Panama 7th - 11th of November

Of course if you visit Panama, you can't not visit the canal. So this is what I did on Saturday morning, taking the bus out to Miraflores locks. These are the most tourist friendly set of locks, as they have a big museum and viewing platform of the canal itself. I watched a large cargo ship making its way through the lock system (an extremely long process). The most amazing part of this process for me was watching a ship which weighs thousands of tons moving vertically upwards. The movement is quite obvious as the water level rises a couple of feet per minute. In the evening I took an overnight bus to the town of David, close to the border with Costa Rica. It was only a 5 1/2 hour bus ride overnight, but I got very little sleep due to the air conditioning being on full blast turning the bus into a fridge. I arrive din David at 5am on Sunday morning and took a bus in land to the town of Boquete. This town is at about 1000m altitude so has a much more bearable climate than the coastal regions. In the afternoon I set of for a hike up Volcan Baru, which as 3475m is Panama's highest mountain (and only volcano). The plan was to climb near to summit on the first day, camp overnight and then be on the summit for dawn on the Monday. The only way to describe the climb up however is 'brutal', especially with the combined effects of very little sleep, altitude, heavy backpack and still recovering from a bad chest and cold. I did have an amusing encounter on the way up with a stranded 4x4 however. 3 Panamanians Esteban, his son Esteban junior and brother Carlos had managed to get their truck stuck on a massive boulder. It took almost an hour of lifting, jumping and pushing to get it free all of which was keenly photographed by Esteban Junior. It was 7 hours of continuous climbing (gaining around 1700m), before I found somewhere good to camp about 200m below the summit. I had just about enough energy to put my tent up and crawl into my sleeping bag and get to sleep by 8pm! The sky was clear, meaning views in the morning would hopefully be good. However I woke in the morning to hear rain falling on the outside of my tent, when I got outside I could only see about 4 feet in the darkness. I climbed to the top anyway, but what should have been great views stretching to both the pacific ocean and Caribbean sea where instead just thick clouds, and about 30 seconds when the sunrise broke through momentarily. It actually looked surprisingly similar to the view from the top of any Scottish mountain. In the afternoon I travelled back to the city of David, closer to the border with Costa Rica.The next morning I went on a rafting trip on the Rio Chiquiri, which pretty much forms the border with Costa Rica. There where 5 of us on the trip and before we got to the river Kevin (the guy who runs the business) gave us a 45 minute briefing. About 10mins of this was instructions, and the rest was a description of various ways we could break bones and die if we fall out in a rapid. He put the fear into everyone by describing how we might have to break our own ankles or legs to free ourselves if we got trapped underwater! When we got to the raft, our raft captain Freddie, was fortunately much more chilled out. It was a really fun trip actually as we went for about 4km before stopping for lunch, then another 4km after. Two people managed to fall out in one of the first rapids, then Freddie decided to push me over too, so pretty much everyone went swimming at some point. A very scenic river to raft on, as the jungle is overhanging the river for most of the trip.In the afternoon I got dropped at the border crossing, and managed to have a relatively hassle free and quick crossing which is a novelty. I then jumped on a bus for the 7hour ride to San Jose arriving by about 10pm. My bad chest and cold caused me great pain on the way though, as when we crossed a high mountain pass my sinuses couldn't equalise in pressure, causing pretty excruciating pain! Hopefully I'll feel better soon, I plan on spending a few days on the beach here in Costa Rica so that should help.
O