The Hike

A few weeks ago, I received an event invite from my friend Haven asking me if I wanted to hike Volcán Barú. Only knowing a little about Barú, I looked up some more information on it. The two biggest things I found out were it is the highest point in Panama at 11,398 ft and if it is a clear morning you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. So I said why not and I signed up.

The plan was to meet in David around 6:30 on Friday. From there we would take a bus to Boquette and make our way to the entrance of the hike. Since the hike takes six to eight hours, our plan was to start hiking around 11pm and reach the top around daybreak.

With that, our group of Peace Corps Volunteers and Panamanians that numbered 18 took off for the top. The first thing I noticed was how much cooler it was in the mountains. It’s not that I don’t know this, but after living at sea level in the hottest part of the country you tend to forget these things.

So our group was off. The trail leading to the top was 15km, very rocky and, of course, sharply uphill. At about 2am, I started to get a bit tired. It seemed that taking breaks was actually hurting me, because my body felt like it wanted to lie down and go to sleep. At that point, I decided no more breaks. Other than changing batteries on my flashlight for a couple minutes, I managed to do that. By the time I reached the summit, though, I was pretty worn out. And it was 4:30am.

I decided to try to catch a little sleep. I set an alarm for 6am, which was the time the sun would come up. Well, I didn’t make it to 6am, as at 5:30 I woke up shaking like a leaf on a tree from the cold and wind. But by this time, it was becoming lighter and others were making their way to the top.

It seemed like it happened all at once, because at one point I looked out in the distance and there were both oceans, separated by a narrow piece of land. It was quite cool. What’s ironic is, despite being in Panama for 21 months that was the first time I saw the Atlantic (or Caribbean).

These pictures don’t really do it justice of what it was like to be at the summit. It literally felt like we were on top of the Bocas Islands.

Slowly, the clouds rolled in and you couldn’t see out in the distance anymore. I slept for another hour or so. We headed back down around 8:30am. To me, that was the worst part of the trip. The constant downhill rocky path killed my knees. Where I didn’t stop much on the way up, I stopped like every 15 minutes on the way down. Needless to say, it was a long trip back.

It even started to rain with about 2km left, which added to the the misery. Eventually, though, I did make it to the bottom in quite a bit of pain.

But, looking back, it was quite an experience. Just one I never want to do again.