A Sunday hike in Boquete

 Our visit here in Boquete happened to overlap with a group hike planned by the guy I call "Mr. Adventure".  He'd written,

"We'll take a group of blind and super cool people hiking.
There will be a Toyota Coaster shuttle departing from Albrook to Boquete and then Cerro Punta.
The whole trail takes 4-6 hours, but temperature is between 15 and 22 degrees Celsius."

My response?

When you guys get to Cerro Punta and start hiking, let me know.  Our tentative plan is when we get the heads up that you’re actually out there, we drive from the AirBnB to the Boquete end of the trail and then get lost in the woods.  [joke: hopefully we do NOT get lost] Or, if not get lost, we find you when you’ve gone a bit more than half way and tell you silly jokes as you finish up your own hike.  

So, my husband and I fired up Google Maps and headed up (very much up) the road toward the Boquete end of the trail, until we reached this sign, and parked.

Spoiler alert: this was not actually the Los Quetzales trail; it was a sign pointing to where the trail would eventually begin.  You can forgive us for thinking otherwise, since there were parked cars all around with other hikers milling about; on the opposite side of the road was this kiosk saying "Senderos Los Quetzales" (Los Quetzales Trail) with a map of the trail, and a blue sign talking about hiking regulations.

Also, just beyond those signs was this very narrow -- admittedly, paved -- road leading across a tiny bridge.

So, we gamely hopped out of the car and started hiking up the road.  The whole way up, there was this pipe running alongside -- we're guessing it was for water, especially because at some point we passed a water treatment plant. 

The chickens that hang out here:
why did they cross the road?

The road was narrow, super steep, and lovely.  We know now it was still "the road" and not "the trail", but our rental car would have had a really hard time on these grades. 

Perhaps we, too, had a hard time on these grades.

After 3 km that took us about an hour to walk, we reached a ranger station.  The ranger pointed to where the trail actually started, just beyond his building.  He said we weren't allowed to hike the trail without paying for it, which we were supposed to do in town or on line (there was no wifi signal at the ranger station).  And regarding the trail from here to Cerro Punta, his advice was "don't do it!"  He led us to the map and showed how the trail was steep up followed by steep up and then more steep up, and it's all "polvo" (dust or dirt).  

I did peek at the trail.  It looked like it was in nicer shape than yesterday's Volcano trail -- being closer to the river means that the dirt is more packed down and less slippery.  

Still, given how difficult it was to navigate yesterday's terrain, my husband was leery of uneven dirt paths, and so that, combined with the fact that we weren't legally allowed to hike it (having not paid the hiking fees), we turned around and went back down the road.

Even though this wasn't the official trail, the views were lovely.

A sign by the side of the road at one point noted we could go see some waterfalls on a side trail.  That route included this bridge, which was a very bouncy bridge to cross.

I guess lots of people reacted to the bounciness in their own ways; hence the sign next to the bridge:

Also along the road were many kinds of flowers of all colors.  Here were some that particularly caught my eye.

So we never met up with the group coming from Cerro Punta: they did the route in the downhill direction, and they'd paid for the trip as they were supposed to, and they ended up having a lovely hike, too.