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Panama Travelog #20
El Valle, Panama - Wed, 25 Dec 2024. 4pm.
We've continued taking it easy today as I recover from overextending myself on a hike yesterday. It's Christmas day, anyway, so a lot of things are closed. Even some hikes are closed. For example, there's a small hiking loop behind our hotel called Square Trees (árboles cuadradros) but it's closed today. There's a locked gate on it. Well, if we can't go hiking, then... as a notorious 1980s Barbie doll would say... let's go shopping!
Okay, it's not shopping, it's sightseeing. But now that we're not focusing on going somewhere we have time to stop and smell the proverbial roses here. Then we went shopping.
"Shopping" in El Valle means going to the Sunday market. I'm not sure why they call it Sunday market, as it's open 7 days a week. It's a combination farmers' market and arts and crafts vendors selling stuff for tourists. Places like this usually scream "Tourist trap!" and so I avoid them. But as I looked more carefully past the bright colors and touts and shills I noticed that in many of the stalls the vendors were crafting their crafts. Like, they were hand-painting wood carvings to hang in their booths for sale. That's huge, because it turns this from a tourist trap— where crap made in factories in China is sold at ridiculous prices to ignorant foreign tourists— into an actual artisans' fair.
We eyed a wood carving of a Harpy Eagle perched on a branch. We'd seen it the other day, too, but we're sure if it was worth the price. Now, knowing that it was hand carved and hand painted by local in the valley, we were ready to buy. And we did buy it— though at the end of the day so we wouldn't have to carry around a carving nearly 3' tall all afternoon!
The Harpy Eagle is a bird of prey native to rain forests in Central America. It is the national bird of Panama. I believe it had that designation long before the Bald Eagle was the official national bird of the US— which just happened, officially! Anyway, the Harpy Eagle, or águila arpía, lives high in trees in the rain forest and feeds on other rain forest animals like sloths and monkeys. It literally yanks them out of trees with its powerful talons, drops them to the ground, then flies down to eat.
I also decided to buy a Panama hat. Yes, the one I previously said makes me look a bit colonizer-y. There seems not to be a hangup about that like I imagined there would be.
In one of the artisans' stalls we noticed a Star of David on the wall.
The artist was cutting designs into metal earrings and pendants as we visited. Hawk noticed that several of his designs portrayed letters of the Hebrew alphabet. She noted aloud, "There are a lot of chais here"... and the artist responded, "Because nothing is more important than life!" showing he was purposeful about his artistic design. (Chai, spelled חַי in Hebrew, means "life" or "living".)
The man confirmed (when Hawk asked) that he is Jewish. He's a single parent with two sons who are also Jewish. They've had bar mitzvahs. "And today is not just Christmas, it's also Hanukkah!" he pointed out. He's right: Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, starts this evening at sundown. In fact, we noticed that when we came back around to buy that eagle from another artisan at 4pm, the jewelry crafter had already closed up his workbench and gone home to ready for celebration with his family.
El Valle, Panama - Wed, 25 Dec 2024. 4pm.
We've continued taking it easy today as I recover from overextending myself on a hike yesterday. It's Christmas day, anyway, so a lot of things are closed. Even some hikes are closed. For example, there's a small hiking loop behind our hotel called Square Trees (árboles cuadradros) but it's closed today. There's a locked gate on it. Well, if we can't go hiking, then... as a notorious 1980s Barbie doll would say... let's go shopping!
Okay, it's not shopping, it's sightseeing. But now that we're not focusing on going somewhere we have time to stop and smell the proverbial roses here. Then we went shopping.
"Shopping" in El Valle means going to the Sunday market. I'm not sure why they call it Sunday market, as it's open 7 days a week. It's a combination farmers' market and arts and crafts vendors selling stuff for tourists. Places like this usually scream "Tourist trap!" and so I avoid them. But as I looked more carefully past the bright colors and touts and shills I noticed that in many of the stalls the vendors were crafting their crafts. Like, they were hand-painting wood carvings to hang in their booths for sale. That's huge, because it turns this from a tourist trap— where crap made in factories in China is sold at ridiculous prices to ignorant foreign tourists— into an actual artisans' fair.
We eyed a wood carving of a Harpy Eagle perched on a branch. We'd seen it the other day, too, but we're sure if it was worth the price. Now, knowing that it was hand carved and hand painted by local in the valley, we were ready to buy. And we did buy it— though at the end of the day so we wouldn't have to carry around a carving nearly 3' tall all afternoon!
The Harpy Eagle is a bird of prey native to rain forests in Central America. It is the national bird of Panama. I believe it had that designation long before the Bald Eagle was the official national bird of the US— which just happened, officially! Anyway, the Harpy Eagle, or águila arpía, lives high in trees in the rain forest and feeds on other rain forest animals like sloths and monkeys. It literally yanks them out of trees with its powerful talons, drops them to the ground, then flies down to eat.
I also decided to buy a Panama hat. Yes, the one I previously said makes me look a bit colonizer-y. There seems not to be a hangup about that like I imagined there would be.
In one of the artisans' stalls we noticed a Star of David on the wall.
The artist was cutting designs into metal earrings and pendants as we visited. Hawk noticed that several of his designs portrayed letters of the Hebrew alphabet. She noted aloud, "There are a lot of chais here"... and the artist responded, "Because nothing is more important than life!" showing he was purposeful about his artistic design. (Chai, spelled חַי in Hebrew, means "life" or "living".)
The man confirmed (when Hawk asked) that he is Jewish. He's a single parent with two sons who are also Jewish. They've had bar mitzvahs. "And today is not just Christmas, it's also Hanukkah!" he pointed out. He's right: Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, starts this evening at sundown. In fact, we noticed that when we came back around to buy that eagle from another artisan at 4pm, the jewelry crafter had already closed up his workbench and gone home to ready for celebration with his family.
