Panama! And Some critters.

Yep. We ended up stopping in Panama on our way to Ecuador. We decided to stay a month and see the rest of the spots we didn’t see back in 2016.

And we stopped to see my sister Dolly and her guy Mark.

It was a really great visit! They were kind enough to let us stay at their lovely little home in the Playa Morrillo area for a week so we could hang out and catch up. And surf (more on that later). Then they met us a week later and we hung out in Bocas Del Toro for a week over Christmas (and surfed some more).

All in all it was great to see them and relax. The last few times we have seen them have been during stressful family times, and just not conducive to pleasant visits, so this one was purely about chilling and catching up.

It was very nice!

We also saw a lot of stuff…

We saw some bugs:

All those legs are mesmerizing in some way. I could have watched this guy all day, except for Tam’s screams of terror. This is one of her arch-nemesis critters, and there are many of her “I almost died” stories with these creepers as the main antagonist.

And these guys: they clear a trail through all the leaf litter on the forest floor for yards and yards, and march in formation from the top of a tree all the way across the jungle to their colony. They are so organized, with all the load-carrying little guys in perfect step headed back, and all the empty ones hurrying back up to grab another load.

I recently had to replace my old smashed-up iPhone 12, and ended up with the new iPhone 17. One of the things they improved was the macro capability. I have been nerding out on these macro shots of little tiny bugs.

Sorry. Bear with me…

This little bee was about three-eighths of an inch long.

This beetle was just so weird. Look closely at his feet and “ankles”. Such cool detail, but, for the sake of his self esteem, please try not to stare at his proboscis.

And this little guy came along to partake of our leftovers, and agreed to a quick photo shoot as payment. He was less than a quarter inch long.

These squirrels are everywhere. Each morning I would get up and have coffee on the patio, and listen to them grinding a hole into a coconut. It would take a couple hours each time, and by the end they would have a hole big enough to stick their head all the way into. And then began the squirrel MMA matches as another two or three greedy little buggers would try to capitalize on the first one’s efforts. This is good Panamanian coffee-time entertainment.

There were other interesting animals as well.

Check out that middle toe on his back feet! It must be what makes them so fun to watch run. They just race across water, trees, rocks, or anything really, with such ease. It appears to be a Common Basilisk, but I prefer the nickname of the “Jesus Christ Lizard” for their ability to run across water.

We stopped at a beach on a neighboring island that was famous for these Strawberry Poison Dart Frogs, endemic just to Isla Bastimentos, and, strangely enough, found in pretty good numbers in the bushes just behind the aptly-named Red Frog Beach. Tam spent a good hour taking two thousand and thirty-eight blurry pictures of these little half-inch long frogs.

She got three good pictures though!

This little guy (and, yes, this one really is a male, as you can tell because he is carrying his hatched tadpoles on his back to another puddle (I guess only the males do this)).

There was a little tree frog at my sister’s house that would come out on the counter on their patio every night. He was a bit of a ham, and held perfectly still for some pictures. She named him Cosmo. He was a bit of a supermodel with those eyes.

Cosmo in his contemplative pose.

And Cosmo’s lighter, happier look.

There are some really crazy looking birds here in Bocas Del Toro.

A Black Oropendola.

These beautiful birds are everywhere here. This one landed a few meters away on the side of my sister’s pool, and was just so animatedly curious. They are commonly called the Roadside Hawk, and true to that name, they are everywhere on the roads cleaning up anything that may be a little too slow crossing the road. They may also be the sworn enemy of our little friend Cosmo.

The same hawk taking off.

Okay, this is all fine and dandy, Mike, but what about the more mammally type animals that Panama is famous for?

Yeah, fine ya impatient buggers, I was getting there…

Okay, fine.

Monkeys!

Howler Monkeys are everywhere here. They are the natural alarm clock (unfortunately at 5:00 AM every morning), the early warning system for incoming rain, and generally just the casual observer of everything going on in the neighborhood. They are not very big monkeys, only about two feet tall, but the sound they make is a deafening T-rex-esque scream/howl thing that could scare anyone silly if they hadn’t heard it before.

No matter how they sound, they are pretty cute, and so much fun to watch. Honestly, I am pretty envious of their prehensile tail. This video shows how independently the tail acts, and how secure the grip is on that branch. I would love to have one of those tails.

And, of course… sloths!

Just Chillin!

Such a cute little mug.

Nap time!

It is true: sloths really don’t move much, but when they do it is really fun to watch. It is such a slow, calculated, methodical way of moving around, and I could watch it for hours.

Like this. Sorry, this one is a little longer.

We have been enjoying Panama. We have visited family, done some nice walks in the jungle, surfed a bunch of really great waves, and taken a really nice hike up a mountain and to some waterfalls in the jungle that left Tam sore and hobbling around for the last two days (that hike will probably be my next post).

Happy Christmas and happy new year!

Buena Aventura!