Panama: Day 1 - Jungle Walk

We found a disaster in our transom shortly after arriving. The transom bilge pump was broken, and the weather stripping wasn't installed correctly, so it was full of water. In addition, an oil bottle had leaked, so the transom and everything stowed within was just full of oily soup. The morning/afternoon was spent cleaning all that up and installing a new bilge pump.

Later in the afternoon though, Minnie and I went for a fun hike through the jungle! There was some insanely thick tall grass that I would never venture into for the life of me.

We saw some leaf-cutter ants that had an incredible system going that had workers cutting leafs into near-perfect circles, then a huge ant-highway that went all the way back to the nest. They had totally cleared out all pieces of foliage along their highway. It was incredible.

We found some remnants of the old US military base that was located here.

We also found some abandoned old barracks/jails from the base that had been partially re-taken by the jungle. It was incredibly spooky and reminded me of a deserted Jurassic Park with all the broken fencing and jungle noises in the background.

Not a good shot, but this spider was the size of your hand. (look dead centre of picture, then go slightly up and to the right)

Minnie braving it up some old stairs.

The trees here were really unique.

We ended up seeing some monkeys swinging in the trees, but I didn't bother taking any pictures of them as my GoPro does not zoom and there is no way it would have picked them up. I do have some video though. Other cool sightings include bats and those huge South American rodents as seen on Kenny vs. Spenny, I don't remember what they are called.

It only got creepier as the sun started to go down.