Panama - Boquete

Feb 17

Boquete! 

 

Here's what I was excited about for Boquete- it's in the mountains, and in a cloud forest, so it's much cooler than at the beach or the city. There are some unique and cool birds there. It's a big ex-pat community, so there are lots of restaurants and things to do. 

 

  

I had been emailing with a Canadian woman named Simone, who I connected with through a birding travel facebook group. She was spending the entire month in Panama, and the previous year had the spent the month of February in Boquete. I asked her a million questions and got a lot of recommendations from her.  She recommended Finca Lerida, which is a coffee plantation and hotel up in the highlands. It looked really nice online, so we booked 2 nights there. 

 

Before driving up to Finca Lerida, we stopped in the city of Boquete for some lunch and sightseeing. We first visited the Boquete Flower & Coffee Fair, which turns out is a fair that happens at a different time of year than when we were there. But the fairgrounds always exist, and we walked through and saw flowers and did a little shopping. We chatted for a long time with a woman running a stall, she was very friendly and fun to talk to. 

The Peacock Garden at the Flower Fair

 

There were also a couple open-air craft/touristy crap/farmers markets nearby, so we wandered through those. I saw a lady selling quilts, probably one of the only quilters in Panama, it's too hot to need quilts most places. She buys her fabric in Japan! We met an American guy who runs a knife-sharpening business in Boquete, and he gave us his card. Just in case? Loads of ex-pats in these markets. 

 

Time for lunch. There was little cafe right there called Boquete Baking Project, that looked cute and had a live band playing. We got some sandwiches and listened to the band. Then before we left, we went to use the restroom and discovered a whole back terrace to the restaurant that would have been very pleasant to sit on while eating lunch!

 

 

Then, while I was waiting for Adam to come out of the restroom, someone came up to me and said, "are you an Eley??" and I was! So there was Nancy and Bruce Henson, a couple from our church in Denver! She recognized me, I never would have recognized them. They have a house in Boquete and come for a couple months every year. We chatted for a while. 

 

Next, Adam and I headed out for a hike. We were recommended the Pipeline Trail (a common trail name I guess), just outside of town, quite close to the Finca we would be staying at. So we headed up there. The hike was not super strenuous, but it was still pretty hot, and my feet hurt a lot from being sunburned and my ankles were swollen (sunburn?) and I also had all these little bites on my ankles from something, so I was kind of uncomfortable. One reason we did this hike was because at the top, we might get to see Resplendent Quetzals! Look at this beautiful bird!

 

Photo from ebird. Spoiler, I did not see this bird.

 

The problem is, I had absolutely no idea where the end of the trail was. Our phones didn't have cell service so we couldn't really look anything up. Was the top in an hour? Two hours? Ten hours? Who knows. 

 

We did lots of cool birds on the hike up. And we chatted with some British folks who told us to keep going, because there was a super old tree to see. We got to the tree! It was cool. 

 

 

But I was spent. I wanted to take my shoes off so badly. And I thought we'd probably have another opportunity to see the Resplendent Quetzal at the Finca. So we did not continue on to the top, we went back to the car. I'll spare you the suspense, we never did see the Resplendent Quetzal. But perhaps someday we will. 

 

We got to the Finca and got checked in and went to our room and it was delightful. It's such a beautiful property, and we had a hammock hanging on our porch, and we sat outside and saw tons of cool birds from the porch. 

 

  

We went to dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was a bit weird, because nobody else was there. It was empty. But we had a nice dinner, then we went back to the room and tried not to fall asleep super early. (We were exhausted every day).

 

Feb 18

 

The hotel offers a coffee service in the morning, so we had coffee (Adam) and hot chocolate (Laura) delivered to the room!   

 

 

  

We went down to the restaurant for breakfast, and had a nice meal. After breakfast we had signed up for a plantation tour of the Finca. Our guide, Jose, showed us around and taught us a lot about coffee. He said he was 80 years old and drinks 12 cups of coffee a day! The tour was good, very extensive, with a coffee tasting at the end. Jose was really an expert, he knew all about how coffee grows, the economics of the global coffee trade, the history of coffee, etc. We saw the coffee plants and tasted a bunch of different beans. 

 

Our coffee guide, Jose

The stages of a coffee bean

  

Then we toured where they dry the beans, roast them, and package them. At the end of the tour we went up to a tasting room and tried 4 different types of coffee- washed, natural, honey and geisha. It was an extensive tasting procedure, first we had to smell the ground beans (carefully, so it wouldn't go up our noses), then we had to smell them with hot water added, then we had to gently stir them and smell them again. Then we tasted them. Then Jose was like, "okay, I have another tour coming now, so hurry up and drink whatever you want to drink!" which felt quite rushed, why did we spend so long with the plants and less time with the coffee tasting? Adam enjoyed the tasting, I didn't notice any difference between any type of coffee at any stage of the tasting.  

 

This is what expert coffee tasters look like

 

There were only 10 people on the tour, and we chatted a bit with this couple from Germany. After the tour, we were able to go down to the coffee shop and get a free drink and slice of cake from being on the tour. So we did that, and it took ages- there was only one person working there, to take all orders, make all the orders, take the money...so we waiting in line about 20-30 minutes to get our drinks and cake. The German couple was in front of us in line, so we had a long time to chat. When we all got our drinks and went out to the terrace, it was quite full, so the 4 of us sat at a little table together and had our drinks and snacks and chatted. It was lovely.   

 

After our snacks, Adam and I went for a walk around the grounds. They have a few trails for birding on the property. We walked up a trail and ran into a woman birding with a bird guide, and we heard the unmistakable call of the Three-wattled Bellbird, a rare and unusual bird. The bird guide told us where to go look for it. Adam spotted the female quite quickly, but we had a hard time finding the male. Adam kept looking and looking and didn't give up, and eventually he found it! To see a picture of this crazy bird, check out my birding post. 

 

Looking out from the trail on the Finca

  

It was pretty warm and there weren't a lot of birds out this afternoon, so we didn't spend a super long time out on the trails. We came back to the room and rested for a while. 

 

For dinner, we drove into Boquete and had dinner at a pizza place. There are tons of options for dinner in Boquete, we just picked a place. It was fine. Then we walked down the main street for a bit, which was kind of busy and crowded, but it wasn't hot, and there weren't any trash holes full of water, so overall it was pleasant. I found a crepe stand and ordered a gigantic delicious dessert crepe to go. We drove back up to the Finca as it was getting dark, and sat on the porch doing the crossword and eating our amazing crepe. 

 

Look at that crepe!

  

We took a little walk around the grounds after dark, I was hoping to see an owl while in Panama, but there weren't any in that area. We just walked around for a bit, but it felt a bit spooky to be prowling the Finca in the dark without a purpose, so we didn't stay out too long. 

 

Feb 19

We went down to the restaurant for breakfast, chatted for a bit with a guy from Toronto, who said he everywhere he had stayed so far in Panama had been super loud, he had gotten any sleep because of Carnival noise. I think we really lucked out in staying at places that were quiet and not in party places, since we didn't even know Carnival was happening. 

 

After lunch we packed up, stopped by the grocery store, Rey, in Boquete, then drove to El Valle. It was another long day of driving. I drove for about 3 hours, then switched with Adam, and he drove us the rest of the way. 

 

Lessons learned: 

• That cafe in Boquete has a sweet back terrace.
• Find out how long the hike is, and don't give up that close to the end.
• Once you've driven up the mountain to the Finca, you realize it's pretty easy and close to town
• This is why I packed pants!! 

For next time: 

• Hike all the way to the top of the Pipeline Trail and see a Resplendent Quetzal. 
• Probably more meals in town, fewer at the Finca. The restaurant was only okay, but staying at the Finca was really lovely.
• Do more birding.