travel

Sure, there are lots of people out there who know little more about Panama than that a canal runs through it. But for folks who have sipped of the Chagres River, El Valle is not one of those unknown destinations. The cool valley formed by an extinct volcanic crater had been well populated for a long time before the Spaniards arrived, and the town has been a popular resort and retirement spot all through the century of Panama's existence as an independent republic.

I visited on a Saturday when the sun and rain were playing hide-and-go-seek, first stopping by to talk over coffee with Manfred Koch at Los Capitanes, one of several hotels. Koch, a German ship captain who settled here to open a hotel and restaurant, didn't have many guests at the time --- just the US ambassador and her husband, and the iffy prospect of a few more. Still, he's adding rooms that he'll be able to fill during the dry season and thinking about the various sectors of the tourist market whom he'd like to attract. As I arrived he was talking to another German, a middle-aged home builder who said that business is reasonably good for him, and after I left I ran across yet another German, a backpack-toting university student in search of one of the town's Internet cafes.

Other than brief visits to the market in search of fruits and vegetables, I hadn't been around El Valle much in awhile, but between rain squalls I took the opportunity to walk around, checking out the physical evidence of the tourism and home construction industries' progress. There certainly are a lot more hotels, pensiones and bed-and-breakfast places than there were a few years ago. The town is fairly well built up --- not, thank God, to the point of burger strips and such --- but there are still plenty of vacant lots to build new homes, and there's an attractive selection of existing homes with "for sale" signs.

I didn't go to many of the town's usual tourist attractions --- I didn't have the extra clothing to play in the waterfall or the hot springs, I left the mysterious indigenous petroglyphs for a drier day, and I figured that my next visit to El Nispero --- an establishment that boasts a zoo, one of Panama's best tree and plant nurseries and an orchid propagation facility --- will happen next time I'm around when my sister decides to go plant shopping.

I did, however, grab some fruit for lunch at the public market. In addition to the fruits, roots and veggies, it's also a good place to buy flowers and ornamental plants, and various local handicrafts. Around the market you will find a number of shops that sell most of the popular Panamanian and Latin American handicrafts along with the usual touristy kitsch. I ran into a few American tourists there on this this rainy day.

El Valle's a safe place for a kid to ride a bike or a horse. A lot of grandparents retire here with the knowledge that their grandchildren will want to come to visit them.

One sign of the tourism industry's development here is an improved system of signs to direct visitors to El Valle's attractions.

Along the quiet streets there are some houses for sale that have back yards like this.

The public market serves its utilitarian commercial purpose, but also draws tourists.

This is a small town in a Catholic country --- a town that was already there before the first missionaries came nearly 500 years ago -- - and the church plays an important role in local life. Around the back you'll find El Valle's local museum.

Also in this section:
A rainy season Saturday in El Valle
Colon, continuity and change
The chiva

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