Sunset at the Summit of Panama

By Thomas Gibbs

Blogs are as varied as the people who write them. Read on, and be enlightened

After I reach the 11,000 foot marker, the light in the sky is fading, and I feel cold for the first time in two months. I have been sweating all day from the grueling climb, most of which has been done alone. My friend Rob has had a problem with his ankle, and has been forced to stop every ten minutes to take off his right boot and massage his foot with a pained expression on his face. Eventually, he tells me to go on alone and that he’ll see me at the summit for the sunset. I doubt he will make it.

I look behind me, down the trail and see the clouds a couple of hundred feet below. They change colour every 30 seconds or so, becoming redder as time passes. The air is very still and silent, except for a low humming noise in the distance. I wonder what could be making this strange sound. I worry that it’s a noise coming from inside my head; a result of fatigue, my body letting me know that it’s time to take a rest. I try to ignore it.

And then, after a few minutes of slow, agonizing steps, a right turn in the gravel path appears ahead. I pick up my pace a little, eager to see what is around this corner. I know I must be getting close to the summit.

I breathe heavily and smile as I turn the corner to discover that I am right. Only 400 feet above me is the summit of Barú Volcano, the highest point in Panama. And then, below it, I see the source of the noise that has been bothering me: a huge white building, surrounded by a tall fence, with what appears to be a large radio tower protruding from its roof. I jog towards it.

 A short, muscular man exits from a side door and stops when he sees me, obviously surprised by my presence. I’m not very confident in Spanish, and so I just nod to him as I get closer.

 “Buenas tardes!” he says, in a friendly way.

He begins talking to me, and I try to respond in broken Spanish. I learn that he lives alone, up here near the summit, and acts as a sort of security guard-cum-engineer for the radio towers behind us. He tells me that he likes his job because he enjoys the solitude, and the silence. I mention the noise emanating from the building, and ask him if that annoys him. He says he has ceased to notice it.

After a few minutes of chatting, he recommends that I go up to the summit before the sun sets. He tells me he is going to bed, and wishes me the best for the climb down. The heavy steel door shuts behind him.

I feel energized after having rested, and leave my pack on the ground for the last 400-foot climb. And then, behind me, I hear a familiar cry. It is my friend Rob approaching, shaking his head.

 “I really didn’t want to miss it,” he says, forcing the words out and catching his breath. Sweat pours down his forehead even though the temperature feels close to freezing.

 I sprint up the little path, and climb the naked black rocks that lead to the cross at the summit. When I get there, the view is unlike anything I have ever seen. The clouds below look like tiny, soft volcanoes themselves, and are beginning to take on a purple hue. The sky looks so open and clear from up here, and is of different, graduated shades of blue, green, orange, pink, and red. The whole experience is very surreal; almost otherworldly, and we just sit, watching the changing colours.

Nothing moves; not even insects or birds live up here, and the only noticeable sound is the one coming from the white building below.

“It’s like looking at a different planet,” my friend tells me.