

There are golden frogs sitting on leaves and-more difficult to understand-golden frogs holding cell phones. El Valle has one main street, a police station, and an open-air market that offers, in addition to the usual hats and embroidery, what must be the world’s largest selection of golden-frog figurines.

The crater is almost four miles across, but when the weather is clear you can see the jagged hills that surround the town, like the walls of a ruined tower. The town of El Valle de Antón, in central Panama, sits in the middle of a volcanic crater formed about a million years ago. Some estimates suggest that, if current trends continue, half the world’s species may disappear by the end of this century.
