Boquete - Part 2

On day two of our stay in Boquete, Chet and I took a tour of one of the local coffee companies, Cafe Ruiz.  We were picked up by Carlos, who ended up being our tour guide.  We had some short conversations with him in Spanish on the way to the coffee farm.  It wasn't until he began the tour and asked in perfect English if English or Spanish was better.  There were two other couples on the tour and one lady piped up saying 'English please, my Spanish is very bad!' So the tour was conducted in English. But I was glad he didn't automatically start speaking English to us when we were picked up; I like practicing my Spanish.

Carlos was a very knowledgeable, funny guide. He started out picking coffee beans when he was 11 years old, working his way up in the company with many jobs including being a coffee taster and now as a guide.  He loves coffee, drinking at least 4 cups a day.

But onto the tour.  It was a fact-filled tour starting with some general information of the area, a tour of one of the company's 11 farms in the Boquete region, a jaunt through a processing factory, and ending with a coffee cupping (a coffee tasting basically). Chet said it was nice to be learning again; traveling can sometimes make the brain go stagnant.

Panama is not a large coffee producer/exporter by any means compared to other countries in the region such as Costa Rica and Colombia.  However, Panama does produce some of the most expensive coffee with most of it grown in the Boquete region. One company, Hacienda Esmeralda, in the region produces a coffee that goes for $350/kilo at auction. There are over 1000 coffee farms in the area. Sadly with the high prices land is selling, many people are cashing out and the coffee farms are leveled to make room for development.

The farm wasn't organized in a plantation style but more in a forest manner with coffee trees interspersed between shade and citrus trees.  The coffee fruits are little red fruits (similar to a cranberry fruit except on a tree) that are individually hand picked. After picking, the fruits can go through several different processes: natural, honeyed, continuous cycle, and washed. These all deal with different ways of drying, fermenting, and removing the skins of the fruit. The natural process is where the fruits are laid out in troughs in the sun to naturally ferment and dry; this is more for specialty coffee.  The most common methods are washed and continuous. We got to see the fruits being processed in the washed method where the fruits are washed, sorted by floaters and sinkers (floaters don't make great coffee), the red skin is removed, the beans are fermented, then pre-dried, dried, the second skin removed, sorted by color, density, size, and shape, and finally aged for several months. From there the beans are sold, roasted, ground, and finally made into a cup of coffee; quite the process! After seeing the processing, we went to the coffee shop and got to try different coffee roasts from light to medium to dark roast. Light roast tasted a little more tea like with a more fruity flavor and the darker roasts tasting more like normal coffee.  All in all, a very cool tour.

The last day we were in Boquete we took a nice long walk around the town and valley. We ended at the fair grounds where the annual Flower and Coffee festival is held in January. Some of the flower gardens were still blooming and sooo beautiful to see!  I was hoping to see some tropical flowers in the gardens, but they were mostly plants (alyssum, pansies, impatients, petunias, snapdragons, etc.) you could find in the nurseries back home. Nonetheless, very pretty.

After two full days of travel, we are now hanging out for a couple days in the small beach town of Santa Teresa, Costa Rica.

Until next time,
Karen and Chet

Coffee fruits (in the red skin) and the beans (in the yellow skin).

Coffee plant blooming.  The flowers smell like citrus/jasmine flowers.

Natural method of drying fruits.

Fermentation of beans.

Pre-drying of beans.

Aging of beans

Green beans ready to be roasted.


Beautiful view of the area above Boquete with a little gringo in the top left corner.


Panama flag in the garden at the fairgrounds.


Sunflowers taller than Karen... not a difficult feat.


Butterfly in garden

Boquete

We woke up at 6:00 am. Our plan was to make it back to the mainland town of Almirante, catch a bus to David and then another bus to the small mountain town of Boquete. We ate breakfast and went to the dock on Bastimentos to catch a boat over to Isla Colon where the boats to the mainland depart from. Once on Isla Colon, we caught the first available boat, a jammed packed dingy headed to Almirante.

The dock at Old Bank on Isla Bastimentos

We disembarked the boat and were immediately approached by people offering to get us a taxi. We politely declined and went to find our own way. Meanwhile one tenacious fellow followed us to the cab and made sure he got his cut from the driver for 'rounding' us up.

We took the cab to the bus terminal and bought our tickets to David. The bus was a jammed packed express over the continental divide to the western side of Panama. Our driver drove the road like a madman. We flew down the road passing cars, trucks and buses in a rather frightening fashion. When we hit the uphill, we slowed to a crawl and the whole bus shook and vibrated with exertion. The vibrations created a deep and very loud buzzing sound. It felt like we were inside a subwoofer.

We drove up the mountains and finally passed through the clouds onto the other side into the sun and wind. Now we were going down hill. The load vibrations diminished and in their stead was the stench of burning brakes. Finally after 5 hours on the bus we arrived in the city of David. The David terminal was simple and logical: all the buses come to the same place. We got off one bus and onto the next, an old yellow school bus from the states. 45 minutes later and we arrived in Boquete after a long day of traveling.

View from our hostel.

Boquete (pronounced bo-ket-eh) is a small town up in the mountains, on the west side of the continental divide (elevation ~3900 ft). It is a beautiful place known for its coffee, flowers, and citrus. Every year in January, they hold a coffee and flower festival.

In the past decade Boquete has become a destination place for non-Panamanians to retire. Consequently, there are a lot of older gringos walking around and the town has seen a massive real estate boom. The locals joke that the name of the town is actually "se vende" (for sale) because there are so many se vende signs around. The evidence is everywhere. It is actually rather sad. Prices have sky-rocketed and the locals have a hard time affording to stay. However, many have also become millionaires overnight by selling their land while the price was right. Now gated communities and country clubs are replacing coffee farms and cloud forest and the gringos keep coming.

Coffee finca cleared for future country club.

Our first day we went for a walk around town. Boquete is known for its gardens so we figured we would go check them out. We walked a little ways out of town to Mi Jardin es su Jardin. The garden was beautiful! Tons of flowers, trees, ponds, and an artificial creek ran throughout. It was a very colorful spot. On the way back, we stopped at a local coffee shop for an iced coffee and Karen and I signed up for a coffee tour.

Entrance to Mi Jardin es su Jardin.

Big flower.

Colorful flowers.

More flowers in the garden.

The actual flower part of the plants.

Colors...so many pretty bouganvilla!

The little man-made creek.

The garden had cool sculptures.

Orange flowers.

Karen by one of the pools.

Little waterfall.

Beautiful flowering tree

Karen sized door.

Wyatt didn't fit.

Another garden shot.

Beautiful red flower

Cow sculpture in the garden.

Red bush-tree

Orange flowers

The logo of the garden.

Onward!!

Karen here! Things are well down here. It's been sunny the last couple days so we've been going to the beach and kayaking. The surf picked up a little bit the last couple days so the guys went surfing. One day, Chet and I kayaked to the island across from we're staying (about a 20 minute paddle, not very far), paddled along that island for an hour then crossed back over to Bastimentos and paddled up it for a bit, seeing awesome mangroves, lots of starfish, and a couple beautiful sting rays. Not a lot of snorkeling that day though; too much swell in the water and the water wasn't very clear due to recent rains. 

We've met quite a few characters the three weeks we've been here. When we first got here, there was a German guy Andres staying here. Hectic fellow! He owns a skate/finger-deck store back in Germany and travels for surfing and to go to skate and finger-deck competitions. (Finger-decks are little skate boards you play with with your fingers. Wyatt, Chet, and I knew of these from growing up, but we didn't know there are competitions for it!!) Andres, a guy in his 30s, always seemed a bit over-caffeinated, talking very quickly and scolding the guys ('You lazy boys!) for not getting surfboards the first full day we were here. 

Next up, we met a tall blonde German lady named Jennifer. She had come down to Panama for a couple days from where she lives in Costa Rica to renew her visa. If you stay in Costa Rica longer than three months, then you need to either apply for a long term visa through lots of paperwork OR you can leave the country for a couple days and they'll give you a new three month visa when you re-enter CR. So needless to say, the latter is what she was doing. She loves sailing and the tropics, hoping to stay here more full time to avoid going back to 'cold gloomy Germany.'

After that, we met a lovely Australian couple, Sam and Alex. Alex had just graduated from university with a degree in communications. Sam is studying to be a nurse, but she is taking some time off to travel. Alex is going back to Australia and Sam is going to Guatemala to study Spanish for a couple months. Awesome people, lots of good discussions, plan to keep in touch with them!

Last up, Diane and Rod from Colorado. They were just finishing a two week trip through Costa Rica and Panama looking for a nice place to retire to. Funny couple; the tropics will suit them! They're flying back to the states tomorrow, dreading the foot of snow on the ground and another predicted foot of snow on the way. 

Tomorrow we're leaving the islands to go to a town called Boquete up in the mountains of Panama that is known for its coffee. We'll be there for a couple days and then plan on heading to the Pacific side of Panama. I'll miss the beautiful blue Caribbean, but it will be nice to move on.

Till next time!

Karen

We've been eating a lot of pineapple lately. It's really good on oatmeal!

Our patio with the guys' boards. (Photo credit Wyatt Dooley)

Wyatt taking a nap after a long day of surfing and hanging out.

Carribean Life

We've been pretty busy for the last week or so, exploring and checking stuff out. We have had several days of kayak/snorkel trips because the sea has been super flat and calm.  We've also gone to Playa Wizard several times; the hike has been quite nice now that the rains have stopped and all the mud has had a chance to dry up.  Not much more to report.  Here's some awesome pictures for you.

(We are continuing to have tablet/internet issues, so please excuse any weird formatting and delays between posts)

Coral...

Awesome heart-looking coral.

Needle fish in the center of the picture.

Dorey-like fish among the red coral.

Karen's rash guard burn despite putting on sunscreen. In her defense, she was slathered in sunscreen, wore her rash guard, and her hat.

Wizards beach. The first truly sunny day we've had so far here on Bastimentos. 

Our shady hangout on the beach. We had the whole place more or less to ourselves. 

Diving down. (Photo credit: Wyatt)

Snorkeling off of Wizards. White urchins and tons of fish. 

Fish next to a rock. It was real surgey despite being a real small swell. Definitely had to watch ourselves next to the rocks. 

Brain coral off of Isla Solarte. Also a fish and sea cucumber. 

Crazy coral and fish. This coral complex was big ~10 ft. 

These were the coolest fish I have ever seen! Unfortunately the photo isn't that great. They were about 2 feet long and colored vibrant turquoise and dark grey. 

Sting ray in the surf off Wizards. This is why we shuffle our feet when walking out. 

Kayaking off Isla Solarte. 

Goldfish in the coral. 

Awesome coral complex. (Photo credit: Wyatt)

Tube worms growing on the coral. They are fun to touch and watch shoot back in. 

Crazy colors and shapes of coral. 

Purple tube coral. 

Hike through the jungle to wizards. 

The jungle path had dried up a lot since last time and the hike was much quicker and easier. 

When the path is in walkable condition, it is about a 15-20 minute hike from town. 

Karen blogging away under the paloppa at where we are staying on Bastimentos.