Mountain · Panama
Volcán Barú
Volcán Barú is the highest mountain in Panama, a sleeping volcano whose summit sometimes shows the Pacific and the Caribbean at once. That double view is rare.
Picture credit: Ayaita (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Volcán Barú?
Volcán Barú is part of the Talamanca Range.
You will find it in: Panama.
Summit: 8.809° N, 82.542° W
The story behind it
Barú is a stratovolcano in the Talamanca Range, only about 35 kilometres from the border with Costa Rica, and it also goes by the older name Volcán de Chiriquí. Around 9 000 years ago one flank slid away in an enormous landslide, leaving a summit caldera six kilometres wide and open to the west; new lava domes have since grown inside it and now stand higher than its rim. An eruption around the year 700 forced people to leave the nearby settlement of Cerro Punta, and the last eruption came around 1550. Both seas really can be seen from the top on a clear day, but that happens rarely, and the Caribbean side usually only very early in the morning before clouds move in. Barú Volcano National Park was created in 1976 and covers about 14 325 hectares, home to more than 250 kinds of birds and to all five big cat species of Central America. The rich volcanic soil on the slopes below is why the town of Boquete has become famous for its coffee.
Find it on the globe
Volcán Barú is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Volcán Barú?
About 3 475 m, the highest point in Panama, though it is only around the twelfth highest summit in Central America. Some sources round it to 3 474 m.
Where is Volcán Barú?
In western Panama, in the province of Chiriquí, about 35 kilometres from the border with Costa Rica. It sits inside Barú Volcano National Park, with the coffee town of Boquete on its eastern slopes.
Is it true that you can see two seas from the summit?
It is true, but only on a clear day, and such days are rare. The Caribbean usually shows itself just in the early morning, because clouds tend to build up over that side later on.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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