Blogs from Boquete, Chiriquí, Panama, Central America Caribbean - page 11

Three of us, including myself, collapsed into bed by 10 PM the previous night - the others went out, but they slept in the next morning while the three of us early-birds went to Mass. This priest was wonderfully clear in his speech, so I could actually understand everything he said (the Mass was in Spanish). After another stop for coffee and banana pancakes (are you noticing a pattern here?), we bid our long adios to our hostess (she tends to go off on tangents), and split our group. Myself, Paige, and Carmel saved $100 each and took the long, long bus ride back instead of flying in the “plane,” which Katrina told me is more like a hang-glider. After riding from Boquete to David, we waited for our David-Panama bus. Luckily that is one of ... read more

Having not gotten up early enough for the morning coffee tour (“this is where we pluck ‘em, this is where we roast ‘em,” etc.) we made our own coffee tour. Boquete as a town is basically laid out as a strip - it doesn’t radiate outwards from a central location like most towns, but lies along one main road that climbs slowly up the mountain. The entire region is known for good coffee, so there was a café about every five feet. We stopped in a lot of them, after more banana pancakes. I drank water, because I’m not going to waste good coffee on my unappreciative palate. The others liked it. We walked all the way up through the town until we reached “Mi Jardin es Su Jardin” (“My Garden is your Garden”). This is ... read more

... and sun-tanned faces and the coming of Christmas with the promise of sand instead of snow. Since we last wrote in San Jaun del Sur, Nicaragua, we´ll start there. We ended up staying there a week and then we got word that my brother, Andre, was making plans for a quickie surf trip. Next thing we knew we hopped on a bus, crossed the border into Costa Rica and five hours later were sitting on a park bench in Liberia, Costa Rica. Our official meeting place was...central park 2pm. Low and behold, a watermelon and a beer later (this is the first country with beers over $1) Andre pulls around the corner in the rental car. The meeting was a success. All thanks to the magic of the world wide web. Soon, we were off ... read more

So like I said in the last blog, Josh and I wanted to go to the rainforest in Panama (especially since we didn't have time to do so in Ecuador). We had read about a place called Wekso, which is an ecolodge on the mainland deep in the rainforest and within hiking distance of the Parque Nacional La Amistad - one of the few places on earth that is still considered somewhat unexplored. We made arrangements with them in advance and headed out early in the morning to take a boat from Bocas to Finca Sesenta (Farm #60), a port near the banana company town of Chinguanola. There a very friendly Wekso volunteer picked us up in an air-conditioned S.U.V. (which was a little bit of a shock after living in the open-air with no cars ... read more

Arrive in Boquete in the Panama mountains on the day they are celebrating 150 years of Chiriqui province... the town plaza is milling with people of every size and shape on horseback.... cowboy hats on men, women and little boys are de rigeur and the horses are beautiful. I sit, chat to the band and absorb the atmosphere as they parade round and round, occasionally lining up saloon bar style outside one of the local comedor restaurants to be fed. Boquete is an odd mixture - the Blue Mountains of Australia crossed with cowboy America crossed with indigenous Panama... the Guaymi people are very much in evidence in their brightly coloured tent-like dresses, with patterning on sleeve and collar. However, there are also innumerable American retirees who lock themselves away in gated communities on the environs, ... read more