Goodbye Santa Catalina, Hello Boquete

We began our day yesterday with breakfast at our favorite little bakery in Santa Catalina.  We were there right when they opened, so we would be able to make the 7:15 bus to Sona.

Mural at the Bakery

Juan (the owner) talked with us so long that we thought we’d miss it!  We paid for our meal and ran down to the bus.  It was a school bus.  Filled with school children…and us.  So there we sat, sticking out like sore thumbs bumping along until we reached the school and dropped all the kids off.  The bus got a little more variety after that as we picked up others along the way. 

We arrived in Sona in time to hop on a mini bus to Santiago.  We ran into “Super Carnes” to grab a couple snacks and some more sunscreen (we were almost out already!).  We dodged some sketchy cabs/buses and found a taxi to El Pyramidal station.  It’s a muy grande bus station that had a luxurious double decker charter bus to David, where we were headed.

We happy waited 30 minutes to take the nice bus to David -a 3.5 hour trip- versus a mini bus.  We drove along and arrived in David. Another pretty big bus station.  We navigated our way down a long line of busses until we finally found “Boquete” another mini bus with blaring music. 

About an hour later we pulled in to Boquete, high in the Panamanian mountains.  We got our gear (by the way, this is my last trip with a rolling suitcase) and headed to Mamallena, our hostel for the night.  Just was we expected, Jaron and Joe were there fresh off their stint in Bocas del Toro geting PADI certified.   We wandered around a little, and had dinner at a cafeteria a few blocks away.  We grabbed dessert with J&J afterward and heard all about their last few days. 

The next morning I accidentally woke us up at 5:30 instead of 6:30 because my ipod didn’t have the time zone right.  Oops.  Ryan and I wandered around and grabbed coffee with the early birds at Romero’s 24 super market.  We moseyed along until a breakfast place opened and grabbed some eggs.

After breakfast we came back to the hotel and sat with J&J until our Coffee tour guide picked us up at 9. Joe decided to come along for the tour.  Our guide’s name was Raul and he was born and raised in Boquete.  The coffee estate is owned by a guy named Tito who built all the machinery used to pocess the beans by himself.  He used car parts, parts of washers and dryers, all sorts of odds and ends to make a sort of Rube Goldberg coffee company.  Even the roaster had the headlight frame of a Jeep making up the outer rim. 

Equipment at Finca La Minagrosa

We learned all about the coffee, and even touched the beans of the coveted and rare Geisha strain of coffee bean.  At the end of the tour we watched Raul roast some beans, periodically checking their progress with an elongated scoop (which turned out to be a screwdriver with a spoon wielded to the end of it).  We were then able to sample some medium roast coffe fright from te estate.  Maybe all the hype got to us - but it was great!  Tasted very smooth.  He even let us eat the plain beans…a light, a medium, and a dark roast.  His cute dog sat by us during this part.  We all bought some coffee to take home.

At the end of the tour we came back to Mamallena, got Jaron, and all went to Sugar and Spice for some para llevar sandwiches.  I got a BLT, Ryan got the “hot volcano”.  Just hit me - isn’t it interesting that for many words, the Spanish form simply adds an “O”?  Car for example.  Car becomes Carro.  Anyway, for volcano it’s the opposite… to translate it to Spanish one has to drop the O instead of add one.  Huh.

Anyway, we got our sandwiches and got in a mini bus to the trailhead for some waterfalls, about a 20 minute bus ride.  We began the half mile uphill walk to to the trailhead.  We had to pay a guy working in the fields 5 dollars each (a few minutes before there was a make shift narrow sign that read “$5, $5, $5, $5” with an arrow.)  We hiked through pretty steep and slippery trails to all three waterfalls, they were all a good size and lots of water.  Joe and Jaron actually swam (for about 30 seconds) in the super cold water under the 3rd waterfall.  No thank you. 

The first waterfall

On the hike back all four of us almost fell on some slippery rock by the second waterfall, but Joe was the one to actually fall and slide a few feet.  He was ok. 

We made it all the way out to the trailhead to the tune of a large cow mooing at us.  We waied about 10 minutes for the bus, and played the “I’m going to the waterfall and I’m bringing Apples, Bananas, Cookies, DEET, Elephant Ears, Flogging Molly, Gyros, Foccacia, Helado, Insect Repellent, Jelly fish, kit kats, limes, mangoes, norepinephrine, ocelots, parasails, quetzales, rice, salamanders, Tortugas, Uncle Chuck, vancomysin, weasels, xerostomia…and believe it or not, I can’t remember Y and Z!  Argh! *update: yogurt and zits

Anyway, we grabbed our luggage at Mamallena, and got a cab up to The Boquete Garden Inn.  Beautiful grounds, manicured garden, and spacious rooms with pretty decorations and nice bathrooms.  Quite the change from our hostel digs. 

We hitched a ride into town with the manager and had some great fish at Matchu Pichu.  Taxi back, great nights sleep, and plenty of complimentary breakfast this morning.  Now we’ll head to the pipeline trail (easier trail than the waterfall) and hang out in town afterwards. 

Stay tuned!