Boquete in the Mist

We spent four days in the misty coffee town of Boquete after a day in Panama City before some beach time in Bocas del Toro. It was great planning on our part because we felt like we were working hard the first half of our vacation--walking and hiking--and then rewarded by just sitting on our bums at the beach.

Boquete is in the province of Chiriqui, about 300 miles west of Panama City. The province is known for its mountain scenery and has Panama's highest peak, Volcan Baru.

When you're in Boquete, I highly recommend you stay at Tinamou Cottage. We spent our most peaceful nights there in all of our 2-week stay in Panama. The Dutch owners, the van der Voorens, also organize tours and hikes. Their Kotowa Coffee tour and the hike to the cloud forest were most enjoyable.

In terms of food, you must try El Hibiscus for their French food. There will be a point where you've had enough fried fish while in Central America and their rabbit, lapin a la moutarde, will be a welcome break. Palo Alto is also one place you must try. We had a civilized riverside lunch there after a long hike.

Quick Tips:

Best Way To Get Around:

It takes about an hour to fly from Panama City to David, the main city of Chiriqui, via Aeroperlas (http://www.aeroperlas.com/indexeng.html). From the airport, we took a cab to Boquete and just told the driver to drop us off at the plaza. The ride took another hour for about . We arranged for the owners of Tinamou Cottage to pick us up at the center of town when we arrived.

There are numerous cabs that you can take from the plaza back to Tinamou Cottage even after 10pm. Just hail for them to stop and you'll share a car or a pickup truck with the locals. It costs about for 2 people.

Hans and Terry van der Vooren moved from Holland to Panama in 1998 and took over a small coffee farm in the mountains of Boquete. They organize nature and coffee excursions but they also have one cottage on their farm available to rent for US$50 a night. In Tinamou Cottage, we had a cozy living room, a fully-equipped kitchen and a bathroom with warm water. We ate our breakfast out on the porch for an extra $5 per person each day if the satellite TV did not keep us up too late the previous night. Since they grow their own coffee, you'll always start your mornings right with a cup or two before venturing out to the mountains.

Their farm is huge and you can follow the trail markers if you want to walk around and do a short 30-minute hike. We did this one afternoon after a nap but we got lost. Hans said that maybe he put the markers too high that they were unnoticeable; he is Dutch and at least six feet tall. They also have at least three dogs and if they’re not keeping you company during breakfast, they’ll surely join you when you hike.

Tinamou Cottage is a few minutes’ drive away from the main town of Boquete and easily accessible by a 4-wheel drive. When we arrived in Boquete from the city of David, we called Hans and he picked us up near the plaza. Each night thereafter, we just made sure we got a pickup truck cab to take us back. We also hiked back one afternoon; it took forever with our unexercised legs but we made it.

In the morning, birds make music in the forest. In fact, over 120 species have been identified on their farm. (The name tinamou comes from the quail-like birds which live in Central and South America.) At night, all we’d hear are the occasional water pressure pump outside and the rare thump on our roof, most likely from a monkey throwing fruit at us. Because Tinamou Cottage sits on the van der Vooren property up in the mountains, our three nights there were our most peaceful throughout our stay in Panama.

Hans and Terry were very accommodating and made sure we had everything we needed. [Please see my separate reviews of their coffee tour and forest hike.]

For a typical Panamanian fare, you must go to El Sabroson, a cafeteria-style restaurant located on Avenue Central, the main street of Boquete. In the Philippines, we call a place like this “turo-turo.” “Turo” means “to point” and you point at the food behind the glass case to order what you want to eat.

It was high noon when we walked in, and the place buzzed with the lunch time local crowd. We came here famished after our cloud forest hike. There were several selections, from chicken and beef stews to fried fish and soups. Two kinds of beans were available as side dishes, as well as rice, mashed potatoes, and fries.

We shared the chicken stew and asked for a pork chop on the side. We waited a bit for the trout to be filleted and fried, but the wait was worth it for fresh fish. Both dishes, served with fries and bean salad cost us less than $8.

After visiting the Kotowa coffee plantation, we wanted a quiet lunch away from town. Hans dropped us off at Palo Alto, a restaurant with varied international items in the menu. They also have several wine bottles to choose from. As soon as you walk in, you'll immediately notice that Palo Alto is a step up from all the other restaurants on Avenue Central.

I don’t know why I was craving pasta while I was in Panama but I knew I wanted my vegetable intake after a few days of fried foods. Their spaghettini with roasted vegetables satisfied all my senses. The boy ordered the Swiss burger with mushrooms and sautéed onions, a perfectly good match with a cold bottle of beer.

Behind the restaurant is the running river, and if the one table outside wasn’t occupied, we would have sat right by it. We settled inside instead with our Balboa beers. Our guide book noted its slow service, but when we were there, we didn't wait too long for our food because it was fairly quiet and empty. The restaurant is airy and spacious. I could imagine that it’s an even nicer setting for dinner. We never had the chance to return because we wanted to try the other restaurants in the area, but for a quiet, riverside dining, Palo Alto is your best bet.

I’ve had slow service before in Latin America, and I know that when on an island, you operate on “island time,” which is really no time at all. (“When in Rome...”) This restaurant sticks with that mantra. I can't even remember the name because we spent most of our three hours there just waiting. All I know is that it's supposed to be a seafood restaurant with Peruvian influence.

It took fifteen minutes for us to get our menu after we were seated and another twenty-five for our waitress to come to us and ask for our orders. It was a highly recommended seafood restaurant, so naturally, we ordered the sea bass. To our dismay, there was no fish available at all that night, so our waitress left us, only to come back another twenty minutes later. How can a seafood restaurant not have fish?

We settled for shrimps and lobster in some kind of sauce that had a soup consistency. Both dishes were almost inedible, but we were so hungry that we reluctantly ate them anyway. Still hungry after picking on our food, we ordered their fried ice cream--ice cream inside a tent of lightly fried tortilla--which wasn't on the menu, but because someone told us about it, we were able to ask for it. We picked on that, too, just so we could go home with a full stomach and be able to sleep well.

When Hans recommended El Hibiscus for our last night’s dinner in Boquete, we were told that it was French. We thought, eh, sure, sure, why not? How French can French food really be in Panama?

We walked in and were welcomed by the sight of the open-arched kitchen. We saw the chefs tossing vegetables in a pan, opening and closing the oven to check on the bread, the smell of garlic wafting through the air. We picked a bottle of red wine because we’d had beers the last few days, and after seeing the menu, we knew it was time to splurge. We were excited at the possibility of redeeming our previous no-fish night with a delicious sit-down dinner.

Splurging in Boquete means a three-course meal with a bottle of wine for two for US$45. It was definitely more than what we had been spending all week on food, but to be reminded of a typical New York City menu for half the price was intriguing.

For starters, we had a salad of mixed greens, plus a big bowl of clam chowder powdered with bacon bits. I’ll be wherever there is bacon, and this bowl of soup hit the spot. It’s not hard for any Latin American country to fry or overcook seafood, and I was glad that my clams weren’t chewy. For our main courses, I chose the sea bass with reduced red wine sauce, and the boy chose the rabbit with mustard sauce. (I finally had sea bass in Boquete! Screw the Peruvian seafood restaurant down the street!) We knew rabbits must be freely roaming around the Boquete mountains but we didn’t know a Panamanian restaurant would even think of offering it for dinner. For dessert, we chose the warm apple turnover and the pear with ice cream and chocolate. We were impressed--so impressed, in fact, that we had to say hello to the chef when he stepped out to see how his customers were doing.

The Frenchman was trained in France to cook. He moved to Panama a couple of years ago to open El Hibiscus. He wondered who ordered the rabbit and was pleased that we appreciated eating it as much as he liked cooking it. Unfortunately, the chef moved to Panama without a coffee grinder with him so his espresso wasn't espresso at all. He still can't take advantage of the fresh coffee beans growing in the area. (He's asked several friends who fly to the States frequently to bring him back a grinder but everyone forgets!)

When you're in Boquete, forget the coffee, but treat yourself right at El Hibiscus.

We started our tour of the Kotowa coffee plantation the first full day we were in Boquete after Hans of Tinamou Cottage picked up two other couples from their hotels. He started telling us about the history of the company and then led us to the old mill where all the original coffee machines still exist. Of course, new ones have been built to take advantage of today’s technology. He walked us through the entire process, from picking up the coffee beans to sorting the bad from the good ones, to processing and roasting them.

Alexander Duncan MacIntyre moved to Boquete in 1918 from Canada after reading an article about the mountains surrounding Volcan Baru, Panama's highest peak. For three generations since then, the family has cultivated and processed Arabica coffee, roasted in small batches to produce light, espresso and dark beans. The coffee cherries are picked up by Ngobe Indians, the indigenous people of Panama, up to five times a year. (Kotowa means “mountain” in the Ngobe Indian language.) The plantation sits at 4,500 feet so the soil and cold climate help develop the kind of coffee that’s rich with a chocolate aroma.

After learning about the history and the different coffees that Kotowa produces, we had the chance to do a tasting. This is the part of the tour that will make anyone a coffee snob, as Hans claims on his Web site. Now that I’ve tasted the three roasts and heard his descriptions of the beans, I don’t think I’ll ever settle for a simple Starbucks cup again.

Tours are organized daily starting at 9am for $20 a person. The fee includes the transportation to the farm and back to your hotel plus all the shots of coffee you can take. Call Hans at (507) 720-1430 or email him at info@coffeeadventures.net to make reservations. Read more about the tour at http://www.coffeeadventures.net/coffeetour.html

There is a gift shop where you can buy small packages of coffee and other souvenir items like tote bags and burlap sacks but what you really come home with is all the knowledge about coffee you thought you already had but never did.