Goodbye Beaches, Hello Mountains

The next stop in our journey is Boquete. It´s only a 4 hour bus ride from Bocas del Toro so we shipped back out on the water taxi at 10am. Boquete is in the mountain region, so it is cool and rainy, and they grow tons of coffee. Interestingly, it´s also where a ton of older Americans go to retire (but you don´t really see them because they keep to themselves and live in mansions on the outskirts of town.)

The bus ride was short, but ended up being great for us. We started chatting with two other travelers: Jon from Australia and Tom from Holland, and decided we´d all look for a hostel together when we got to Boquete. Since its rainy season here, we were welcomed into Boquete with a torrential rain storm. The four us jumped off the bus and ran to the first hostel we saw, El Hostal Palacio.


El Palacio
The owner of the hostel was named Francisco, a Panamenian and former pro basketball player in Chile with boundless energy. (His wife was Chilean so her and I got to exchange some chilenismos, which was great.) Before we could barely even get settled, Francisco pulled us into his family living room (the hostel was more like 50% hostel, 50% bed and breakfast) and gave us a hyper-energetic run-down on Boquete and the surrounding area.

This is the map Francisco drew us. The best part is, he knew he wouldn´t be able to contain himself to one page so he started off with a second blank page to spill over onto. It was incredibly difficult to not laugh during this presentation.

 

This is Perrito (or so we named him) and this is Perrito´s chair. It was mandatory to greet Perrito upon entry and exit of El Palacio.

 

 

The backyard at El Palacio. We spent every night back here drinking beer and listening to Tom and Jon play guitar. You can´t beat cheap beer and free entertainment :)

 

 

Boquete

Boquete was an incredibly gorgeous town. One day we did a two hour hike through the coffee growing region and saw all the fields of coffee trees and tasted some coffee from a local grower.

 



 

 

Volcán Baru

The big thing we did in Boquete was to hike the Baru Volcano. Our group was Tom and Jon, and a  German and a Spaniard that we had met in Bocas the week before. No one else really had much hiking experience so Keegan and I made sure to pack extra food and gear just in case. (The camp stove and packs of ramen we brought ended up saving some lives because the top was freezing cold.)

 

The hike was 13.5km one way (about 8.5 miles) and we caught a shuttle at 11:30pm (yep, you read that right: we started the hike at midnight) so that we could get to the top before sunrise.

 

We had to break a lot on the way up

 

 

The hike was really hard because it was steep (we gained 2000m of elevation) and dark, and our group moved pretty slowly. BUT, after 5.5 hours of hiking, we made it to the top just before sunrise and it was amazing and totally worth it. The volcano is the highest point in Panama, and on a clear morning (which we were lucky enough to have) you can see both the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean.

 

 

 

Sunrise to the east, the Atlantic Ocean. The islands of Bocas del Toro are laid out like a map.

 

 

 Sunrise the west, the Pacific Ocean.

 

 

The hike was actually really hard and it was freezing at the top. The view and the accomplishment made it totally worth it though.

 

 Summit Selfie.