Boquete, Panama - 20th May 2011

Banana trees and coffee plantations overlooking a Boquete neighbourhood

Boquete
Boquete is a quaint, little northern town about 60 kms from the Costa Rican border. It's 1200 meters above sea level and so is alot cooler than other swealtering Panamanian cities. It's a great place to come, sample some local coffee, visit plantations and climb Panama's highest (and only) volcano, Volcan Baru which stands at 3475 meters.

We stayed in Hostel Palacios run by an enthusiastic, ex-pro basketball player called Pancho. He drew us a map of the surrounding areas and detailed several locations for us to visit. After a 45 minutes of scribbling, we were absolutely none the wiser of what to do and where to visit. (See map below...)


Pancho's extraordinary map (click to enlarge)

With Pancho's help (!) we set off on a tour of the countryside and surrounding coffee plantations. We were suprised to see how wealthy this part of Panama seemed. Everyone was driving massive, gas guzzling 4x4s and the houses and attached land looked wonderful and plentiful.


Mmmm, fresh coffee


A local coffee plantation signage.


Local seller, great hut!


House in the trees

On our second full day we decided to hike Volcan Baru. We were told by Pancho that being up at the summit for sunrise would be a fantastic experience but that invloves walking at midnight, catching the 6am sunrise and walking back down. A round trip of 27km, 8 hours of trekking and no sleep. Ouch!

At 11.30pm a taxi drops us at the park entrance and we start the gruelling dirt path ascent with our LED head torches. It's a creepy experience walking at night as it's deathly quiet and the jungle vegetation occasionally spooks us as some local animal runs through it. Add to that the sound of crickets and birds and it's a great atmosphere. The ascent goes on and on, up and up for a solid 5 hours straight. When it arrives, we are truely happy to see the top of the volcano but it's bone-shakingly cold and the 1 hour wait for sunrise seems to last forever and when it does come, heavy cloud hangs to the mountains, obscuring our view of the town below. On a good day, you can supposedly see the Carribean and Pacific coast in one great panoramic. Sadly, it's not to be today.

After a four hour, knee crunching descent, it's time for a taxi back to he hostal and an afternoon sleep.


Regular signposts updated you on the rate of your ascent


Beautiful sunrise from the summit of Volcan Baru


We were so utterly shattered from the knee-murdering descent