PANAMA: The guests in Rooms 28 and 29 at the Hotel Campestre here in this lush volcano-crater town get the full spa treatment. Daily cleansing rinses. Exotic lunches. Even 24-hour room service
It would all be so lovely, a real dream, if they could only go outside every once in a while. But they can't. Not ever. One step outside, or in their case one hop, and they'd be goners.
Thus is the lot of Panama's - and perhaps the world's - most unusual hotel VIPs, the darling little Panamanian golden frogs of El Valle de Anton. The frogs, considered so lucky in Panama that their images appear on lottery tickets, are in big trouble. They're on the run from a vicious fungus that has already wiped out as many as 120 species of amphibians in Central America.
The Hotel Campestre might be their last hope. If the golden frogs make it, this crumbling backpackers' hangout could very well provide a revolutionary new model for handling one of the world's most endangered species.
More than 300 frogs ended up at the Campestre, which sits in the shadow of steep mountains at the edge of a dormant volcano's crater about 50 miles southwest of Panama city, because of an audacious and quickly confected plan.
In March, a Panamanian biologist named Edgardo Griffith spotted a dead frog in a stream near El Valle. Its limbs were splayed out, and its skin was peeling. He scooped it up, went home and cried.
Griffith, a sleepy-eyed 28-year-old, said he suspected a deadly fungus called chytrid and his fears were confirmed by a laboratory in the US. "There's nothing you can do," Griffith told his girlfriend.
Biologists had been watching the fungus brutally work its way down Central America for a decade, but Griffith's discovery proved that it had arrived in the ecological wonderland of Panama - which means "place of abundant fish and butterflies" in the indigenous language here - far faster than anyone expected. The naturally occurring fungus invades the skin of amphibians and effectively suffocates them.
In a panic, Griffith started talking to everyone he could find. Soon, an international network of biologists, zookeepers and environmentalists was buzzing. A plan evolved: Create a Noah's Ark for frogs in a Panama hotel.
Biologists, environmentalists and employees from more than 20 US zoos started hopping on aircraft bound for Panama.
They pored through streams in the misty night-time rain forests of El Valle, collecting specimens of 40 threatened species of frogs and toads.
Each night, the collectors came back to the quarantine zone of the Campestre, where a "stud book" is kept to track breeding.
The hotel had become the frogs' own Hotel California, a place where they could check in, but could never check out.
The volunteers found glass frogs with skin so translucent that their organs are always on full display.
They picked up frogs that look like rocks and eat freshwater crabs, aggressive tree frogs and shy, nocturnal toads. But the golden frogs are the stars.
The trickiest question, perhaps, is about the future. Biologists know that chytrid fungus kills all amphibians it touches, but they aren't sure how long it sticks around.
Could it be that the frogs they are saving in Panama might be the last of their kind? And might those frogs - those jumping, squirmy delights - never see the outside world again? - (LA Times-Washington Post service)