Feliz Ano Nuevo!

Happy New Year to all of our friends and family!!  While we rang in the new year at our little appartment (while Genevieve slept through massive amounts of fireworks, including some being set off on the street in front of our building...not super safe in our opinion), we spent New Years day the Panamanian way by going to the beach!  We were planning on heading to Playa Coronado, but after sitting in traffic on the Pan American Highway for 15 minutes and not getting very far (still over an hour away from the beach), we decided to turn around and try to find a closer beach...which we found!  Playa Venao in Veracruz...just 20 minutes from our appartment!  We are pretty sure it is a "locals" beach with mostly lower-middle class Panamanians in attendance.  There were TONS of people there!  We ate lunch at a restaurant right on the beach and then spent a few hours letting Genevieve play in the sand and water on the beach.  The ocean here was VERY calm, perfect for Genevieve!  She made a little friend there with a Panamanian girl whose family of course wanted to take picture of Genevieve, haha.  The family only spoke Spanish, but we talked with them for a long time, which made us feel better about our own Spanish speaking abilities! :)


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January 2nd was also a holiday for Panama, so James had off work and we were able to go see more things around the Panama City area.  We got up super early (left the appartment by 6am) and headed for Soberino National Park (where the Summit Zoo is located that we took G to for her Birthday).  More specifically, we were headed to an area called Gamboa where there is a Rainforest Discovery Center with a 1,000 meter tall observation tower.  From the top of the tower you have an amazing view of the rainforest and for those who are into bird watching, its a good place to see numerous species of birds.  One day, some researchers observed over 500 different species of birds from the tower! 

finally caught one of the coati mundis on camera!  It is trying to go back into the brush, by the right rear tire of the truck.

Tons of humming birds at the Rainforest Discovery Center

On our way to the observation tower!

This was hilarious to us because there was a huge line of leaf cutter ants going horizontally across the path in front of the sign telling about leaf cutter ants.  It's like they knew it was their sign! :)

Observation tower from the ground up

G and Daddy on their way up!

View from the top!  We could hear tons of howler monkeys in the distance.

Rainforest half way down the tower

Almost didn't even see this little guy!

no, not a snake...just a cool vine we saw on our hike through the rainforest

Gatun Lake

Can you spot the frog?  These guys were EVERYWHERE and you could just see them hopping away as you walked down the path.  It isn't any bigger than a cricket and some were as big as the nail on my pinky finger!

This tree grows spikes on it so that animals won't climb it...kind of looks like something out of a horror movie!

Ha, try to spot the bird!  Its in the upper half of the picture, in the center, and has a yellow chest with blue wings.

our path through the forest

 We didn't see any monkeys on our walk as James had hoped, but we did see more coati mundi's and another animal that looking like a cat-sized rodent without a tail.  We saw many colorful birds, including some sort of parrot with a bright green body and an orangey-red head!

A cruise ship heads down the Panama Canal on our way back to the appartment!

We were back at our appartment by 10am so that James could go play basketball with some guys from work at 10:30.  James left our appartment at 10:30 expecting everyone to be late (typical Panamanian style)...when he got there only one other guy was there who didn't speak any English.  When the other guys finally did show up, the one who brought the basketball brought a flat ball!  So then they had to go around the city to find a pump!  Needless to say, James didnt make it home until almost 2pm.  :)

Since we had our rental car until Tuesday morning, we decided to try to go see Panama Viejo (basically, the ruins of the old Panama city).  We got to Panama Viejo around 3pm only to have the guy sitting at the entrance gate tell us it was "Cerrado" (closed).  Really??  We walked around and took pictures of the part that didnt have a fence around it and then decided to call it a day! 

Panama Viejo...this is the part that was closed.  Supposedly you can climb to the top of that tower and have an amazing view of Panama City...but not today...

The old Cathedral

And that concludes our three day weekend spent around town!  :) We hope everyone had a great New Years and can't wait to see everyone when we get back in only a month and a half!