Mountain Air, Rainbows, Coffee and Flowers
Trip Start
Dec 03, 2007
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16
29
Trip End
Mar 29, 2008
Boquete,
Panama
Saturday, January 5, 2008
The Lonely Planet guide correctly describes Boquete as being in a region of ´mist-covered mountains, pristine forests and cool, refreshing streams'. The huge Volcan Baru (3275 m), Panama´s only volcano, and the La Amistad Park look like great places to go hiking through rain forests. There is also the promise of seeing more quetzals on the 8 km Quetzal Trail which we plan on walking in the near future. Chris is still trying to get over a mild case of bronchitis, so we won´t hike until he is feeling better...
Daily we have walked the 2 km downhill trek into Boquete, either by road or Indian Trail
beautiful displays
. The paved road is quite good, actually only a year old, but due to the downpours during the rainy season parts of the road have washed away, straight down the cliff. We can see the pieces of road and the road lines way,way down if we stand precariously at the edge of the cliff. Taking the Indian Trail is a shorter walk through coffee fields and it winds by indigenous homes offering a closeup view of how the native people live.Chiriqui province is home to the Ngobe-Bugle people whose women are highly visible everywhere as they wear full, long and very brightly coloured dresses with lots of trim work. They match the colours of the daily rainbows that we see in Boquete. We do not have photos yet as we feel uncomfortable blatantly taking pictures of people. The men wear western style clothes, jeans and short sleeved shirts, and black rubber boots. I think that they would wear the Wellington Beer boot t-shirt if they were available here! Rubber boots are cheap, keep the feet dry, and protect the workers from getting snake bites when they work in the coffee fincas, or farms.
For 10 days, Boquete celebrates the start of summer (in January) by holding a Coffee and Flower Fair. This little village of 6,000 people changes drastically during the fair as more than 100,000 people from all over Panama flood the town
coffee up for judging
. One morning, we headed down the mountain to the fairgrounds before the masses made their way there. One area was set up with stalls selling handicrafts from the region as well as from Uruguay. Another area had displays of flowers, many of which we have at home - marigolds, geraniums, daisies, roses, sunflowers - as well as orquids which grow on most of the trees here. A third area featured small buildings which celebrated the coffee harvest. Due to the rich, deep volcanic soil, the climate and the altitude, Boquete is able to grow and produce wonderful coffee. In fact, Boquete coffee is sold in Vancouver for $15 a cup but here we can get it for $.50 a cup! We have been inspired to go on a coffee tour a little later so will share our experiences in another blog. The last section of the fair was made up of stages and sound equipment.
Stages and sound equipment ... We knew we were in trouble when we saw the extent of the equipment. To make a long story short, we did not sleep for the next three nights as the music shook the mountain as well as the teepee from 8 at night until 5;30 in the morning! After 3 nights of this, we left Boquete for some peace and quiet.
