Quintessentially alpine Cerro Punta is a most unlikely tropical setting, conjuring images of the Sound of Music without the snow. You will be glad for blankets at night in this flower-filled high-mountain valley at the gateway to Parque Internaciaonal La Amistad. Orchid, strawberry, and horse-breeding farms and a large Ngobe-Bugle population keep visitors enthralled when not hiking and birding in the cloud forest.

North of Volcan, the road ascends through El Llano created by an ancient lava flow; it is studded with massive boulders and striated with old riverbeds. Set amid pines between Volcan and Cerro Punta, the twin communities of Bambito and Nueva Suiza cause you to do a double-take wit their Tyrolean-style houses and lodges graced by gingerbread trim and hanging baskets full of pink, red, and white impatiens.

Above Cerro Punta, exquisite Guadalupe, the highest village n Panama, is the flower-festooned setting for Los Quetzales Lodge and Spa, an excellent base for riverside spa treatments and for hiking and birding in the hotel’s 350 hectare private reserve.