My Travels In El Valle de Anton, Panama

Hello folks.  I wasn't sure where to post this, so many places I could have and not sure if I put it where the most people could read it and help them. But since El Valle is my town I posted it here. Maybe the people who run this site will see fit to place it where it belongs, on another page or in the trash.

 

My name is Mark. I moved to Panama 8 years ago.  I used to write for International Living on their expat exchange site.  I wrote over...

Such beauty and wonder everywhere!

 

 

Just a short drive from the traffic and hectic city life of Panama City is the beautiful oasis called El Valle de Anton. This charming and picturesque community is a growing retirement community for many ex-pats and Panamanians as well. 

 

A paved road winds its way off the Pan-American Highway towards the mountains. One can feel the air grow cooler as the road climes ever...

One can look at a map of Panama and see it as would an early engineer, as an earth moving project. There, where the raised land is as narrow as a sandbar on the globe, and the two giant fraternal land masses balance on either side of the equator, Panama is like the stretched middle of a twisted water balloon, and anyone with an imagination tuned to navigation, would place an inland waterway there to connect the oceans, dug to accommodate the cargo of deep-hulled ships.  But when one...

It was the extra toilet paper holder, a lace and chintz contraption hanging on the wall, that made us laugh.  The room in which we stayed was called Limonera, named for the lime tree in its private terrace, which was a separate studio around the back of the main house of Park Eden in El Valle de Anton, Panama.  If I were a detective, I would say it was originally the residence of someone who loved to read, for there were many books along the wall, and who loved Panama for the...

For the final stretch, we followed the blue signs to Park Eden from the main road.  The way was unpaved and bumpy, with rocks smoothed over by frequent travel, slowing us to peer into the gates and gardens of well-kept El Valle de Anton homes and jostling us so we were forced to look up at the handsome ridges of the caldera that were thick with riotous jungle.  If I were a Victorian British memsahib arriving to the cooler regions of the hill stations, the grounds...