At Miguel’s

“Everything that´s green is poison – good thing that I am brown all over.” ~ Flo

That was our motto when we visited Miguel, a lovely, funny man who lives together with his partner Yaneth in the rainforest of Panama. When we entered the jungle, we got greeted by a concert of the rain that was loudly drumming on the leaf roof above us. And of course we got a very warm welcome by Miguel, Yaneth and their three dogs, who were leading the way to their camp. The first obstacle was a river that separated us and the coming way to the camp of Miguel. Even though we crossed it via “lancha” (Spanisch für Boot) our backpacks and our clothes, trekking shoes, zip trousers and t-shirts were immediately wet – a status that would continue for the rest of our stay. In fact, our stuff was not only completely wet but also totally muddy. While we had our struggles walking, staying up to the ankle in the mud, Ruth had the time of her life, laughing at us in her wellies.

The journey to the camp was quite a struggle, it was steep, slippery and our luggage felt like hundreds of kilos. Everyone carried one backpack and one rucksack in front of themselves and as an extra we also had to carry all the food for our stay up the hill. Some of us were swearing, but in the end we had a good time hiking. When we made it to the camp, which consisted of some huts, a place to hang up hammocks, two toilets, two sinks, two showers and the main house where the kitchen and our “dining room” was, we all got a cup of nice warm and sweet tea. After that we took a quick bath in a rainforest river with a waterfall nearby, in order to get everything clean. Since we did that with all our clothes on, including our shoes, we quickly changed into something dry and warm back in the camp. This way, not all of our clothes were dripping wet. There were our forest clothes and our camp clothes, although in the end they were both brown because of the mud, but literally no one cared. Yaneth and some of us prepared a delicious dinner consisting of rice and lentils. We ate our meal next to spiders as big as our hands, ants and grasshoppers, because there were no real walls, windows or doors. For some of us this worked like a therapy for their arachnophobia (fear of spiders).

Then it was time for our first night in the rain forest. Before we could go to sleep, we had to search our bed or our hammocks for spiders, snakes and scorpions. While checking you could hear some screams from time to time. Similar situation the next morning when we were checking our shoes, which had been cozy places for all animals with more than four legs for the whole night. The breakfast was delicious and especially the cacao tasted awesome to me, because I had carried it up all the way. We spent the day mainly in the camp talking and massaging each other’s backs, because after carrying all the heavy stuff our necks felt like steel. Due to the heavy rain the atmosphere was cozy and nice. The rain stopped in the afternoon, so we went for a short hike through the forest to a river where we gratefully jumped in. When we were all nice and clean again, we had dinner together. The food was quite interesting and the best part of it was that Miguel made crepes out of Yucca flour for dessert.

The next morning started earlier for us. Miguel organized an animal and sunrise watching at different spots in the camp. We all hoped to see for example monkeys or sloths, but unfortunately we only saw some birds. After we’ve had breakfast, Miguel guided us on an extensive tour through the rainforest, showing us the nature and explaining literally everything we saw. We also heard a short presentation by Anton about ants, which was really interesting because we stood next to a base of them and watched them the whole time walking on their “highways”, carrying leaves that were five times as big as themselves. We were carrying something on our way back to the camp too, the tagua pearls. These are fruits of a tree that is like ebony. Back in the camp we all started crafting, because if you shape the fruit you can get pearls of any shape, for example for bracelets. That was our activity for the rest of the evening, just until it was dinnertime. After that we all went to bed quickly, as we had to leave the next morning.

Even though we loved every animal we saw in the jungle (even the scorpion as large as a hand that had joined our dinner the evening before), we just didn´t want to take them with us to Panama City, so we checked all our bags for small crawling animals. It was a bit annoying but some of us were really happy to do so, because their bags had been taken over by ants. Then it was time to get back into civilization and to rock our forest clothes for the last time. It was a beautiful hike, even though our backpacks and rucksacks were as heavy as before, because now we were used to the muddy and slippery paths and this way we could completely enjoy the breathtaking green nature. And we also got the last chance to go for a swim in a rainforest river. While our luggage got shuttled by Miguel in a rowing boat, the rest of us (including the dogs) swam across, which was fun because of the current. Even though we had only stayed for three days with them, we were all very sad to say goodbye to Miguel and Yaneth.