Santa Fe

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Things just keep getting better. I´m really loving panama. I´ll actually being staying here for my whole trip. There are a lot of places here that I don´t want to miss out on.
I left Panama city about 10 days ago and went to a small town in the mountains called Santa Fe. For me, it was perfect. There is a beautiful hostel there called La Qhia and it was like paradise. The hostal itself was beautiful with lots of gardens, fruit trees and flowers - rooms were clean and it had a hot shower. The people that own it were awesome. She is Belgian and he is from Argentina and they speak French, English and Spanish. There 3 year old son also speaks Spanish and French - impressive. I met a lot of other travellers there during my 8 day stay. MOstly retired Canadians looking for land to buy.
The small town of Santa Fe is great. The people are so friendly. They seem genuinely happy you are there and had lots of patience with my Spanish. It is still a constant work in progress, but my language skills are improving. It is citrus season in the tropics and everywhere you look there are trees full of mandarins, oranges, and grapfruit. There are also chickens all over. I´m sure they belong to people, but they seem to just roam around town. Some people have cars, but the main mode of transportation is either on foot or on horse.
Besides the tourists that just come and go, I got to know a couple of people that are staying in Santa Fe for about 6 months. Nacho is from Argentina and is the brother of the guy that owns the hostal. There was also Israel, from Spain. These guys were great and showed us lots of places to check out in the area. They were also really good for practicing spanish. Everyday was something new. Jungles, rivers, waterfalls and lots and lots of hills.
I didn´t want to leave this little oasis, but it was time to move on. Yesterday I took a series of buses from Santa Fe to another mountain town called Boquete. It is small, but compared with Santa Fe it seems big and I´m kind of in shock. There are lots of gringos here and it just doen´t really seem that personal. I feel like I´m just lost in the shuffle. The weather here isn´t that great either - lots of rain. But this town has been highly recommended by lots of people, so I wanted to check it out. This is the agriculture center of the country and the coffee is unbelievable. Its all grown right here. There are a lot of potential hikes around here, but the tourist infrastructure is really built up. Everything is a "eco-tour" that requires a guide. In Santa Fe you just talk to some people for recommendations and head off into the hills.
So I think I´ll only be in Boquete a couple of days. I´m going to take some spanish lessons while I´m here because there is a school in town. I think I´ll have 8 hours of private lessons over the next two days. It should be pretty helpful. There are a few other things that I want to do here, but mostly I´m looking foward to end of the week when I head to the beaches!

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Comments

[Edwin]

as you would say....."nice"
glad to hear you're having a good time. great snow here.