Day 2 in Panama City

After breakfast this morning, we decided to go to the Metropolitan Nature Park, to maybe walk a trail or two and see what it's all about.  And we were hoping it wouldn't rain!!

So, we get to the park headquarters, pay our entrance fee and are led out to the beginning of the trail we wanted to walk on.  We had walked just a little way (on the Titi Monkey trail), when by a nursery that they have there in that park, near a stream, a big black snake suddenly shot out about 8 feet away from the trail.  It slithered really fast along a wall there, and we watched it as it disappeared somewhere near the stream.  That was an exciting first sighting!!!  No picture, it all happened way too fast.

The Titi Monkey trail is pretty much uphill all the way to the lookout, but we took it fairly slow.  We saw a Slaty-tailed Trogon - very pretty, along the way.  It just sat there so we got a good look at it, but we couldn't identify it at the time, but when we got back home we identified it over the internet.  We also passed a very wide trail of leaf-cutter ants carrying bright yellow and green things - leaves and yellow flowers from a tree.

The view from the top of the park was very impressive - and the whole time we were just so sure it was going to rain.  Here are some pictures from the top.

As you can see from these two pictures, it sure looks like it's going to rain.

In this picture, you can see the two dark islands on the upper left.  They are part of the causeway we were on yesterday.

Well, it just sprinkled a little bit when we were up at the top, taking these pictures.  But we sure thought we were in for it.  It actually never rained this entire day, so that was pretty surprising to us, given all the dark clouds everywhere.

On our walk back down, Guillermo was taking pictures of the leaf cutter ants when all of a sudden I saw some little animal run across the trail.  Now it COULD have been an agouti, but it looked more like a little rabbit.  So, since we weren't sure, we dubbed it the agouti rabbit that I saw.  And this little agouti rabbit was obviously being chased because shortly after it ran across the road, along came about 7 or 8 coatis also crossing the road.  After that excitement, we walked further down the road (it's all downhill now!!), and I spotted a sloth high up in a tree!!!!  At first I thought it was yet another termite mound, but then an arm moved out!  We were so happy to see a sloth!!  We stood there for the longest time watching it, and this one was doing quite a bit of moving.  There were two of them up there, and we watched one cross over the road, and then it seemed to be coming down!  As it got closer to the ground, we got a picture of it, but not that good.  And then we just lost it - somehow or another we took our eyes off for a few minutes, and then we couldn't find it again.

Continuing on our walk down, we saw quite a few more birds - a cuckoo we couldn't identify and then Guillermo spotted another sloth real close to the trail!!  We saw this one much better, and the pictures came out not too bad!

Check out those claws!!!

So, it was a pretty exciting walk in this park.  Once we got off the trail, we caught a taxi back to Albrook Mall, since most things were closed today as apparently it is a major holiday - sort of like 4th of July to us.

We went back to the same parillada that we ate at yesterday in the mall, and then walked around looking for a book store.  This precious animal was just outside the bookstore.

Guillermo said he was going to get this hippo for Rebeca, but it didn't fit in his backpack, and he was afraid it would hurt the Energumeno.

Everyone was doing this, so of course, we had to also!

Here he is, in all his glory!

Nothing interesting at the bookstore, so we went back and got two ice creams - one a mandarina and the other maracuya - both delicious!  Then we got a taxi and headed back to the hotel.  Tomorrow, we pick up our rental car and drive to David and then on to Boquete.