My thoughts are elsewhere as I clutch at tufts of grass and haul myself up the steep hillside, sweating profusely in the soporific heat all the while desperately trying to keep up with my guide. Each dry discarded or felled tree appears in my line of sight as a possible lurking place for some venomous creature or another, and risking increasing the distance between the guide and me, I skirt around the edges rather than suffer the possible consequences. And then we arrive at the hillcrest, and below us the claustrophobic confines and still Caribbean waters of the Gulf of Urabá open out with clear views west onto the famed Darien region and from up here I can understand why, in 1509, Spanish Conquistador Alonso de Ojeda, chose this spot.