Boquete is not unlike Salento in Colombia except the elevation is probably slightly lower and everything is more expensive. It is a very congenial town, perhaps why so many Americans have adopted it as their home. Coffee, cacao, fruits and vegetables all grow in abundance here and the enveloping clouds inevitably cast a blanket of fine mist over the town each afternoon despite there being blue sky immediately overhead. That always threw me off.
Given I didn't actually do a coffee tour in Salento, I decided to do one with Sinah and Mauri. Our guide had grown up on the family finca and was now working for another one. He had been at this finca for 8 years, working 6 days a week giving tours twice a day. At first the tour was exceptionally prescriptive and was struggling to maintain focus as he bombarded us with an overwhelming array of facts and figures, some useless and uninformative, and the odd english-second-language joke that really didn't work or just wasn't funny. But to his credit, once he had finished his obligatory spiel, it became more interactive, and for me, more interesting. They grew 5-6 varieties of coffee there with the significant majority exported. One interesting point was that your typical commercial grade of coffee is often a mix of different coffee beans from the same plantation and is normally B-grade in quality. This particular finca also grew the second most expensive type of coffee in the world which all went to Japan and retailed for some ordinary price and unusually has more of a weak, citrus tea flavour, well this is what I was told. A coffee shop on town sold this coffee for a lazy $9 a cup - I wasn't prepared to try it if it was more like a tea. Each to their own.
The only other major activity that we attempted was a hike to some waterfalls. After getting a taxi to a finca and trying to sell the two girls who were in the tray of the ute to the taxi driver (he was interested, they weren't his type, upon which he proceeded to show us numerous photos on his phone of very curvy women from all over Latin America - they weren't my type, large, very, VERY curvy and lots of inappropriate surgery).
From the finca it was a one hour walk to the waterfall. This walk was really cool. Along the road through some small villages, up and over hills lined with fields of onions, potatoes, carrots and other vegetables. We played soccer with some local kids who were thrilled to interact with some foreigners and one bright young kid kept wanting to take photos with Elisa and my SLR cameras. After an hour we had only reached the trail head...it was another hour or more to the waterfall. I was hot, bothered, thirsty and more importantly desperately in need of food. Elisa and I opted to head back and eat whilst the others soldiered on, ransacking a local tienda on the path that hadn't grasped the concept of paying for goods.
We got a lift back with some locals who were doing some fruit shopping around the various farms - they sold it to the supermarkets in Panama City. They were very friendly and surprisingly spoke English, even the old lady.
The evenings were spent eating Papi's 3 ingredient challenge pasta and watching Sinah get beaten up by the guys. Never accept the offer of a fight from someone who volunteers. Bad news.
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| Sinah, Mauri and Patrick |
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| The potato people |
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| Elisa and the budding photographer giving her tips on how to use her camera |
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| Medium roasted coffee |
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| The finca owner |
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| Boquete |
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| The lovely Elisa |
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| Wandering hands Eugene |
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