other aspects of the Darién

Whilst the main reason I went to the Darién was to see the harpy eagle, I also wanted to experience some of the other wildlife there.  & the show started even before we arrived, as this beauty (a female great curassow) popped out of the trees beside the road and wandered around for a little while allowing me to take some photos.

The camp itself was surrounded by forest and there were a number of great birds around the grounds. Parrots (red-lored and mealy amazons) flew around screeching the whole time, a woodpecker was nesting in a tree beside the dining area, and the hummingbird feeders were well used.  If I woke during the night I could always hear the yelping call of at least one mottled owl, and the guide managed to find one for me with his flashlight:






There were other interesting creatures around too, including this snake which I believe to be the highly venomous fer-de-lance:

There were monkeys (howler and geoffroy's tamarin) and sloths too, millions of butterflies, little tree frogs, giant toads, pretty grasshoppers - and far too many spiders for my liking.  It's difficult to limit the photos I post here as there was such a great variety of wildlife.  How often do you see a green butterfly?

What I hadn't expected to see so much of, however, was the human story that currently has the Darién as part of its route.  Migrants are working their way up from South America and through Central America into the US.  Based around the US policy of giving asylum to Cubans who arrive by land (but not those who come by sea), but now with as many Haitians and Africans from various nations using the route too.  It has hit the news recently as Nicaragua closed their borders to these migrants, meaning thousands of them stuck in Costa Rica, and now that Costa Rica is trying to limit the numbers the problem is hitting Panama.  A parallel with the way the Balkan states put up barriers to stop Syrians passing through on their way to Germany.

You don't see these migrants in Panama City unless you happen to be in the long-distance bus terminal when they come in from the Darién and wait for a bus to take them west to Costa Rica (or at least now to the camps on the border), but in the Darién there were hundreds.  These guys were waiting in the pouring rain to cross the Chucunaque River:

They will have made their way, somehow, through the almost impassable Darién Gap that divides Panama from Colombia - an area of rainforest-clad mountains dissected by numerous rivers, best known for its Colombian guerrillas and drug smugglers and the (mythical?) FBI agents trying to stop them.  I visited parts of this area, around the fringes, but the interior is pretty inaccessible.  Further on I saw them queuing to be processed by the border police, I saw them walking along the roadsides, queuing for food being handed out by a local Catholic church, and hanging around this camp waiting to move on to Panama City:

I wanted to know more about them, to hear their stories of how they got to Colombia (where I hear many have been robbed), how they got through the Darién, and what they were hoping for at the end of this hugely difficult journey.  Unfortunately, having a full (pre-organised) schedule, I didn't get the chance of more than a few smiles and waves, and it is difficult to get reliable information here on the matter.  Locals I asked told me they were all from the Congo, or from Somalia, or Haiti, or Bangladesh ... what is certain though is that their number does include Cubans, Haitians and Africans.