If you want to drink high quality coffee in Central America, this is the place to go to. Boquete is located at 1,200m above sea level in the green mountain highlands about 60 km. from the Costa Rican border. There are several coffee farms around town who take pride in their coffee growing and making. Here you can taste some of the best quality coffee in the world in several coffee shops around town.
I arrived in Boquete on a rainy afternoon. It was refreshing to escape the hot and humid Caribbean coast. I settled at the Mamallena hostel located right in the town centre. I went for an afternoon walk around town and discovered that the town centre is pretty much the town. With not much town discovering to do, I made sure that I had a coffee tour booked for the next morning. Later, I wondered town to find some groceries and enjoyed a home made dinner at the hostel while meeting other travelers. The Mamallena hostel makes you feel like you are at a friends home and it’s a great place to meet fellow travelers.
Next day, I was more then ready for my now second coffee tour in Central America. A very
friendly guide, Jason, picked us up at the hostel. We drove for about 20 minutes before we arrived at the plantation. Jason was very friendly and passionate about coffee. He started picking coffee as a child with his father. Coffee picking was a very common job back is the days. He worked at the coffee farm for many years and his curiosity and passion made him an expert about the coffee. He spoke very good English. I assumed he’d been living abroad for a while. But when I asked where he learned his English he simply replied “from the tourists”. When the coffee farms started to expose themselves to tourists, Jason tok the opportunity to work very hard at learning English so that he could get a better job. Eventually, he became one of the area best tour guides. He took us around the farm and explained in detail the coffee growing process. At the end of the tour, we got to roast our own coffee and taste it. We got dropped off back at the hostel and I spent the afternoon walking around the little town and relaxing.
Coffee is definitely a sales pitch for Boquete. But the area has much more to offer then that. As I was looking up other activities for the next day an Austrian couple was planing a night hike to volcano Baru, the tallest point of Panama. I thought back to the volcanoes that I have visited in Nicaragua. I had to do this one too I thought! I looked up the information and got a bit disappointed. All though the volcano peaks at 3,475 meters it’s not active, and to hike it at night not being able to see any nature wants worth it and I finally passes on the offer. However, I have heard good reviews of the hike if done in daytime and on a very clear day you might even be able to view both the Caribbean and the Pacific coast. But in my opinion, there are many other spectacular volcanoes too see in the neighbouring countries that are worth a visit. And with that thought, I signed up to go and see some waterfalls instead. This has seemed to become my regular and passionate activity.
We arranged a hiking trip to the Sendero Culebra trail with one of the front desk staff as 
our guide. It’s a 20 minute ride to the trail head, but it took us nearly 40 min to get there. Our “guide” did not know or forgot the way. So we had to go back and get one of the other staff members to drive us. We got dropped off at the trailhead and headed up. We came to a small entrance point with a little lodge where we were asked to pay a fee. Our entrance fee was included in our tour when we first paid for it, but little did our guide know, or spoke Spanish for that matter, so a fellow hiker Noemi from Spain had to step into the rescue and clarify the situation. There trail took us to 3 waterfalls. The first one is located about a 10 minute easy hike away from the entrance. It is the tallest one but you cannot swim in it. We only stayed there a few minutes taking photos. The “guide” handed me his 
camera and without saying anything tried to fit behind a massive leaf. I assumed he wanted a photo with the leaf. As I looked through the camera lense, the guy disappeared! It looked like the ground has just swallowed him up behind the leaf. We ran to the spot and there he was, stuck in a 3 meter deep hole behind the leaf saying “well, I did not expect that”. Phew, for a moment there I though we’ve lost the guide for good. With a big effort trying to hang on to massive tree roots he managed to pull himself out of the hole, and now looked like had a mud bath. With no comments we continued to the second waterfall. From there it got tricky. That part of the trail was not well developed and we had to climb up to the top of the waterfall hanging on to vines and tree roots like tarzan, but we probably looked more like unskilled monkeys instead. Once on top, the beautiful peaceful creek came to and edge and formed the waterfall we were just under. Following the trail we got to the third and last waterfall. Beautiful like all of them are, you could go behind and feel the cold mist spraying and refreshing your body. The hike back took us about 25 minutes. We returned with muddy boots and a muddy guide safe and sound at the trail head where Victor was waiting for us with the van.
I did not have much time left in Boquete and that afternoon I decided to check out the 
famous natural hot springs that everyone talked about. Noemi and I took a cab ride out there which is the easiest, if not the only way to get there. It took us a good half hour-40 min before we reached the area. The hot springs are located in an area inhabited by wey simple farm people. A 10 minute hike took us to the place. There were several small natural pools of hot water enough to fit 5-15 people. We crawled into a 40 degree hot pool in a 30 degree hot weather. This would have been much more enjoyable in cold air temperature. It did not take us long time before we jumped in the nearby cold river instead to cool off. A thunderstorm was on the way and we decided it was time to head back. Our taxi was waiting for us the entire time and we were back at the hostel early evening, just in time for dinner. That evening, we enjoyed wine and cheese with random fellow travelers and locals relaxing by the front desk with the hostel staff.
Panama 