Wild carob, chocolate gold...
Today my dad and I hiked 12 km along Las Cruces Trail, built by the Spaniards using native slave labor around 1585. It was the new "improved" highway, paved by river stones and replacing an earlier trail, over which Inca gold and silver was transferred from the Pacific to the Atlantic enriching Spain and, ultimately, all of Europe. We walked in the footsteps of conquistadors, Sir Francis Drake, Henry Morgan the pirate, the gold rush 49ers, Ulysses S. Grant and, quite literally, in the hoof holes left by the thousands of mules that trekked across the stones over the centuries hauling Inca treasure to waiting Spanish galleons and later California gold to waiting clipper ships.
Las Croces, the crosses laid in the path....
cute little capuchin monkey
The trail remained in constant use until the construction of a railway by the French canal builders in the late 1850's. Rough, wet, slippery, and humid (99%?) with the sound of
howler monkeys in the canopy and thousands of special little creatures
and plants along the trail (including poison dart frogs and tarantulas),
we saw no one else the entire hike. Our naturalist guide Ivan, from
Ancon Expeditions, was super!
water filling in the holes worn by a thousand donkey hooves....
forest gold...
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