Macho de Monte

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Kris Cunningham

Macho de Monte is a beautiful canyon with a river and lots of waterfalls. It’s near Cuesta de Piedra, south of Volcan in Chiriqui Province. Our friends Tony and Carol also wanted to see the place, so we set out together to have a fun day.

If you want to visit this place, of course the first thing you need to do is find it. We had directions – go north towards Volcan. When you get to Cuesta de Piedra turn right (east), go 3 kilometers, and look for a guard house on the right. Ask the guard to point you to the path.

We drove right past it, taking these photos on the way not knowing this was the guard house we needed. There are no signs or anything to alert you. We drove a bit more, didn’t find anything that matched the directions so we went back to ask, and sure enough, that was it.

We are driving down a very scenic, winding, and steep hill. That is the guard house ahead on the right.
We sail past the guard house, down the hill, around the curve (where we later parked the car), and head for the bridge.
This is the bridge over the canyon.

Joel also took some videos of our experience.

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Now that we realized that we were in the right place, how do you get down to the river? We saw a path on the south side of the bridge so we headed uphill in that direction.

Looking over the bridge, this is what we saw! We were definitely in the right place.
We headed up the path to see what we could find.
We found this!! We were on the edge above these huge walls looking deep down into the canyon.
At the end of the path, standing on a small outcropping of rock, we could see farther down the canyon.

Here’s a bit of that view in video form.

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Since it was clear that we couldn’t get down to the water from way up there, we decided to see what we could find on the other side of the road.

This looks possible! We climbed and slid down the sandy hill to the rocky river bed below.
There was a large and healthy looking tomato plant growing in the rocks!
We climb over the rocks toward the river. That is the beginning of the canyon ahead. There is also a cave on the right.
We made it to the canyon!
The entrance to the cave, walls covered with moss, ferns, and other plants.
A tiny frog in the sand (photo by Joel)
Someone had made a lean to shelter near the river.
The walls above the river on the way to the canyon are covered with plants and waterfalls.

It is hard to explain or show in photos how magnificent this place is! It is a hidden gem. Maybe this video will give you some idea of what we saw. First you will see the path heading up to the sandy hills and rocky river bed, and then what Joel saw at the entrance to the canyon.

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I would definitely go back there, but we would take climbing ropes. I think if we went over the first waterfall and swam in the beautiful clear, blue pool below we could get back up with ropes. If we went farther down the canyon though, it might be a bit too much adventure for us old folks. We’ll leave that for people like our friend Ryan who made a couple videos of his experience there. We may not be up to doing it all, but he sure inspires us to get out there and have adventures!

Ryan at Macho de Monte

Ryan – the true story of his experiences at Macho de Monte

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About Kris Cunningham

We live in David, Chiriqui Provence, Republic of Panama! This blog is about some of our experiences in our new country.
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13 Responses to Macho de Monte

  1. hollycarter184 says:
    April 12, 2013 at 4:53 pm

    oh Boy! Kris thank you so much for sharing that ! I had seen Ryan’s video and so it was really great to see it from your perspective. I just can hardly wait to go there myself!

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    • Kris says:
      April 12, 2013 at 5:08 pm

      We’ll have to go together! I’d definitely like to see it again. I wonder what it’s like in the rainy season. I’m sure there would be a whole lot more water. I think Ryan’s video was in Dec. when he said “it might be my last”!

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  2. flexcouple says:
    April 12, 2013 at 6:04 pm

    Looks awesome! We will have to get directions from you again when we are there later this year. We went to a really neat canyon near Boquete last year and jumped into the river. This looks even better.

    Shelly

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    • Kris says:
      April 12, 2013 at 9:43 pm

      Sure, I’d be happy to point you in the right direction (or use it as a good excuse to go back again 😀 ) I’ll have to find out about your canyon near Boquete too.

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  3. Rewired and Retired in Nicaragua says:
    April 12, 2013 at 7:55 pm

    This looks like an amazing place. I’ll bet it was nice and cool there.

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    • Kris says:
      April 12, 2013 at 9:30 pm

      Actually it was a bit warm since it wasn’t that high up. I was sweating climbing over all those rocks, but if you got in the water you would be nice and cool. Maybe next time!

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  4. indacampo says:
    April 12, 2013 at 11:57 pm

    I was thinking that we’d like to go exploring but maybe this is a trip best left for dry season. Beautiful pics as usual Kris, and thank you Joel for the video!

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  5. daniellajoe says:
    April 13, 2013 at 9:00 pm

    really nice video!!!! 🙂

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  6. Pingback: Macho de Monte, revisited | The Panama Adventure

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