Heading out of the extreme heat of David, the capital of Panama´s western province of Chiriquí, I hopped a yellow schoolbus to nearby Boquete, which lies in the middle of the Panamanian highlands, and in the shadow of Barú, a volcano that is the country's highest peak.
It is a very pleasant little town, if a bit touristy, but there is a good deal to see and Boquete has a gorgeous climate and clean, mountain air. There is a gorgeous vista of the town on the way in by a tourist centre and coffee shop, peering down on a mountain pass and long river valley of the rocky Calderas brook.
Alongside the banks of the Calderas is a nice little fairgrounds, where the nationally famous annual Coffee and Flower festival is held in mid-January, so it was still in full bloom when I arrived. Next to the fairgrounds is a small rodeo where local horsemen gather from time to time.
Beyond the town, heading up into the hills, there is a small coffee factory of the Café Ruíz plantation, of which I took an extended tour in the afternoon that was very interesting and well organized. The impressive 3-hour tour went through every stage of the coffee growing, harvesting, cleaning, roasting and packaging processes, and included visits to all the sites along the way, not simply a mock-up of the process. The end result is a very good cup of coffee, and when I drink a cup of Café Ruíz in future, I will be happy to say I know the company treats its employees well and produces a good, safe product. The guide is Carlos Alfaro, who has worked in the coffee industry since his childhood, when he picked the coffee berries or "cherries" as they call them locally. This is the outer cask of the bean, which is actually hidden under several more layers that need to be rinsed, fermented and dried off before the bean can be reached. The picking in Chiriquí cannot be done by machine, due to the rocky and uneven mountainous terrain, and so many Guaymí people come each harvest season and live and work on the plantations, to earn enough money to return to their mountain homes where they cultivate rice and herds. All over Boquete you can see the Guaymí women in their colourful native dress. The men, however, have adopted Western-style clothing.
As in other Latin American coffee-producing countries, Panama exports most of its best coffee, and the local blends can have a mixture of unripened beans, corn and even cow blood added to bulk it up. The best part of waking up is certainly not that in your cup.
Carlos' tour of the coffee process covered all the steps the beans go through, right up to the roasting and packaging in the last factory.
Beside the Coffee Shop, there is a lovely little private garden that allows visitors for free, called "Mi Jardin es su Jardin." It is impeccably kept and is impressive with the mountainous backdrop in the distance.
This whole area is quite green and covered in rivers shuttling down from the mountains...it is also home to several other coffee plantations, despite the fact that Panama is not generally considered a major coffee grower.
In recent years, Boquete is also becoming a hip international retirement community, adding more foreigners to an existing population of farmers from the former Yugoslavia who settled in the area, drawn by its rich volcanic soil, decades ago. The massive new Valle Escondido (Hidden Valley) retirement community sits in a cozy retreat alongside the town and is sure to bring lots more folks in their golden years to this gorgeous town in the years to come.
|  | 
|
