Volcan Baru

At ten o clock at night I started walking, I had a long way to go and wanted to make it by sunrise. I was expecting to start at twelve, but the taxi showed up two hours earlier. Cheeky bugger wanted to go to bed early and had no qualms about leaving me on a mountain on my own all night. He dropped me at the trailhead, pointed up the mountain and said, "Volcan Baru", with a bemused expression, wondering why these crazy gringos want to walk through the night to get to the top of something. And I started walking. At first it was light from the moon but soon, as I entered the forest, the darkness descended on me and my torch had to come out and lead me onward.

I was attempting to hike the tallest peak in Panama, Volcan Baru, which sits at about 3500 meters above sea level. I wanted to do it at night to get there as the sun was coming up, before the daily blanket of clouds descended on the mountain peak and obscure the views. I had heard you could see both the Caribbean and the Pacific ocean at the same time on a good day. 

At one point in the night I took a wrong turn, and it took me two hours of wandering around on paths past houses and pastures and rivers and fences to get back on track. I walked and walked, seeing only what my torch illuminated and the silhouettes of massive trees against the stars. The way was steep, and rocky, and after hours of walking and mental games, I finally made it to the summit of the peak, seven hours and seventeen kilometers later, just as the sky was starting to lighten and glow. My legs felt week, and it was cold, really cold. It was the first time I have had numb fingers in many months. And I felt great.

The sun started creeping up towards the horizon scattering rays of light throughout the sky and I felt euphoria, alone on a mountain top, seeing to infinity. I yelled and whooped a little, and sat and stared, and walked around, and watched, and then started walking back down.

The sun cast shadows off the peak, a perfect triangle dipping off into infinite space, and both oceans lay passive, reflecting the fruitbowl of colours filling the sky and impregnating the clouds.

The landscape was revealed to me for the first time as the sun lit up the hills with a golden glow. I could see into the crater below, where so many years ago an explosive blast had blow away millions of tons of rock.

Self portrait

The walk down was magical, and I took it slowly, admiring the light filtering through the trees, the moisture evaporating from the path, the greenness of everything, the massiveness of some trees and the minuteness of other living things, many of them clinging to the giants.

To have the path that I had trudged up through the night revealed to me under the morning light was energising and mesmerising, and the some of the scenes were inescapably beautiful. The walk was long, but I liked it like that. I got to the bottom of the trail fourteen hours after I had begun, tired but satisfied after covering over thirty kilometers and over a kilometer and a half of vertical ascent. I reached the bottom, drank some water with some construction workers and hitched a ride in the back of a farm truck back to Bouqete. 

Coffee growing on the slopes of the volcano, being fed by rolling clouds that sweep up the valley

Magical fields with arum lilies scattered throughout, soft grass and sailing clouds.