Sarah, a Spider Monkey, and the Local Jungle Man

As you can see, we had a run in with Tarzan and a spider monkey that likes to borrow Ritz crackers from unsuspecting tourists. But first, a quick catch up since our last riveting post. Our first full day here in Boquete we decided to take a quick walking tour of the town, which is very easy to get around by foot. We also walked about a mile out of town to what is supposedly a very nice garden up in the hills. Unfortunately it was closed as the owners were at a fair in a nearby city for the weekend, we will probably head back in the next few days. On the way back from the garden we stopped at a coffee farm and had some delicious coffee at their on-premises cafe. There are several hiking trails near boquete and the following day we took a cab up to the trailhead for three of the trails. We had originally thought about hiking the Quetzal trail (despite it being technically closed) but when we arrived there was a man explaining that the Quetzal trail is pretty hard to hike as it is washed out in many places and less experienced hikers may have trouble following the trail. We decided to hike a different area, called the Pipeline trail which leads up to a waterfall. This was a very nice hike, and since it was always sort of misty but not quite raining you really feel as if you are in the clouds. The next day we relaxed after our long hike, and celebrated St. patrick's day with some green concoctions, and some of the other travellers tried to teach us how to play cricket. Luckily there were no nearby windows as it slowly turned into baseball.
Yesterday we took a tour of a small canyon and some nearby hot springs. The canyon appears to have been cut by a narrow river and goes quite deep, you could cliff dive into it. There were also some rather inquisitive (as in, they like to bite swimmers) fish in the water. The hot springs were on a local's farm and were very natural. You could still see the air bubbles coming up from wherever the water was being heated underground. The farmer had made little rock walls around the springs to turn them into little pools and it was very peaceful on his farm. Then his monkey arrived! This particular monkey is known for taking food and drinks and we were told not to take any beers to the hot springs as the monkey has drank them and gotten sick in the past! There was also a jungle man living nearby (with a possibly french accent) who came to say hello. The picture above shows Sarah on her way out trying to keep the monkey from eating her crackers. I think the jungle man just liked being in pictures. Anyways, we will probably head back to the garden in a day or so, then possibly head to the beach before going to Panama City. We will keep you posted!