A night in a crater

We left Santa Catalina early and made our way to El Valle de Antón, which is a town located inside a crater of an inactive volcano. The last leg of the way from the Panamericana Highway to the valley was very scenic as the bus took us up the volcano and in to the crater. Unfortunately, we couldn’t take any photos as we were all standing squeezed together on the bus.

When we decided to stay at an Eco Hostel called Bodhi with a 27-Bed dorm(!!), we were hesitant and thought it would be dirty and really loud when you have 27 people sharing a huge room, but we were really pleasantly surprised. I realized that it works because this town gets travelers who are interested in nature and hiking, which means sleeping early and waking up early and therefore no problems with noisy guests. The owner is also a traveler himself and so the hostel had a lot of small details that really made the experience great. Oreo, the (black and white) hostel dog, was also quite special. He had been going back and forth to the hostel to get food for a while before he got really sick and they took care of him at the hospital. Now he hangs around all the time and can sense if someone is lost on the hiking trail and goes out to meet them and bring them back to the hostel!

After hitting the fruit and veggie market early the next day, which had a lot of variety, we headed out hiking to see “the sleeping indian”. The hike takes you through the clouds to the edge of the crater, where there is quite a sharp cliff overlooking town. It was a little tougher than expected since we decided to take a different route to go up and take the official one back down, which meant we had to make our path sometimes but were then rewarded with several water falls on the way back. We only spent one night in El Valle but it was really worth it to get some fresh mountain air again before going on to our next stop: Panama City.