Postcards from Overseas Certain travellers give the impression that they keep moving because only then do they feel fully alive.

The fire ants are the size of my thumb. They swarm in grids, much like the aerial views of Panama City. They block the path to the Sleeping Indian Girl, a mountain named for its silhouette. Currently we are somewhere in her tangled jungle of hair, which fans out below into El Valle de Anton. It is a town cupped in the hands of the mountains, where every morning the winds bring in dry heat and sun-showers. Papaya juice is pulpy over crackling ice cubes. Public transit consists of vans crammed with people, thumping Raggaeton from blown speakers. The dogs in the streets seem to spot foreigners, trotting over to sniff ankles and hands. Couples share the same bicycle, grinning shyly. Grandmothers who stroll behind young children greet us with a crinkly-eyed “Buenos.”

I brush sweat away, watching the ants. Better make a run for it—straight up what, in heat-induced stupor, I am sure is a ninety-degree incline. In an attempt to impress everyone, I have volunteered to carry the heaviest pack.

“Vamanos,” says Dario, a slight and leathery man. He is indigenous Panamanian; a friend of our host. Several miles back we stopped at his dirt-floored home to drink from his stream. His grandchildren watched with glittering black eyes as he offered to show us the peak. Despite wobbly legs, we accepted.

I learned from his kind, toothless wife that Dario is 73. But he has slowed his fast clip for our sake. Now to avoid the ants, he hops spryly from rock to rock, a teeming basket of sugarcane on his back. Every day he cuts dozens of stalks with a machete, runs them—and the blade—down the mountain to sell, and climbs back up. His basket must weigh three times my pack.

It is Dario’s simple determination (I can and I will, yo puedo y lo haré) that does it. One deep breath and then I’m sprinting, tripping, laughing through the swarm of ants. And then suddenly we are through the trees, and I am unscathed, and the whole earth is before us. A thin dirt trail runs for miles along the bare ridge. I crawl on my belly to a sharp cliff, peering far below into the jungle we just hiked. The cool pressure of rainclouds touches my face. We remain here, silently grateful, until the sky threatens to burst.

When we part, Dario hands us each a stalk of sugarcane, smiling. We thank him, pressing our hands into his. Then we trek down the path he travels every day, falling in line like ants. I use the cane as a walking stick, but every mile I bite from the fibrous stalk, sweetness on my tongue.