After spending 3 nights in Bocas del Toro, where I've only been drinking, mainly, I decided to go to Boquete, a small village in the mountains. I asked Victor, a german guy I met before in Costa Rica to come along so together we left Bocas around 14:00. I planned to start travelling around 10, but the hostel had problems with their wireless internet so I offered to help them out
, which I couldn't due to missing passwords and unreachable people in charge but they offered me a T-shirt for the effort anyway.
>From ashore we had to take a bus to David, a city way more south. At first I didn't realize that David was such a long way from Bocas, but eventually it made sense since we payed $7 a person. Since we arrived in David just befo
re 6 pm, I figured we would have to stay over in David, but once we arrived at the terminal, we figured out that there were still buses going that way because it was only a 45 minute drive. We booked in a hotel, appropriately called Hostel Boquete, which was situated on the river side. First thing we noticed was that Boquete is a lot colder than Bocas.
Before we got to the hostel we met some people that Victor had met before and they offered us some coffee bread that they just bought. It was a little piece of heaven !
Next day we moved from this hostel to another one, because we didn't thought this hostel to be very social and ended up in Hostel Palacio which was also only $8,5 against $12 for the former. The owner very enthusiastically told us everything there was to do in Boquete so we decided to go for a short walk around the town.
A little to my disappointment, the trip followed the road the whole time and the only highlight besides some views was "mi jardin es su jardin", a garden full of beautiful flowers although somewhat structured too strict, with cement pavements giving you a slight disneyland experience.
Although the trip was rather short, I ended up with a blister on one of my feet.
Back in the hostel we bought and prepared dinner while making plans to go and climb the volcano Baru. I certainly wanted too see that since I had decided against paying for volcano Fortuna and this one was for free (apart from the taxi ride there). First we were just the two of us, but after meeting with the other people in hostel Palacio we soon found some more souls to join us. After a while everyone who stayed in the hostel was sitting outside and talking and we convinced some more people, so I told the group that everyone who wanted to come I'd make Indian Curry for dinner the night before we'd leave. Ali, an American girl didn't want to come at first because she didn't do hikes for holiday, but eventually she said she'd come because of the peer pressure.
The next day we found out that there would be 11 of us and after eating and buckling up we jumped in the taxi that arrived there at 22:45.
We were lucky concerning the weather, since it was a starry night and we were in the middle of the rainy season. After walking/climbing for about 1,5 hour, we started to understand it wasn't going to be a stroll in the park and my blister from the day before had been bothering me from the start. We've only finished a fifth of the hike and I already felt like all the energy had been drained from my legs. I remembered from my survival guide that sugar quickly restores energy so I ate a Snickers(TM) and then I thought we should continue. My T-Shirt was already wet-through from my sweat and the temperature dropped with every step we went higher. Once we started walking again I couldn't believe how much energy I regained from just that half bar of a Snickers and I believed again I could make it. Around 5:00 we finally arrived at the top and the sky was stilled filled with many stars. The volcano didn't look like a volcano at all and the top was covered in some buildings with plenty antennas with dishes and other emission equipment. It was very windy which made the actual 4 degrees Celsius feel even colder. Viktor and me had decided to build a campfire there so we started searching for wood. At the other side of the rim there was a 270 degrees view into the underlying valley and I could see the lights of a big city, probably David in the far distance. We found some wood, but not enough to make a big campfire so we returned and decided to stay behind the buildings out of the wind. Some of us started dancing to keep warm, others sat down and curled up together to share the little bit of warmth there was to share.
When the light of dawn started to arise, with it also the fog came and the sunrise where we came for was fragmented in some blue spots of air every 5 minutes. Being brighter now, we managed to find some more carton and other burnable stuff and we made a little campfire.
After a while we decide to descend back to earth which was supposedly to last about 5 hours as well. Starting walking again after a break, we looked like a bunch of old people because everyone suffered from something that hurted especially when starting again: some had sore knees, some had sore thighs, a sore back and I suffered from one growing blister and several accompanying smaller blisters on both feet. I thought descending was going to be less painful as they were in the back of my feet, but I had to reconsider quickly.
Around 14:00 we arrived bac at our starting point and we were all glad to be in the taxi, heading back to the hostel. Even during the short 15" ride, several members of our expedition couldn't keep their eyes open and fell asleep in the van.
We were all proud of ourselves for doing this, but for now we just wanted to sleep...
After 2 hours and some forks, the river became a whole lot smaller and more shallow. The propeller from the boat's engine clogged up a number of times because more and more water-vegetation made navigating difficult. Eventually we sat foot on land and the children that lived in "La Marea" came running from all over the village to see the gringos arriving.
The women and the kids all wanted to be a helping hand and took the few ounces off luggage out of our hands so we strolled empty handed, followed by a stream of people through the village. Along the way we looked upon many huts built on poles 1,5 two 2,5 meters high (in the rainy season the whole village floods). Little eyes peered at our appearance which seemed to be so odd that many little hands were sucked by many little mouths. When we cheerfully said "Hola !" to everyone, nobody seemed to response which gave us the impression that they didn't speak any Spanish.
at the opposite was true: the children could hardly speak their own language anymore and amongst them they communicated in Spanish. 
Together with their language other things from their culture were also disappearing. They still painted each other with the fruit they used for that, but the paintings were now merely decorative and have lost all meaning over time. (you could tell someone's marital status, amount of children and many things more by their tribal paintings)...
