Tuesday, April 20, 2010

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.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

The Azuero Classic

Over the course of my life, I have attended hundreds of sporting events. Some memorable, others mostly forgettable. But two weeks ago, I attended the Azuero Classic and it immediately became one of the most memorable events I’ve attended.

What is the Azuero Classic? It is a baseball game between Herrera (the province I live in) and Los Santos (the province directly below Herrera). These two provinces make up the Azuero Peninsula here in Panama. Naturally, because of the proximity of the two provinces, there is quite the rivalry between the two teams.

So that’s the background for the game. The game took place in the Los Santos stadium, which is in Las Tablas, about an hour bus ride for me. For the game, I was joined by four other Peace Corps Volunteers who live in the Azuero. One calls Herrera his home, while the other three live in Los Santos. Additionally we were joined by some community memebers of the volunteers that live in Los Santos. Here’s a photo of the group:

Now we have that out of the way, I feel like this would be a good time to mention that the adult beverages at the game were 65 cents, so the whole crowd was fired up as the first pitch was thrown. None moreso then the respective bands fo each team, who would play when the other team is pitching.

Los Santos jumped on the board first with a towering two run home run that ended up in a graveyard (not exactly McCovey Cove) over the left field wall. With that, the Los Santos crowd exploded and my Herrera friend and I were on the receiving end of some Spanish taunting.

The top half of the next inning saw Herrera put guys on first and second with no outs. However, the Herrera batter lined out to the first baseman who then tagged the guy caught of first before firing to second to get that runner. That’s right, a triple play! Again, the home crowd exploded and I hung my head as I had a lot more things yelled at me that I didn’t understand.

Everything was at a fever pitch when the game turned on its heels in the bottom of the third. With a Los Santos runner on third, the Herrera pitcher uncorked a wild pitch that went to the backstop. Despite no throw, the Los Santos guy went crashing into the Herrera pitcher. And with that, pandemonium everywhere. The Herrera pitcher started swinging at the Los Santos guy and both benches emptied. You can see the brawl here.

But it gets better. The Herrera-Los Santos fans in the stands started to get into it. Since we were right on the boarder of the two fan bases, we got to see beers and beer cans go flying at each other. Eventually the police came up into the stands to calm everybody down.

After about a twenty minute delay, the game resumed. It was hard to match the intensity after that and Los Santos eased its way to a 5-1 win. Leaving the stadium, my friend and I received some more good natured Spanish trash talking. It was quite enjoyable; I just wish I had a good comeback.