Boquete: Superior Coffee and Misty Mountains

Leaving the big cities behind us, we hopped on a express night bus to David, which we reached at roughly 6am, and switched to a local bus headed here to Boquete, home of the allegedly finest coffee in Panama. Boquete is a small town at the elevation of some 1060m in a lush valley surrounded by mountains, ideal for hiking, rafting, wildlife watching, you name it. There's cloud- and rainforests around, with a hearty population of colorful birds and orchids, to name a few. In the town there are something

like a dozen places to stay from more upmarket hotels to small pensions.. ours is towards the budget end at 26$/night, with private bath (and a tiny swimming pool!). The town is rather heavily influenced by north Americans, and one of the upsides of this that every place seems to boast a free WLAN. Although naturally it's called "Wi-Fi"..

The trip over from PC was rather colorful. After returning from the canal there was little else to do but tour the city with our backpacks after having to check out from the room at 2pm, so we went to sample the bar scene. First, while hiking the 2km stretch along the shore to the city's business / bar district we got drenched by a sudden downpour and had to wait it out under a bridge. A few hours and several pitchers later we arrived to a brewery restaurant where a waiter got so excited of my Helloween t-shirt that he ran to change the tunes played on the premises to the works of Mr. Weikath. The rest of the patrons seemed baffled about the weird music.

Our bus was to leave at midnight so we headed to the bus terminal at 9.30ish pm with another local bus. We never saw any other tourists using the bus, which was weird since although the taxis weren't too expensive (a ride within the city for about 6usd), the bus cost 25c to anywhere. Finally, there was trouble again at the bus station bar which was full of people watching Panama butcher El Salvador in football; the bouncers didn't look very kindly at me trying to enter with a bottle of rum and two cokes I had bought for the trip.

The first day and night in Boquete were spent eyeing the scenery, booking a guided hike and just generally enjoying the slow pace of life here at the mountains - not to mention a lovely 3$ Chilean Merlot we're drinking out of plastic cups on the patio. The hostel's garden has plenty of birds everywhere, one of them a caged tucan called Willie. All the humming and chirping makes a very relaxing ambience for reading a book. In the night time a rogue cricket parked right outside our door and would make sounds of such volume the walls seemed to crack.

The next day we enjoyed a nice 1.5$ (for both..) breakfast and went for the hike in the cloud forest for a few hours (was supposed to be three, but I guess the pace is set for an average middle aged American, of which there are several here, as well as elderly ones). The lush greenness was great, the tall trees covered with moss with wild orchids living on the treetops. The route took us to two beautiful waterfalls, the latter one with a natural pool of cold mountain water. According to our guide it was "freezing", but in my opinion it pretty much matched the water temperature of Finnish bodies of water during the summer months. The forest floor was quite wet and muddy and thanks to a lonely and overly friendly mixed-breed German shepherd in a desperate need of a hug, we returned from the trip covered in soil.

After the hike we had ample time to visit a garden outside the town, run by a local who has opened the place for everyone to see, free of charge. It was packed with big colorful flowers, with pools filled with big fish and birds all around. Natural beauty at its best.

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