Boquete, Panama

Departing Panama City at midnight Max and I boarded an arctic bus headed toward the town of David. With the air conditioning set to hypothermia, we adorned our fleeces, leaned back our seats, and closed our eyes for the long 6 hour bus ride. However, we would not make it to our intended destination.

The passenger seating directly behind us engaged us in an unexpected conversation in English. A Colorado native, he moved to Panama to open a hostel that he is now running in Boquete. He invited us to ride with him to the mountain town as he was to be picked up by his girlfriend in David. We took him up on his offer.

The town of Boquete is a quaint village at the foot of the third highest peak in Central America - Volcan Baru. Having slept nearly the entire bus ride Max and I went directly to tackling the 7 hour hiking route to the base of the volcano.

The hike was beautiful and tiring. With our only fuel consisting of a pack of starburst, one hershey bar, and two bottled waters we somehow survived. Seriously, we rationed the candy as we were starving and overlooked the obvious fact we would get hungry. 3 hours in, we crawled our way to the restaurant near the pinnacle of the route. We devoured cheeseburgers and paticones (or "panty-chones" as we like to call them).

The highlight of the route was seeing the indigenous people of the mountain harvesting crops. The mountains were adorned with rows of onion, lettuce, lemon, and coffee. Max and I are affable travellers. The indigenous adults and kids, contrary to the experience of most travellers, are always interested in communicating. A few of the kids (pictured here) ran up to us and we taught them our handshakes. Those emotions that are not conveyed by their general lack of facial expression are certainly communicated to us through their warmness and touch.

We are now in Bocas Del Toro and I will post tomorrow about this amazing group of islands.