Our last stop in our travels was the Rambala Jungle Lodge. We had been here before so I knew what it was like, and I was really looking forward to going there again.

Jungle Lodge doesn’t fully explain what this place is about. I probably can’t either. It is one of those things you have to experience. The place is near Rambala, a town on the north side of Panama in Bocas del Toro Province. If you are high up enough you can see the water of Chiriqui Grande.

Eric and Linda (the owners) have carved a bit of living space out of the jungle. There are cabanas so you have a roof over your head and mosquito nets to keep out unwanted night visitors, but otherwise you are literally in the jungle. There is no electricity. Water is from the mountain stream. Anything else must be carried in. It is one thing to experience Panama from a city or block house, and quite another to be out with nature in the big outdoors.

The view from the front of our cabana.

Our bed, more or less outdoors except for the roof.

The bathroom. That is the sink straight ahead. There is a composting toilet on the right. (works great – odor free)

The outdoor shower is on the right.

You can tell we’ve been out and about.

The grounds are beautiful, and it was interesting to see different flowers and plants this time. (our last visit was in December). Here’s are some photos, in no particular order.

This is only one variety of many heliconia that are growing on the property.

That’s our cabana up there.

I don’t know what these were but they were sure pretty.

A pathway up the hill.

We had fun swimming one afternoon! The water was pretty chilly but if you are hot it feels very good.

There is the water of Chiriqui Grande in the distance.

My camera tended to fog up in the morning sun after being cooled in the night air.

One the way home, hiking out back to the car.

Of course there are always interesting bugs and critters!

There were four tree sloths, two of them with babies.

I was trying to photograph a spider and found this unique bug under the lodge.

A Jesus Lizard, a different variety than we have near my house.

These Jesus Lizards are great because they freeze when disturbed, making them great photo subjects.

Some others found the poison dart frog and brought it back for the rest of us to see. When he was let go he was nice enough to pose for a moment before he hopped off into the undergrowth.

A golden orb spider, a very large spider. This one wasn’t polite enough to hang out where he was easy to photograph, or where the light would hit the web (which is supposed to be gold in the sunlight) but he was still a very cool spider.

A beautiful flag bug hanging out on the passion vine.

Another tree sloth in the tree.

I got lucky one morning and caught this sloth in the tree with the light hitting her (we know it’s a her because she is one of the moms)

Two different orchid bees. Eric put the paper towel out with a scent they like to attract them. He says they collect the scents and store them on their back legs so they will smell good enough to attract a female.

This orchid bee is quite large and very beautiful.

I saw this big critter hanging out on our door frame one morning.

A very lucky shot! The sloth stretched her front legs overhead (or underhead since she is upside down) just long enough to get a good shot of the baby hanging on to her belly.

Eric and Linda are becoming a wealth of information on the wildlife in the area, and love to point out everything they find. They said they have also been visited by a number of research scientists who want to study wildlife. One time they had a whole crowd who spent all night in the jungle looking for a particular frog! I know I have barely scratched the surface of what can be seen in their jungle.

Javier with the horse assigned the job of carrying our packs out to the car.

As we were walking out, two indians came along carrying long pieces of lumber like they were nothing!

Down the road, there is a herd of water buffalo.

I’ll leave you with some random videos I took while experimenting with my iPad. The next post will be some untouched jungle as we go hiking up the hill!