Allen & Nancy Chartier

Our flight departed from Houston at about 1:40 p.m. and after about 4-½ hours we arrived in Panama City around 6:30 p.m. local time (Panama is on Eastern Standard Time). After a somewhat slow immigration and customs process, we met Hernan Arauz in front of the airport. He had shaved off his beard since Allen had seen him last November, so he didn’t recognize him until he shouted "Hello Allen!"

Hernan drove us to The Canopy Tower Lodge, about a 2 hour drive from the airport. They prepared an excellent dinner for us in mere minutes, even though it was nearly 9:00 p.m. After dinner we settled in to our room on the highest floor with rooms, just below the dining area, which was one level below the topmost observation deck.

We returned to the Canopy Tower for lunch, then watched the hummingbird feeders for a while. It was rather windy so not much was in evidence from the canopy observation deck. We had dinner at 7:00 p.m., then watched the nocturnal "feeders," which were bunches of bananas hung in the trees near the lodge. We saw another Coatimundi, an opossum, and a Kinkajou which we’d been wanting to see since our first trip to the tropics in 1983.

After breakfast, we walked down the 1 ½ mile Semaphore Hill Road to the Plantation Trail into Soberania NP. We walked a short distance on this trail before we had to head back up the hill for lunch. We found an antswarm on the way down with several interesting birds, but the activity had diminished quite a bit by the time we returned past the spot. There were lots of Geoffroy’s Tamarins and a few White-faced Capuchins along the road. The Olivaceous Woodcreeper we saw was a new bird for the area, and we found out from Raul, the owner of the Canopy Tower, that the Blackpoll Warbler we saw in the morning from the observation deck was not only a new species for the area, but rare in Panama. He gave us two free T-shirts for adding these species to the list!

Around 3:00 p.m. we set out to repeat our walk from the morning, hoping to get a bit farther along this time. We looked into the White-whiskered Puffbird nest we had discovered in the morning, and found it contained two young with eyes open. Other highlights were Yellow-headed Caracara and Tawny-capped Euphonia along the Plantation Trail, neither of which are on Raul’s list, though he doesn’t include this trail in his compilation. Two more free T-shirts tomorrow? There was an interesting small Anole that was all black with a dark brown head. Coming back up the road we flushed a Great Tinamou out of the ditch next to the road. We spent half an hour on top of the Canopy Tower before we showered and had dinner. There were lots of guests arriving today, most just for a single night. Some noticeable activity in the hallway turned out to be some of the other guests looking at an interesting Praying Mantis with a large green shield on its thorax.

We ran into a snag at the airport, as we had no tickets and no boarding passes issued to us. Edgar hadn’t left yet, and helped us figure out the situation. We were on a charter flight by ourselves. The flight was a bit over an hour late, and another Ancon representative came out to the airport to apologize.

We got underway in a 6-seat single-engine Cessna (like at Kapawi Lodge three years ago). After about an hour and a half we landed at the airstrip at Cana. We met our guide, Rick Morales, and the three staff (one the cook). Since the four people who were at Cana before us were leaving, we would be the only ones here for the next four days (except for three military police, a.k.a. Maytag repairmen). Cana is a two-day walk from the nearest small village. One more staff person was encountered along the Boca del Cupe trail where he had ridden by horseback 15 hours from that very village to get to Cana. This is the most remote place we’ve ever stayed.

About half way up the trail it started to rain. It rained for about an hour, just long enough to make it slippery. It was also very hot in our raincoats. Among the birds, we saw some Central American Spider Monkeys, a few White-faced Capuchins, and some Mantled Howler Monkeys. In the mud, we saw several tapir tracks. At 2:45 p.m. we arrived at the Cerro Pirre tented camp, 5 ½ hours and 6.2 kilometers later, and 2300 feet higher. We had hoped to see some orchids on this trail, but the habitat was more like a hilly rainforest, and there were not too many epiphytic plants on the trees. We found an interesting and colorful grasshopper (PHOTO) near the scenic overlook near camp.  We did a little birding around the camp before dinner, and retired early for the evening.

Rick said this all-night and all-day rain was very unusual for this time of year (it was supposed to be the dry season). Once again a freak weather pattern sought us out as on so many of our previous trips. We found out after we got home that they had so much rain in Panama City that they had to release 1.2 billion gallons of water into the ocean to prevent the Panama Canal from bursting! This was the first time in 15 years this had to be done.

As this trail took us up into real cloud forest, we again expected to see orchids. But again the forest really looked like a transition between rain forest and true cloud forest. There weren’t too many bromeliads either, so we didn’t have a chance to find our first Neotropical species of salamander.

In the afternoon, it cleared for about an hour before starting to rain again at 4:15 p.m. The rain stopped for the day at 6:00 and we turned in for the night at 7:00.

We then walked part of the Mine Trail and part of another that headed back up the Pirre Ridge (yikes!). We quit this one, having had enough steep trails for one day, and found a good canopy flock on the way back. We had dinner at 6:30 and turned in right afterwards to rest our beat-up feet, if nothing else. Since the sky was partly clear, we had an excellent view of Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus. The moons of Jupiter were easy to see in binoculars, and even the rings of Saturn were just barely visible in 10x binoculars. In the 60x telescope, the rings were very nicely visible.

We returned to camp just after noon to hear that the Black-tipped Cotinga, one of our "must see" birds, had been around, but left 20 minutes before we arrived. This species apparently prefers to sit up on treetops only on sunny afternoons.

Then, the sun went away. Soon, however, Rodolpho (the caretaker who had helped Alexander Wetmore collect and skin birds in the 1940s) called out "cotinga!" It was high on a far ridge, and we got it in the scope. Then it started to rain. Then it rained really hard. The cotinga stayed put the whole time. A lifer at the last possible minute, 30 minutes before our plane out was scheduled to arrive.

Our plane arrived at 2:30 and we had to take off without Rick as the runway was too short for the 6-seater Cessna to take off with three passengers plus luggage. The plan was to fly 12 minutes to the tiny town of El Real, where there was a longer paved runway, leave us off, then go back and get Rick, then take off from the longer airstrip. Sound’s simple doesn’t it? It wasn’t. When we were coming in for a landing, crosswinds at the end of the runway caused us to wobble quite a bit, which prevented the pilot from pulling us up as much as we needed to. As a result, we came down pretty hard. The result was that the brakes failed and we rolled right off the end of the runway into a tall canegrass field. The pilot got us back onto the tarmac, but until a mechanic could be flown in from Panama City, we were stranded.

One thing didn’t lead to another and no plane arrived before dark. Since there weren’t any lights on the runway (nothing but a runway, in fact), no plane would be coming after dark. We found out later that the plane that was sent out for us was on another mission to look for a small plane that had disappeared during the heavy rains on December 29. It was late getting back to Panama City to refuel, and all available planes were looking for this downed plane; nothing was available to "rescue" us. At least we saw a few new birds for the trip, including one last life bird (Spectacled Parrotlet), along with lots of parrots going to roost for the night. We had to sleep overnight in town, where there were no real hotels and no restaurants. Our dinner consisted of some cheese and crackers, and an Orange Crush, purchased at a small store that was still open (it was New Year’s eve, after all). I’ll leave out most of the details of being taken into custody, passport checks, and questioning about Colombia by the local Policia Nacional. What a day!

Marco, from Ancon Expeditions, had called the police station last night and explained to us what was planned for this morning. The plane that was promised had left Panama City at 6:00 a.m., but didn’t arrive on time at 6:45 because the airstrip was fogged in! The plane had to land nearby at La Palma to wait for the low cloud to lift. The clouds lifted around 9:00 a.m. and the plane arrived around 9:15. We landed at Tocumen International Airport (Rick was on his own at this point!) in Panama City at 10:15 and the pilots led us up to the Continental Airlines check-in counter where Edgar (our Ancon driver) was waiting with the rest of our luggage. It was now 10:20, the scheduled departure time of our flight, and they wouldn’t let us check in. They also hadn’t paged us to the gate even though we were confirmed on the flight. There were no other flights to Houston, and few other flights to the US. All possible flights to the U.S. were completely booked, or overbooked. They couldn’t put us on any flights, but were only able to put us on tomorrow’s Houston flight on standby! The flight was oversold by 50%, but at least we were first on the standby list.

Edgar drove us to the very nice Hotel Ejecutivo in Panama City, where we spent the rest of the day relaxing, eating lunch and dinner, and birding on the bay a few blocks away, another opportunity to add to our Panama bird list. We both called in to work to let them know we wouldn’t be in to work the next day due to our little adventure.

One of the Continental Airlines staff (Francia Luiz) was very helpful, the first such person from Continental we’ve met so far. She managed to get us on an Iberia Airlines flight to Miami at 1:00 p.m. and got us "confirmed" American Airlines flights to Chicago then to Detroit, where we were expecting to arrive around midnight. We had to reclaim our bags and recheck in, but unfortunately our main bag had been put on the Houston flight that we couldn’t get on. Francia arranged for the bag to be transferred to the Continental flight to Detroit where we supposedly would be able to claim it.

The Iberia flight departed late at 1:50 p.m., making our connection with our Chicago flight very tight. At least we were on a plane headed for the US! The flight landed at 4:30 p.m. and we managed to get through immigration and customs in 30 minutes. We ran across the airport to the American Airlines gate, arriving at 5:05 for the 5:09 flight. They wouldn’t issue us a boarding pass at the gate, as they had no record of our reservation (confirmed?) in the computer. They told us there were 100 people on standby for this flight, and there was nothing they could do! How can a business run this way? They did nothing to help us, so we were on our own. We checked out the Northwest Airlines counter where there was a friendly, helpful person with nobody else waiting in line. She put us on standby on the 6:40 p.m. flight to Detroit, which would arrive at 9:00. We were first on the standby list, as she had listed us as "mishandled passengers," which was the most accurate thing we’d heard all day.

Not too hopeful, we went to the gate to wait and see if we got on the flight. The supervisor there eventually called us up and indicated that he could probably get us on the flight if we could get our ticket signed over from Continental to Northwest (it was signed over to American, which Northwest couldn’t honor). This was handled in the nick of time by another Continental Airlines person and we got on the flight. There are some people out there willing to help, but they’re hard to find and most of them don’t work for Continental.

We landed in Detroit at 9:45 and walked all the way across the airport to the Continental Airlines baggage claim area to see if our other bag had made it. The bag was not in their computer, and of course Continental wouldn’t take responsibility for the bag even though they were the last ones to handle it. They told us we had to file a claim with Northwest Airlines, as they were the last ones to "handle" us. So, back across the airport we went to file our claim.

We got home around 11:00 p.m. only to find that our screen door was frozen shut. We were locked out! We ended up prying the door open with a tire iron that we had in the trunk of the car. It’s great to be home! Our missing bag arrived the next day.