Hiking Chorro Macho Falls in Panama
Panama Travelog #12
El Valle, Panama - Tue, 24 Dec 2024. 11:30am.
Finally, we've done a hike in Panama. A hike on a trail that was open, accessible via our weeny rental car, and which delivered exactly what it promised (no touts or shills filling sites with fake reviews). And it only took us... 5 tries.
On the way back to town from our aborted attempt to get to Pozo Azul we stopped at Chorro Macho falls. It's part of a small eco-park, and its small parking lot was full of tourist outfitter vans. Oh, buy, just the sign we hate. Oh, and speaking of signs we hate, there was the literal sign advertising the admission fee to hike the trail. It was only a few bucks each. That's not much... but it's also a super-short trail. The cost works out to something like $25/km. Shit, a limo is way cheaper than this walk. But after the frustration with this morning's thwarted hike we said "Whatever", paid our money, and started on the hike.
I'd forgotten to bring my nice camera on the day's outing. It's sitting in a dark corner of the one closet-like shelf in our sparsely furnished hotel room. I gave thought to driving back through town to get it but at this point am so sick of wasting time not getting to hike that I decided I'll do the best I can with my iPhone camera. Which... is fairly good nowadays. The photo of Chorro Macho falls above is way better than I could have captured with my old iPhone SE 3. My new 16 Pro has a higher resolution imager, multiple lenses, and more powerful computational photography. It still doesn't achieve the richness of color than my aging Fujifilm X-T3 delivers, but it does other things well that save me time try to fix them up in post, like fixing highlights and shadows by quietly and smoothly combining multiple exposures.
I'd share more than this one picture, but it was a short hike and this falls 100m in from the trailhead was basically it. We'd definitely like to hike more today.... We'll have to go back to our plans and see what else we can pull forward to today.
El Valle, Panama - Tue, 24 Dec 2024. 11:30am.
Finally, we've done a hike in Panama. A hike on a trail that was open, accessible via our weeny rental car, and which delivered exactly what it promised (no touts or shills filling sites with fake reviews). And it only took us... 5 tries.
On the way back to town from our aborted attempt to get to Pozo Azul we stopped at Chorro Macho falls. It's part of a small eco-park, and its small parking lot was full of tourist outfitter vans. Oh, buy, just the sign we hate. Oh, and speaking of signs we hate, there was the literal sign advertising the admission fee to hike the trail. It was only a few bucks each. That's not much... but it's also a super-short trail. The cost works out to something like $25/km. Shit, a limo is way cheaper than this walk. But after the frustration with this morning's thwarted hike we said "Whatever", paid our money, and started on the hike.
I'd forgotten to bring my nice camera on the day's outing. It's sitting in a dark corner of the one closet-like shelf in our sparsely furnished hotel room. I gave thought to driving back through town to get it but at this point am so sick of wasting time not getting to hike that I decided I'll do the best I can with my iPhone camera. Which... is fairly good nowadays. The photo of Chorro Macho falls above is way better than I could have captured with my old iPhone SE 3. My new 16 Pro has a higher resolution imager, multiple lenses, and more powerful computational photography. It still doesn't achieve the richness of color than my aging Fujifilm X-T3 delivers, but it does other things well that save me time try to fix them up in post, like fixing highlights and shadows by quietly and smoothly combining multiple exposures.
I'd share more than this one picture, but it was a short hike and this falls 100m in from the trailhead was basically it. We'd definitely like to hike more today.... We'll have to go back to our plans and see what else we can pull forward to today.