Boquete Trip

Ok, well "I will update this soon" ended up being almost a month later, but that'll have to do i guess. Now i have to remmember all the boquete details. Let's see, we left very early in the morning and took 3 buses and a cab during the all day trip to Boquete. The bus station food at one of the stops gave us all a bit of tummy troubles (to put it mildly) and we found out later that it's been rumoured that the cat's in that area have been dissapearing (though people often say the same thing about KFC). It was probably just a matter of the the leftovers being continually re-served every day until they were obviously rancid, i doubt it was actually cat.

The first day in Boquete we took it easy for the morning, just wandered around the little town, admiring the gardens and the view. Boquete is a small town in the Mountainous region of panama (Chiriqui province), home to more expats "than you could shake a stick at". No wonder, with the amazing view, spectacular birds and flowers and last but not least the cool climate it has a reputation as being one of the number one places in the world to retire. This has been unfortunate for the locals who now cannot afford to buy land there and who are now learning the word "gated community".

That afternoon we went on a tour to a local coffee plantation (Cafe Ruize in this case). Unlike other Central American countries, Panama's coffee is sold in country and is not regulated by single corporations who primarily export (for example in Costa rica, only the "reject" coffee is allowed to be sold in country as instant coffee). From what was said on the tour (which obviously needs to be taken with a grain of salt), Panama coffee growers rely on producing small amounts of high quality "gourmet" coffee as it cannot compete with countries like Brazil and Costa Rica in sheer production. From what i saw on the farm, the coffee was shade grown and intermingled with legumes like castor beans and also included some fruit trees which was nice. Though some organic coffee was available, the company did not have fair trade certification...

The next morning at 4am we left our hotel to go on our hike up Volcan Baru (as Russ pointed out in the comments - the highest point in Panama). The website he posted is great to check out for a better idea of what the top is like (thanks!). It was pretty steep and long with a lot of loose rock on the trail but we managed to make it to the top before the clouds rolled in and completely obscurred the view. In the photos you can barely see both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (I swear i'm not making it up). The climb back down was very pleasant as a cool fog rolled in over the cloud forest portion, but we could still see the brilliant flowers and jumbo-sized hummingbirds. Later, once we were down farther where there was pasture and onion/rose farms we had stopped to lie down for a rest and saw a large green bird with a long tail and red breast fly right over us. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of a resplendent Quetzal (an amazingly beautiful Trogon), but had pretty much given up and forgotten about it by that point. We just saw it briefly, but it was still pretty fantastic.

I was so tired and achy the next day, the bus ride was a bit of a relief (i did not want to walk another step). We avoided eating at the sketchy bus station and arrived back in Gamboa safe and sound, ready to go net more bats.

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