Volcano Baru

20/08/2011

Four words in my mouth: WOW I did it!

I can assure you I didn’t think I would when we first started. But let’s start by the beginning. At 4am we woke up, finished packing and left our bags at the reception of the hostel because they weren’t sure to have availability for the next night. Indeed as with the tour we had booked we were supposed to sleep at the volcano and then the next day going directly to take the bus to Panama city, the change of plan changed everything. We decided to stay another night in Boquete and go to do a canopy tour (my dad has never done it) and maybe horseback riding in the afternoon if the weather is good. But well, we’ll see that in the next article. So we left our bags at the reception and went to Explora Ya to meet our guide and the other guy who was climbing with us.

Nilsons gave us our breakfast and lunch that we had to carry and then a bus picked us up to drive us to the start of the 13.5kilometers hike. Going back to what I said I first: I can assure you that I didn’t think I would finish when we first started!

Starting at 5:30am by a 40° degree climb with the guide telling you “yes it’s going to be like that all the way”: it’s not very motivating. After only 10 minutes my body was already asking for a break. The 3 others were climbing a lot faster than I was and I didn’t want to delay them. I walked with the guide, trying to keep my breathing deep and calm while he was asking me a lot of questions… It wasn’t very easy to answer because I was out of breath as if I had run for 30 minutes! I was just hoping for my ankle to twist so that I would have had an excuse to stop. My dad slowed down to come and he showed so much faith in me that it motivated me: I didn’t want to disappoint him. He told me that I could do it and that I should go at my rhythm because at the end I would only arrived 20 or 30 minutes after them… I didn’t believe it but I kept walking step after step. After an hour we stopped 5 minutes to take pictures of the amazing view we had. Just for that it was worth climbing up there.

 On the way we were able to see the sun rising:

It became harder from me at that point because I got a tendinitis at my right thigh :S so it was painful at every single move of the thigh...no making things easier when you are climbing a volcano but we kept walking...

 One of the "flat" part (look at my dad's stick to apreciate the inclination

1 hour later we stopped to have breakfast.

As incredible as it sounds: I made it up to the 4th kilometer ;)

We kept walking..

We kept walking, up and up and always up. 

After the breakfast stop I was already going a bit faster, my body was getting use to it. We had some flat areas where we could rest but not a lot before the 9^th kilometer. Down there we had around 1 kilometer of flat or small rise. We stopped to have lunch and to take some rest. I put my jacket on the floor and slept for 15 minutes: I told you, I learnt to sleep everywhere, in any position hahaha.
After that we even had…a descent! It was the luxury before having to go up again. After all we had to go to the top of the volcano...

  

Nearly there...

The last kilometer was horrible! I had to stop every 15-20 steps as it was so steep!

It took me nearly 30 minutes to do the last kilometer!! I arrived at the top and I lay down on the floor, unable to believe I had managed to go to the top. It took us 6 hours and 10 minutes, well for me. Will, who was always the first, made it in 5:45 and my dad in 6:00 : Congrats to them!! While I was on the floor, my dad didn’t resist in taking a picture of me!

 I didn’t enjoy a lot the view as it started raining so I just took out my rain jacket to protect me while I was going for a nap.

But I had my revenge:

The rain was too strong so I had to move with the others near a small building to get out of the rain. After eating a small snack…I fell asleep, once again in a very strange position..as always jajaja.

Unfortunately the view at the top was very bad… we were supposed to be able to see the two oceans, Costa-Rica and Panama but the only thing we saw was: fog!

 

 

To go down, we only took 3 hours and 25 minutes. The advantages of always going up to see the top of the volcano is that when you have to go the other way around: it’s always going down! It was raining hard and we slipped more than once! My supposedly “waterproof” trouser wasn’t and I was soaked wet in less than 10 minutes. Whatever, I was so happy to have made it and to go down that everything was equal to me.

 

On the way my dad showed me that he had written "CM" in the mud while he was going up. It made me very happy, especially because I’m getting closer to my dad and I think it’s great. So next to it I wrote his initials: BM.

 

I was the last to get to the top but was the first to arrive to the meeting point!! Youhou... I'm loca...and proud of it!

I really want to thanks my dad for his support and trust. Without him, I wouldn’t have made it! Thanks dad!

Tomorrow: Canopy and maybe horseback riding!