Volcán Barú

I finally can say that I have done one of the things I've wanted to do the most in Panama.. Climb Volcan Baru! It is the highest peak in Panama, at 3 474 m (11,398 ft), located just 35km from the border with Costa Rica.

After our agriculture class, I went back to Boquete (a beautiful little town in the highlands, where the temperature is much cooler than the hot and humid Panama City) with 4 other girls in our group. We had read all sorts of things about the Volcano.. but finally decided that we wanted to climb it at night and therefore went up with a guide. Armed with 3L of water and many bananas, we left at 1 am on Friday morning and arrived to the top almost 5 hours later just as the sun was rising... I must admit that it was quite steep and very tiring (memories of Kilimanjaro) but we all made it to the top safe and sound. The view was of course spectacular. The main reason people hike up at night is to avoid the clouds and rain that could make your short stay at the top quite unpleasant. Luckily there were few clouds and we were able to see the Pacific ocean.

With Lizzie and Ateeya

Caroline emerges

The trip down only took 3 hours and was quite a relief after the much more strenuous hike up.. We arrived, exhausted after 22 km, to the terminal around 2pm and were told that the bus to Panama City was leaving "ahorita" which, though that means "right now" in spanish, does not have much meaning in Panama. 2 hours later, we began the 7 hours bus ride home.

The trip from Volcan Baru back to Panama City

I admit that today I am VERY sore but am happy that I made it through hiking the volcano and crossing the country on only a couple hours of sleep! I will write another post soon about our week-long agriculture field trip to Chiriquí, but first I have to write the final paper for this class that is due way too soon.