Day 129 - Thursday 26th January 2006

The hike from Cerro Punta to Boquete is known as Sendero los Quetzales, which roughly means the path of the Quetzales. Quetzales being birds. This walk runs through the Parque Nacional Volcan Baru, traversing the north side of the Vocan Baru, the highest peak in Panama. Covering some 35,000 acres the park is filled with different landscapes - from open fields to dense rainforest - and also some species of animal only found in this part of the world.

We set out at 10am for the Sendero los Quetzales from our hotel at Cerro Punta. As we left it was starting to get a little overcast and there was a little rain in the air. 5 minutes after we started walking that changed to a lot of rain in the air. Just to reach the entrance to the trail proper it was a 5km walk through valleys and up hillsides. The farmers of the region seem to defy gravity in the way they work. They have planted crops all the way up the the sides of the hills, some being really quite steep.

It took about two hours to reach the ranger station from where the hike official begins. By the time we had walked to this point the rain had come and we were enveloped in the clouds. To reach the ranger station at Cerro Punta we had climbed about 500m to an altitude of 2500m ASL. The hike from this point to Boquete decended about 1000m over the space of 8km so for the majority of the walk we were headed downhill. Now it becomes obvious why we did the walk in this direction and not the other way around!

From the ranger station we walked about two hours through increasingly thick vegetation. The path was pretty clearly defined and was easy enough to follow. The rain let up slightly and the sun even came out for a short while, giving us some better views of the rainforest. We stopped about halfway along at a conventient campsite and ate our packed lunches (tuna sarnies for me) before taking a slight detour to one of the lookout points.

The first hour after lunch we walked down into a valley, following closely the course of a river. This part if the trail was the most difficult as it was really wet and muddy and quite steep going down. In some places the path had been washed away and we were forced to make our own. Once we reached the valley floor everything was damp, humid and muddy. Pretty much what you would expect from a rainforest.

We followed the river through the valley floor for about another hour before reaching the end of the trail and coming out of the rainforest. Up until this point the thick canopy of the forest had mostly protected us from the rains, however as we left the forest we no longer had protection from it. The ranger station was about another 3km along an open road, and walking this in the pouring rain we were soon soaked through.

When we came to the rangers hut there were a group of German tourists who offered us a lift in Boquete. We gratefully accepted and arrived in town thoroughly wet through. We checked into a hotel and changed into some dry(ish) clothes before heading uot for some well deserved dinner and a quiet beer. Not having the energy nor inclination to drink more we headed back to the hotel for an early night.