Boquete: Two Excellent Weeks In The Mountains of Panama

A few of you have mentioned that we’ve been posting rather sparsely the past couple of weeks.
So, I thought I would summarize the past couple of weeks in Boquete.
(This is a long post, but I’ve included lots of pictures. This should help if you like to read by skimming. )
Carrie and I have had two wonderful weeks here in Boquete, and we’ve really enjoyed our time here in Chiriqui Province, Panama.

(In case you missed it, I did talk about our wonderful day at the beach at Las Olas/Playa Barqueta.)
Before heading to Florida, David and Cora had dinner for their guests/renters.

The dinner was for Nick and Joyce, friends of David and Cora’s, to celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary.

The next day, we drove David (day-vid) and Cora to the airport in David (dah-veed).

We’ve taken full advantage of house-sitting for David and Cora their at their home, and have really liked having use of their theater, pool, views of Volcan Baru and the Boquete valley, and their great spaces for entertaining.

Rob (a real estate developer we met in November) came from David and visited us.

Rob stayed one night here in Boquete. He brought a cake with him, which was made and decorated for us by the bakery here in Boquete. The frosting tasted like marshmallow cream.

The next day, we went to the Boquete Feria, a yearly 12 day festival of coffee and flowers which has turned into a big event for this whole region.


We’ve gotten together with Vicki a couple of nights – Vicki is from Texas but has lived in Boquete for a few months and now calls it home.
We’ve had some great games of Mexican Train dominoes with Vicki.
Another night, we had pot-luck dinner with the 5 people who are renting from Dave and Cora right now.

They’re all Canadian: Kenneth and Collette, Francoise, and Ron and Linda.
Kenneth said to me one day, “I heard a rumor that you are a runner.”
I replied, “That’s a nasty rumor!”
Kenneth runs about 5 miles every day, and gets to and from Boquete in about 55 minutes (easy on the way down to town, but very difficult on the way back up the hill).

By way of comparison, it takes Carrie and I about 35 minutes to walk into town (and 45-50 minutes to come back), walking at a pretty good pace. (We usually pay the $2 to take a taxi back up the hill.)
Unfortunately, Ron and Linda headed out a few days ago, so we said bye to them. But we got to have another dinner with Kenneth, Collette, and Francoise in Casita B (the same place we rented for 2 1/2 weeks back in November.)
Thursday night, eating dinner with Kenneth and Collette, we discovered that they were going to be headed to Panama City the same nights we were going to be staying in a hotel in Boquete.
They offered that we could stay in Casita B those two nights (which are last night and tonight), and is where I’m writing this post from.
It’s nice to feel “at home” in a “foreign” country, both at Dave and Cora’s, and being back in Casita B.
(We didn’t really need an excuse to get to Canada, as it’s somewhere we’ve wanted to visit, but being that we have met and know some Canadians now, we have an excuse.)
So we’re looking forward to visiting Canada and seeing Kenneth and Collette again in the future.
No trip to Boquete could be complete without visiting the favorite bar of the local gringos, Amigo’s (Yes, with an apostrophe), so we had chili and a hamburger there one night.

We also picked up fried chicken and fried yucca one night from the poorly named but local favorite, Milquiburger. (We have no idea why it’s called that, but it’s a roadside stand that’s open from about 5PM-8PM and is known for delicious fried chicken.)
We also met Tom and Caroline, who live right behind David and Cora in the castle. Tom is from Holland and Caroline from the UK.
You might be inclined to make assumptions about people who would build and live in a modern-day castle, but Tom and Caroline are some of the nicest and most genuine people we have met in our travels, and their castle truly feels like a home.
Tom and Caroline graciously invited us for drinks with them one night at the castle, which is when we got to know them.

Caroline mentioned she was going to England, so while she’s been gone and Tom’s been a bachelor, we invited him to David and Cora’s for chicken parmesean.
Another morning, Tom invited us to have coffee with him at the castle.

He also invited us to breakfast at a restaurant in Boquete, where we had some delicious local home-cooking (at a place the locals call Olga’s – since Olga owns the place).

(We have returned to Olga’s since, and would return again if we were going to be here in Boquete longer.)
Another morning, we went and had breakfast at a coffee finca (coffee farm) here in Boquete – Lerida Coffee, where we watched the hummingbirds and enjoyed the view.

We also met Bambi, an appropriately named wild deer.
She is so used to people though that she eats right from the hands of one of the people working at Cafe Lerida.

It has been a wonderful two weeks in Boquete.

From here, we will head to David, Panama on Monday, where we will spend an afternoon and evening with Nick and Joyce (the couple from above). Then we will take the overnight bus to Panama City, where we will spend 2 days seeing the Panama Canal and old Panama City.
On Thursday, we fly to Quito, Ecuador.
We will spend a month in Quito, hopefully having a good Internet connection, taking Spanish classes in the mornings and working in the afternoons, exploring the upper part of South America on the weekends.
We’re sad to leave Panama, but we are happy to know we have made friends here that will last a lifetime.

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