Bananas gone wild

We continued our quest and went from Panama City via David in the northwest of the country to tiny Boquete – a charming town nestled on the cool slopes of Volcan Baru, at 3474m Panama's highest peak. A river runs through it and beautiful, wild forests reach into town. Parrots sing their songs at dusk and dawn and the cool, dry (by Panamanian standards) climate allows people to mingle outside the whole day without suffering a heart attack. Boquete is in fact so darn pretty that it is flooded by US-Americans that settle here for their retirement. This leads to a welcoming, international vibe and we liked Boquete the moment we stepped out of the bus – but also had to realize that we would not find what we were looking for: the smell of bananas. And why would we not find that sweet smell? Because we were surrounded by the country's most famous coffee plantations. So instead of bananas Panama smells like coffee, at least in Boquete.

We went for long walks around the city and into its surroundings, along the coffee plants that looked so familiar and conjured up memories of Vietnam's coffee highlands. It was the day of local elections in Panama and in front of a small house there were quite the election parties going on – seemingly all the parties were celebrating right next to each other and right in front of the election office. The building was guarded by heavily armed national policemen that made sure that everything went according to order (taking into account all the bribery we witnessed – and took part in- the last couple of days the policemen didn't seem so out of place anymore). We went back to the hostel for a little afternoon nap and then started to get ready for our next adventure: climbing the volcano at night to reach its top right in time for sunrise the next morning. Prepared with tons of water, some food, warm clothes and, most importantly, headlights with fresh batteries we left the hostel around 11pm and got to the head of the trail at the entrance to the national park shortly before midnight. Under a clear, stary sky we started our 13km way to the summit quite energetically and made some way in the complete darkness of the forest before tiredness set in. From around 2:30am to 5am we were only stumbling on, sleeping while walking (yes, that is really possible), shivering in the cold air. When we reached the last steep climb we looked back to where we came from – the east. A fiery red sun was slowly rising above a sea of clouds that covered the valleys far below us. It was a stunning sight that woke us up immediately – we hurried up to the cross and enjoyed the spectacular view while the sun was coming up. Once the spectacle was over we had some well earned breakfast and then quickly turned around – it was quite cold up there. The way back down to the entrance of the park was torture. When sleepwalking up the mountain before we hadn't realized just how steep the way was most of the time. 13 steep km down means hurting knees after the first half hour, bleeding toes and lots of gliding, slipping and tumbling. We asked ourselves 'Why?!' more than once. At least this time we could actually see the beauty of the landscape we were walking through. Thick, lush jungle was covering the mountain slopes, we saw tons of colorful hummingbirds, glimmering, gigantic insects, some small snakes and we could hear monkeys in the distance. After we had finally gotten back to the hostel almost 5 hours later, slept the whole afternoon and enjoyed some good food for dinner we were ready to say: Yes, it was a good hike and totally worth the effort! The only thing we missed on that volcano was - you guessed it - the smell of bananas.

Therefore we left Boquete the next morning to continue our search on the Caribbean coast. We went back to David and took a bus to Almirante from where we left the mainland by water taxi and reached our final destination: Isla Colon, the main island of the Bocas del Toro archipelago. In this tropical paradise we were sure to find bananas and their smell.

The first day, we hired bikes and toured up to the northern tip of the island, along secluded white beaches, surf breaks and through thick jungle. It was steaming hot and we went through our 3 liters of water in no time. The old bikes without gear and real breaks were not really made for the dirt track that lead through the forest (and was actually the only road there was on this part of the island). We went through deep, soft sand, had to cross old, crumbling bridges, waded through rivers and got stuck in mud a couple of times. Finally we had to give up and surrender to nature when the path got lost in a swamp that was humming with the sound of animals. We had just encountered our very first wild giant snake (a black python with a diameter of at least 20cm) and were howled at by monkeys that threw stuff at us so we were not inclined to cross that swamp slowly, barefoot and unarmed as we were. Instead we went back the same road that we had come. On the way we met two very nice American girls that got stuck with their quad in the same deep mud that we got stuck in so we helped each other out of there and celebrated our jungle-survival when we made it back out of the forest and onto the beach with its very welcoming, laid back beach bar. We talked, laughed, enjoyed the view and our sun-downers and then went back to town to take a good, long shower.

The next day, we took a boating tour to explore more of the islands around Isla Colon. We first went to Dolphin Cove. The dolphins that supposedly live there in great numbers were all sleeping when we got there (typical...), so we didn't get to see any. That was not too bad, though, as we instead took a great tour through Cayo Crawl, a labyrinth of mangrove-dotted channels with a mystical calm aura. Afterward we went snorkeling. The variety of fish wasn't very impressive and the visibility was less than perfect but the kind of corals we got to see was quite fascinating, as we never saw these before. Very colorful hard corals and soft corals that formed underwater forests like seaweed covered the whole area. After a picnic lunch we continued the tour to the distant Cayos Zapatillas with pristine white-sand beaches and awesome forests to hike through. We spent the afternoon enjoying the warm waters and running from the mosquitoes in the forest before we went back to Isla Colon.

Our last trip on the island led us to the beautiful beach at Bocas del Drago in the north east. We walked along it for about 15 minutes, passed the most beautiful, lonely cove with crystal clear water and finally reached the amazing Starfish Beach. The water is dotted with beautiful red and yellow, small and big starfish and the occasional little ray that calmly swims by. We had brought our goggles and spent hours in amazement, inspecting every single starfish. About 5 meters into the water, the bottom dropped significantly and along that wall, there were myriads of the cute underwater animals – their sheer amount was a sight in itself. We definitely fell in love with starfish that day. But after spending a whole afternoon with them at their beach and two more days around the archipelago we had to admit: there is no smell of bananas on Isla Colon or the surrounding islands. 

Smell-wise disappointed (everything else was fantastic so there was no reason to be otherwise disappointed) we decided to give up our search and go on to Panama's northern neighbor: Costa Rica. We took the water taxi back to the mainland and went north by bus – and there, in the boarder region of the two countries, we finally found what we had been looking for all over Panama: miles and miles of banana plantations. So at the boarder, while leaving the country, we took a deep sniff of sweet sweet banana smelling air. Janosch was right: Oh, wie schoen ist Panama!