This story recounts some of the events of  the tragic disappearance of two young women in the Mountains of Panama.

It was April the first 2014, and in the small mountain town of bouquete when two young women got into a taxi to go and walk the Sendero or track of the Pianista, a well known and much used hiking trail.
Fate was about to deal them all a dark and complex trick,  ultimately no one whom was in that car on that fateful day was to survive.
The indigenous people, the Ngabe and Bugle use the path over the mountains to get from Chiriqui Grande on Atlantic side of the country, to the Province of Chiriqui and the work they find tending the coffee plantations in Bouquet.
It’s a picturesque town that nestles at the base of the Volcan Baru which dominates the Chiriqui skyline, because of the fertile volcanic slopes it has been the epicentre of some of the best coffee growing in the republic of Panama for generations.
It is generally known for tourism, fine restaurants, beautiful flowers, farming and retirement, and has a small mountain river which flows down from two main branches which unite to run through the town close to the plaza, There are always many people watching its progress from the bridge and delighting in the cool breezes of the place, a welcome respite from the countries baking tropical heat.
It is certainly not the atmosphere which conjures the dark shadows of the imagination, but on this day was set in motion a set of events which ultimately led to tragedy for many.
The trail in question starts high to the north of the main town at the restaurant of the Pianista,  it has a prominent three legged sign and sits alongside a small brook, which falls steeply downward towards the town, the  vegetation is lush  and there are many small stone houses and gardens, it was here that the girls directed the taxi.
Lisanne Froon aged 22 with long blond hair and brown eyes and around six feet tall, and her friend Kris Kremers of 21 years of age also with long blond hair and blue eyes, a little shorter at around five foot nine inches tall, they made a striking pair,  their enthusiasm shines brightly in their photos. They had come to Panama principally to learn Spanish and were staying at a hostel that Specialises in teaching mostly young foreign travellers called Spanish on the river, which is located a little out of the town in the Barrio of Palmira.
Keen on hiking and exploring,  the surrounding mountains provided ample opportunity to get out and burn off some excess exuberance, coming from the Netherlands the scenery must have been especially impressive.
The path they chose strikes north north east, following the creek and through some cattle farms,  it follows a four wheel drive track of uneven stone, the gradient is not steep yet. Then it turns north and the track soon gives way to the path itself following the left tributary of the creek.
The jungle closes in with a high canopy above,   here some local indigenous people have cut small gardens to grow food and run a few cows,  their humble shacks built on the steep mountain sides.
The Sendero or path then crosses the brook and steeply climbs, switching back and forth to reach the ridge high above and a place called el Mirador (the lookout).  The ground becomes saturated by the wetter climate and the banks of the path often tower overhead, giving the impression one is walking up a canyon. The footprints of the locals who often run cattle over the pass, churn the ground to deep mud slowly cutting the track deeper and deeper, higher up the moss laden branches are covered by orchids, interlacing and dripping moisture of the temperate rain forest hemming one in,  and only occasionally can glimpses of the scenery be had.
So it was to the restaurant that Two young women Lisanne and kris asked to be dropped off at the beginning of the trail,  later it was reported in the newspapers covering the case, that based on information from local witnesses, that it was three thirty in the afternoon. It was this time that played such a crucial role in the following events.
From here they set off carrying small daypacks and dressed in hiking shoes, shorts and tank tops and that was the last time they were seen in corporeal form again in this world.
It was perhaps this finality which made this such a chilling incident,  it was a sunny day of the dry season with light northerly breezes,  the walking track was wide and exceptionally well marked,

It was not cold and the  country is not particularly difficult,  Moving off the track is hard but not impossible, there is plenty of water and the direct sun is shaded by the canopy.
Granted up at 1850 meters at the saddle between the Bocas De Toro watershed and the Boquete Watershed,  it gets cold at night.  It was to this pass called El Mirador at the top of the ridge that it was presumed that the Young Women were headed, a good day out,  just a few hours walking there and back, getting lost is practically impossible.
This was an unusual year in that it was exceptionally dry both on the Atlantic and Pacific side of the country,  the whole of April remained that way and the rains did not start on the Atlantic slopes until almost mid May, this also was to be a very important factor in the ensuing events.
The two young women having not returned to their Hostel that night caused the manager to call the authorities, their room was searched and the greater bulk of their belonging were found to be inside. At this point I doubt any real concern was registered by the police, two young women not coming home for a night could easily be explained away.
Over the ensuing days things changed and a much more serious search was mounted, which was to go on for at least two months and involve the use of helicopters, detectives, search dogs and Specialised teams and it become an international affair.
Over the next few days they searched using horses, Sinaproc the emergency agency of Panama sent out teams, especially trained frontier police used to jungle conditions, dogs helicopters, the indigenous population and absolutely nothing was found.

This was all reported in the national news on a daily basis,  the then President of the country Ricardo Martinelli ordering that exhaustive efforts be made in the Endeavour,  and the authorities reporting that some 923 Kilometres of paths had been searched,  before finally the active search was suspended on April the 14th of 2014.
The search was then to be changed to monitoring the situation and waiting for leads.
There was and still is a lot of speculation that this was a criminal case and that they had been abducted or murdered,  rumours flew and a lot of finger pointing was done.
One such caught up in the net,  was the taxi driver who carried the two women to the trail, Leonardo Arturo Gonzalez,  he was detained and interrogated at length over their Disappearance.
I suppose it was completely logical that if after such an effort spent beating the jungle trails had turned up absolutely no traces,  then the answer had to be foul play.
It was around this time that I had the bright idea to throw in my hat, and go and see if there was anything that could be done,  the search was being suspended and I felt it did not make sense that you could just vanish into thin air.  Also I was not buying the criminal aspect,  as I know just how dangerous any mountain country can be when you do not have the basic survival equipment  or knowledge, and had myself never personally received any type of animosity from the indigenous peoples of the mountains.

Some years before in Ecuador in the mountains of the Llanganatis my father and I had been involved in a search for two members of a party of three,  a young Ecuadorian by the name of Eddie and two Americans,  David Groover and Bill Johnson ( William Theadore Johnson),  they had been part of a treasure hunting expedition that had gone very wrong.
The small group had become separated from their local guides and porters and with only the clothes that they wore,  they wandered without food lost, and in the terrible cold and wet of the place for seven days,  A mix of temperate cloud forest and paramo and at an altitude mostly above 4000 meters.
Finally they could not carry on,  so the leader of the party Bill Johnson left David and Eddie behind to make a Hail Mary attempt to get help,  and it was he whom we had encountered staggering up the track late in afternoon in a terrible state.
A night was passed in the tent in which which I spent getting hot food and liquids into him,  whilst my father walked out to raise the alarm.
The following morning after questioning him in detail as to the exact whereabouts of the remaining two members of the party and finally being able to pass Bill over to the Ecuadorian Local authorities for transfer to a hospital,  we were then able to change our plans and set of in the search for the remaining two.
We spent four fruitless days beating to a spot that he had indicated on our map, in the most difficult of cloud forest mountain terrain,  at 3500 meters to 4500 meters altitude,  it was right at the edge of the tree line and the paramo,  only to find we had been given the wrong location by the Delirious and half blind survivor whom we had rescued.
We were able to watch the Ecuadorian Army helicopter after hours of flying,  pick up the two lost souls from the edge of the tree line in extremely rough country,  at most it was three hours from where we had encountered Bill Johnson,  it was now Four days too late and  we were on the complete other side of the deep valley of the Golpe River,  sadly David Groover did not survive as he had succumbed to exposure and hunger,  luckily the young Ecuadorian Eddie of seventeen years did manage to make it through.
I always felt it could have turned out better,  fate I guess, still it left a few deep memories, mostly of failure.
So whilst I was sure that after thirteen days of having been lost the news was probably not going to be good,  I still felt it was worth a try to go and look.
The mountains above and to the north of Boquete are home to the Puma,  and it has a healthy population, they generally live above a thousand meters and are known to take small prey such as the Conejo Pintado,  or small deer, rodents that sort of thing. On the Atlantic slope which has a thick and extensive forest cover, the Jaguar abounds living generally below fifteen hundred meters and has a much wider prey range anything from the tapir,  deer, cattle any mammal basically, and possibly the odd human.
So I felt they may have been taken by a feline,  otherwise some sort of evidence would have been found,  but a big cat can take someone in a heartbeat, especially the jaguar which is capable of dragging even a fully grown cow or horse off into the thickest jungle.
Snakes made no sense as although there are plenty of really poisonous vipers here,  their venom though does not act instantly and it would be very unlikely that both women would have been bitten and succumbed, it simply did not add up.
So I packed up a bag with some camping gear and a camera and much to the disgust of my other half,  set off up to Boquete on my dirt bike.
To be honest I had been really busy working on a welding project in Pedregal and this was the first chance really to get away,  it certainly seemed more interesting than working on a trailer for a client.
As the papers had been adamant that the two Holandesas as they had come to be known, had reached the start of the Pianista  trail at three thirty in the afternoon, this was the time I picked to be at the beginning of the path also, for obvious reasons.
A curious detail had emerged during the search, a dog by the name of blue, due to his deep blue eyes had become accustomed to following hikers up the sendero and on the First of April had accompanied the two young women as was his custom,  but had returned some time late in the evening alone. Unfortunately it was not possible to interrogate the dog.

Blue was there hanging out near the quaint restaurant that had a three legged sign announcing its name.
He decided against following me up the track,  there was no sign of anyone else heading out to search, so leaving the bike a little way in, up the dirt road and in front of some small houses, I set off at exactly three thirty pm.
The path follows a small bubbling creek and climbs steadily uphill and through cattle pastures,  it forded the small rocky creek a couple of times before heading up the left bank of the watercourse.  Further up the creek branched and the Pianista path led off towards the left into the forest,  generally the course being towards the North and the divide at one thousand eight hundred meters or more.
The going was not particularly difficult,  the track following a stream on the left hand side passing some small indigenous farms and huts, before fording the stream and striking steeply upward on its final ascent to the ridge above.
Open fields were now gone and the path had carved deep channels into the loam of the forest by sheer use,  it became wetter and muddier,  more slippery underfoot, moss draped everything and the slopes are thickly forested.
I was sweating heavily by the time I reached the final ridge above,  it was chilly now and the cloud was draped over the mountain obscuring any view to be had.  The path then followed the dividing ridge rising and dipping through really muddy sections,  the wet tree branches moss covered reached into the path,  alternately wide and then narrowing.
Finally the Mirador was reached, very obvious by all the food wrappers left about by the previous searchers,  it had taken exactly two hours to reach this point without stopping all the way from the restaurant.
Occasionally I caught a glimpse of steep mountain slopes coming sporadically out of the clouds, on the whole the cover remained down.
It seemed obvious at the time that if you left the beginning of the track at three thirty and arrived here at the Mirador at five thirty earliest, then time was getting short for the return, that is if you had no camping gear and were moving light, as the girls were outfitted according to the papers.
This then was the objective,  if the weather was fine, then at least twenty minutes taking photos and celebrating the ascent would be normal,  this would have made it closer to six pm.  It gets dark at around seven so time is getting on.
It is also getting cold, I had no idea what clothes they had with them at this point in time, but reasoned that they did not have mountain gear with them, also probably no map or compass, so it seemed reasonable they would not have wanted to hang around long, or keep going down the path descending towards the North.
Could they have become turned around thinking that the direction toward Boquete was in fact toward Changuinola to the North?   It seemed really unlikely as the Mirador had the section with the view to Boquete cut back on the right hand side,  with few trees rising above the path level,  yet to the North it remained thickly wooded, even in the thick cloud it seemed unlikely, but of course not impossible.
It was a good time though, for large cats to be hunting,  and on this I based the search, feeling that foul play did not fit the situation. If a large cat or cats had been involved then they could have taken two persons quickly and dragged them off into the forest leaving very little evidence and so it was to the forest, I felt the search had to be directed,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though this I had to admit seemed far fetched.
Meanwhile for me the evening was closing in and I had to find somewhere to camp,
The cloud now,  just before sunset was lifting enough to see a little back towards boquete,  the slopes of the mountains did not seem that steep to me, not then the sort of place for an accident.
In the end I pitched a flysheet and hammock bivouac right across the path,  just a little lower down from the summit of the ridge, the track providing the easiest clear ground.

One end of the hammock was tied to a tree and the other to a rotten tall stump,  which I was hoping would hold for the night.
After that a quick meal of crackers and spam and of course tea,  I quickly turned in, fighting my way into the sleeping bag fully clothed on top of the hammock,  it’s a bit of a balancing act.
It got cold quickly, for me the full moon rose early bathing the twisted moss laden jungle with silver light,  it was an eerie spectra indeed, but in its own way it had a beauty to it. Tomorrow night the fifteenth would be a full lunar eclipse.
The day the holandesas disappeared had been a new moon,  the night must have been pitch dark and if they were somewhere in this forest, then it must have been terrifying for them.
I slept fitfully trying not to think too much of large roaming cats,  the cold seeped through the sleeping bag and my clothes, that is the problem with a hammock, it is hell on insulation,  a tent traps heat, and is better, but of course heavier.
Around midnight strangely someone let off a bunch of fireworks, which I did not see but heard, they were loud and appeared to come from the Atlantic slope below me to the North, but sound plays tricks, someones birthday I suppose, I dozed on.
The morning brought a grey light, it was cold at this hight of eighteen hundred meters, so the first thing was to get some hot coffee inside of me and eat something.

I struck camp as soon as I could,  everything was soaked in dew,  then headed back up to the mirador to see if anything could be seen.
The view was clear in all directions and I was able to take photos of everything,  which always proves useful for navigation and searching,  you will never know what is going to be important, so take a lot of pictures.
The Committee of one decided finally, that the steepest slope to the North, falling away toward the Atlantic, should be searched first and I was about to implement the decision, when an indigenous bloke appeared on the path coming up from the Atlantic side carrying a sack.  I was able to talk with him for a bit and turned the subject to the lost women, he also appeared really puzzled not understanding how you could get into trouble here, and in good weather, Asking about cats we talked for a while, the puma he said does not bother anyone and are a common sight sometimes crossing the tracks whilst they are walking along.  On the other hand the jaguar was a more of a problem and that they been known to have taken people, he pointed down to the North,  and explained that you would not be likely to encounter one up here as they don’t like the cold,  but lower down they were not uncommon.
After a while he shouldered the sack and continued on towards Boquete.
The Locals are always a mine of information, it’s their land and they know a great deal about it, they also tend to be far more adept at moving over the terrain.
So I descended the path a little bit on the northern slope and chose the easiest place to plunge into the thick jungle to make a long traverse along the front of the mountain and down to a small stream, the going was slow,  Making my way through thick growth and over rotting trees and detritus.  There was absolutely no sign of anyone having pushed through the bush,  no broken branches or telltale skid marks where someone would have slipped,  as is normal on steep difficult terrain.
After a long traverse I descended into the small creek, which is literally part of the headwaters of the Culebra River, then descending downwards following the stream through really thick overgrowth.
Nothing no sign of anything.
Finally after descending quite some way it just seemed obvious that no one had come this way,  so I started making my way now back up to the descending ridge of the Pianista path.
A large animal to my right squawked and crashed through the bush, it surprised me, whatever it was.  The going was hard as the The forest was really thick and that made me think that if anyone had been here recently they would have left some mark.
As I neared the path I could here an approaching helicopter the rotors slicing the air.
They came up the valley flying low,  making search sweeps along the mountain slopes and finally passing above El mirador, obviously looking for the Dutch women.
I encountered the path and climbed back up to the lookout,  sat down and rested a bit,  I was able to use the cellphone I had with me Here to check in,  but only at the very top of the ridge and the signal was weak.
At around this time another person showed up,  he turned out to be a guide from Boquete whom seemed quite surprised to see me,  we talked at length.
He had been searching for the two women for some time,  we talked of the terrain, he felt as I did that it was unlikely that they could have remained lost for very long and on the whole it was also unlikely that they would have had an accident up here, which would have Proved fatal.
It was really a puzzle.
He continued onward and I did another sweep of the mountainside this time a little higher up,  thinking that if an animal had dragged them off then maybe there was some belongings to be found, but again came up with nothing,  though this time there was signs of others before me, which I took to be searching for them.
It was now late afternoon and it was time to head back to the track and my bike, I had to be back at work in the morning after all.
Reflecting on the Endeavour,  I was disappointed that I had come up empty and I am sure others before me felt the same way.
That is how I left things for quite a while, the parents of the missing women had come to Panama and had been fully in contact with all of the official rescue parties and the local Boquete expat community, there seemed little else to be done.
To be honest I felt that if they had been lost in the wilderness, then it was already too late and it was a case of looking for bodies, so the reasons for carrying on were not really there.
Work reared its ugly head again and I was caught up in it,  of course I followed the media coverage, which really was just a recap of old news, as nothing new was uncovered.
The next development was the arrival of especially trained dogs and their handlers brought in from holland to aid in the search.  This was all reported in the news,  the whole nation being now a little caught up in the mystery,  there were a lot of opinions and rumors flying around.  A team of eighteen handlers and twelve dogs arrived on the 25th of May,   it was explained that they were adept in finding bodies and victims of natural disasters,  even months after the fact.
So up the path they went in orange overalls with their canines,  this all appearing on the national news every night, there were a lot of wry comments about the unlikely attention any ordinary Panamanian would receive if they were to go missing in the mountains.
They stayed and searched for nine or ten days, in the rain and the mud during the now rainy season, all to no avail, nothing was found.
At around this point the parents of the missing girls put up a thirty-thousand dollar reward, for information leading to the discovery of the young women, either dead or alive, a tidy sum for most Panamanians.
Interestingly enough it was also around this time that one of the guys whom worked for me decided it would be a good idea to resume the search, and that his cousin, Samuel who is also friend of mine would be perfect for the job.
So to round two – five weeks too late,  and of course  purely for humanitarian purposes, off we go to the mountains.
It had been raining on and off steadily on the Atlantic slopes now,  the weather was no longer stable, but on the day we went up it was actually quite dry.
This time I took the old Chevy four wheel drive, we left from David early at four in the morning and drove the fifty kilometres up to Boquete, the sun just rising as we entered the town.  It was the weekend and there was activity even at this hour, we negotiated the bridge and followed the valley upwards until the Pianista  track. From here it was all in low ratio four wheel drive, the track forded the stream twice, rounded rocks and outcrops made it a slow and lumpy ride up as far as the end of the cattle pasture.
Here we left the truck, kitted up and slogged upwards in the early morning cool, to the top of the ridge and El Mirador.
We spent a fruitless day searching around the lookout in long swathes through incredibly dense foliage and thickets, many times we were crawling on all fours to get along, or clambering on top of dense vines and twisted trunks of trees fifteen feet or more off the ground.  At one point I slipped and rolled very literally down a steep incline, the ground being so soft no harm comes of it.
Samuel, my partner in this little outing is rake thin, and is incredibly Adept at cutting one vine and slipping through the bush, leaving me to flail some more with the machete to get through the same section, this happened constantly.
We discussed the possibility of snakes in the forest we were searching, Sam ventured that it was too cold for them, so I agreed with him, I did not mention the high altitude viper I had read about in a white paper covering serpents of Panama, after all I did not want to cause too much undue stress.
The weather had turned out fantastic,   for the most part it was dry and clear, the rains had not completely set in yet.
We had a good day and covered a lot of territory, a complete circumnavigation of the mirador had been made at varying altitudes. There was now a lot of signs of others whom had searched before us, we tried as much as possible to pick new lines,  and every so often we would see tell tales of cut saplings or the bush pushed aside.
The results were dismal, at this point we were looking for shoes, clothes or anything which might give us an idea of what had occurred,  And so around five in the afternoon we gave it up and slogged back to the truck covered in mud and mulch.
So for me the thing came to an end and work took over again.  There seemed little point in continuing and to be honest I was sure that it was most likely that no further evidence would be uncovered of the two dutch girls whom went for their last hike.
The whole thing depressed me, we were looking for bodies,  bones, clothes, what good could possibly come of it.  I very much doubted there was a happy ending to this story,  There was no chance that even if we found anything that I was claiming any reward, I could just see it, “ Oh here are some remains – come on cough up”  yea right, it was not happening.
So it came as a great surprise to the entire nation and especially to myself when in mid June an indigenous couple came across a backpack with the following belongings inside: A wallet with some eighty-three dollars in cash, Lisanne Froons passport, two cellphones,  a camera, two bras and two pairs of sunglasses,  Seventy-two days from their disappearance.
This was found in the Rio Culebra and a little further upriver a shoe was discovered with the remains of a human foot,  Macabre yes- but it did change everything.
The remains were discovered many Kilometres down the Culebra River, no one had any idea how they got there, again the spectra of foul play was brought up.
To me it was now confirmed that this was no criminal case, the cellphones, money and anything else of value would have been taken for sure had these young women been abducted or attacked, just the nature of the beast.
So they in my mind they had died in the mountains, how or why they ended up where the remains were found has remained a mystery to this day.
Further remains and objects went on to be discovered, a piece of pelvis belonging to Kris, the foot was DNA tested and belonged to Lisanne, A pair of shorts belonging to kris were discovered much further up the river.
As I had thought, nothing good, no happy ending here.

There I left it and thought no more of the subject and again much later still, something really strange occurred.
There is a place in Chiriqui called the Cangilones de Gualaca, where a lot of local people and tourists go to swim in the river,  it is unusual in that the rock formation is a long canyon of vertical rock rising some twenty feet from the water, it is very narrow and the depth of the river is some thirty feet at the deepest.  It’s a great place to practice climbing, the bouldering moves are really difficult and when you fall, it’s directly into deep water, no equipment needed and a soft landing.
The shallower spots are used by locals to swim and to wade,  and its very popular during the dry season,  people bring food and make a day of it.
For me it’s a great place to keep fit, long swims and lots of bouldering quickly gets you into shape.
So it was a great surprise when it was reported in the paper that on the third of march of 2015 the body of Leonardo Arturo Gonzalez was found floating in the water.  It was he whom had given the two girls the taxi ride to the start of the trail on that fateful First of April the year before.
The report simply stated that he had given a lift to three tourists to the Cangilones and whilst they were enjoying the location, he had been found floating dead.
I had the opportunity to ask some locals about what occurred and they said he had dived in and hit a ledge, there being no one looking he had simply drowned.
Maybe it was just a coincidence, but the whole thing felt like a visit from a very dark place not of our world, as I said no one whom got into that taxi survived.
Then in early 2016 whilst surfing the internet the dutch girls came up in an unrelated google search, the photos from the cellphones and their camera had at some point been published, they had originally been suppressed out of respect for the family, which was understandable.
It was a really strange and unsettling feeling to see them so alive and happy in the first group of photos from their cellphones where they are seen walking the path, at a brook, marvelling at the deep overhead banks of the Sendero, smiling, alive,  when you know their very soon to unravel fate.

The last group of photos taken were just plain spooky, not much else to say to be honest.

On their camera there were ninety photos taken on the 8th of April exactly one week after their disappearance, of which the report states eighty-seven were blank, and the last three were really strange, taken at night, two were of rocks and trees and one is of a small branch with some red plastic from what looks like supermarket bags tied to it, this seems fairly obviously a signal device.
The ninety photos were reportedly taken between 1am and 4am only three of which were good, one every two minutes or so.
Something stood out clearly though, and for me changed everything, it was the photos taken on their cellphone on April the first at El Mirador, the sun was shining high in the sky there was little cloud, it was remarkably clear, and there it was!
The photos were analysed by experts, it was not five thirty or six in the evening, it was 1pm in the afternoon or thereabouts, these young women had left in the morning NOT at three thirty in the afternoon, it changed everything.
I know the reported time of their start up the path fixed in stone our search area at the top of the ridge El Mirador,  I am sure it influenced others.
At one in the afternoon there was time to carry on with the adventure, squeeze a little more from the day,  they were young and therefore not tired, so instead of turning around they might well have kept going on the path towards Changuinola heading to the North.
Thirty minutes or so would have got them to the first quebrada or creek, There is a second quebrada another ten minutes along the path, both of these creeks join a little further down and they make up  the headwaters of the Rio Culebra. So if the Girls arrive say 2pm it’s the hight of the hottest part of the day on a sunny mountain, if you have ever experienced this you will know with the sun beating down it can get pretty warm.
So there is a cool stream, well, human nature is to go for a swim.
Maybe you would want a little privacy for this, so follow the river up, or down to look for a pool.
From the second creek onward to the North There are no real features until you reach a major branch of the Rio Culebra,  but this is two or hours or more further on and Through dense jungle.  So it  makes sense that this would be the point where they decided they had gone far enough, after all they did not have anything more than the items aforementioned,  certainly nothing to spend the night out in the cold.
There has to be a point where they would decide they had gone far enough and it would be closely related to the time. From either the first or second creek it would take more than two hours solid going to be able to get to the sealed Boquete Road again.
Their cellphones register a call placed to the dutch emergency number of 112  at 4-39pm that day and another at twelve minutes later using alternately both their cellphones.
A total of eight emergency calls were made the last being on the 3rd of April. This information was also released some time after the initial searches.
So clearly they were in trouble at four forty in the afternoon, given delays and messing around it seems unlikely that they would have gone much further than the first or second creek which are slightly to the north of El mirador.
So if indeed this is where they got to, what occurred there that ultimately proved fatal?
For the most part the rivers of the Panamanian are open and often quite wide, very rocky and the water tumbles down them amongst boulders, but sections of rivers where the gradient is steep enter Formidable canyons.

These features require Specialised equipment to safely negotiate and a lot of experience, they have many natural traps for the unwary. They are three dimensional zones which are hard to comprehend unless you have had previous experience, and they are not necessarily easy places to safely get through.
They also tend to come up quite suddenly, one minute its easy boulder hopping and the next you are confronted with perpendicular walls and high waterfalls.
It is easy to descend into a section and not be able to exit it.
You can enter a deep pool to swim and not be able to get out due to the very polished nature of the rocks and rock walls.
The upper sections of waterfalls bear a slimy coating at times,  which is the equivalent of black ice.
Flash flooding can raise water levels in seconds.
Boulders can shift trapping a person.
The extremely uneven nature of the terrain can unbalance you,  and falls can easily occur.
I treat such places with extreme caution always.
Could they have got themselves into such a zone and become trapped?
Had they perished and their bodies not been found, then it is perfectly possible that they would have remained there until the rains started.
Any place in a river narrow enough to hide two people from a low flying helicopter would very quickly fill with water in the intense rains of the wet season.
I have lost kayaking in the Chiriqui Whitewater, Paddles, water bottles and anything not tied into the boat. On a few occasions I have nearly lost the entire kayak and even my own life in the powerful rapids.
The width of the river has little to do with this phenomenon,  A narrow creek can be way more powerful than a wider river, especially if it has been squeezed down, It has far more to do with water volume and gradient mixed with the width of the hydraulic.
Nothing is spared,  whole trees are washed miles downstream, on many occasions I have had a steep rapid completely transform on me due to heavy rains which have moved boulders of many tons, making kayak lines I knew obsolete (the path which you aim to use to negotiate a rapid).
So it was no leap of imagination to think their bodies and belongings would be swept many kilometres downstream in similar floods.

Such is the power of the water, it is enough to power cities.
The animal life of the jungle is very efficient in its food usage and that little remained of the women was no surprise to me, ants can reduce large animals in short time, carnivores will eat animals that are already dead,  also dragging remains for some distance. It is generally rare to find the bones of any animal in the Forest everything has been consumed. Was this ultimately their final fate?
Of course this is all conjecture, there are many unanswered questions, for example, why  was the backpack and belongings found largely intact after having Been swept down a river for some distance (the official version of their demise comes also to the conclusion they were carried downriver by the water)?                         Why were the remains and items found only after a large monetary  award had been offered?  Why were the photos taken only what appears to be a rock wall and a stick with plastic attached, and that no further photos were taken of themselves beyond the First of April? These questions and more are troubling.
I am not sure we will ever really know what occurred on that April day, the first of the month, and the exact events that followed it.   From my own perspective I found this a very haunting case that still gives me chills to this day.

FOOTNOTE                                                                                       Many people have become lost in the mountains of Panama, most are rescued by the authorities, some, as this story relates are not so fortunate. It is important to carry some essentials with you whenever venturing out into the wilds.                                               A compass, map or air photos, a machete, rain jacket, a small first aid kit, some food and of course a water bottle are amongst them. Wear good boots and try and dress for the terrain.

Tell someone where you plan to go

Perhaps the most important, if you are not sure of yourself  or have limited experience, then there are guides you can hire to help you out.