Boquete + Lost and Found Hostel (01/18-01/25)

Thursday January 18th


We arrived to Boquete yesterday afternoon, and without much thought or planning, decided to book a guided tour on Sendero Los Quetzales (trail). We paid $60 each, which seems reasonable, since it includes the park entrance fee, the transportation at both ends of the trail, a bag of snacks and drinks, and a guide, the part we care least about. We took our breakfast to go in the van. Today´s experiment with beans and oatmeal yielded smashed white beans in overnight oats. Again I could not taste the beans, and found the oatmeal to be supremely filling.


The van was about the size of a sprinter van and went mostly filled. Our guide Armando rode up front with the driver, and there were 8 of us in the back. The ride to the trailhead (on the other side of the volcano) took about and hour and a half. That´s way faster than we could have done it on our own by bus.  On the way we drove into Cerro Punta, the town I lived in, and past the house I lived in too. A lot has changed since I was last there. Some development has occurred, and the potato field in front of the house and the cabbage field next door have been replaced by dirt lots that had big tractors parked in them. There is also now a tree growing in front of the house, so you can´t see it too well from the highway anymore.


The van went as far up the road as it could. From there we had about an hour of walking up hill on a 4WD road to reach the trailhead. Initially we walked past potato fields, then eventually we were in forest. It was kind of rainy and misty out, but not enough for us to get wet. It was definitely much colder than Boquete! Among our hiking group was an older couple from Germany, a single lady (about our age) from NYC, an incredibly slow Irish girl, an older Dutch lady who is our dorm mate, and a young extremely hungover bozo from Philadelphia. We keep running in to the Dutch lady, she was in our hostel in Sante Fe too, and we really like her. She is so pleasant to talk to, always so positive! The Irish girl got on our nerves the whole time being slow, she kept blaming in on her shoes, her hiking boots had broken the day before, and she was forced to hike in converse shoes. The truth is, however, she is overweight and out of shape. Even our guide got frustrated with her and told us during one of the times that we were stopped waiting for her, that we were about an hour behind the normal amount of time it takes to do the hike. We also found the young hungover bozo real annoying. He´d stayed up all night drinking and dancing at one of the clubs in the fair and was in really bad shape this morning. He was unwilling to believe that the alcohol and lack of sleep were the problem though. He thought he had altitude sickness!! We started the day at about 4,000 feet, and gained about a thousand feet on the drive. He was so convinced that he was nauseous from elevation that when we stopped to take a break on the way he went to a pharmacy to get motion sickness medicine. He also took some kind of pain killers provided by the Irish girl. What he really needed was a whole lot of water. He also slowed us down. Him and the Irish girl walked at the back of the pack the whole way. We averaged a pace of about 1.5 kilometers per hour, or just under 1 mile.

A typical Cerro Punta scene, a potato field and lots of clouds

Misty cloud forest view

The trail was incredibly muddy. We had to accept that we would have wet muddy feet and not try so hard to avoid the puddles and muck. A few weeks ago, the Caribbean was hit with a series of tropical storms. This caused a lot of rainfall in this area, along the continental divide. The heavy rains caused a great deal of trail damage, in the from of mudslides and fallen trees. The rains never really stopped, sound the ground in saturated with nowhere for additional rain to go. During these storms we heard that 25 people had to be rescued from a top the volcano. The Mamallena shuttle goes every night, as long as there are people who sign up, and once you are at the trailhead, you are pretty much stuck with your decision, as there is no way to get the 12 km back to town unless you walk. I guess there was terrible weather and freezing rain and a bunch of unprepared people, so 4WD tourist vehicles were dispatched to the top to rescue the idiots, at the expense of the government.


We we on the trail about 6 hours. From our starting point on the 4WD road to the other end where the van picked us up again was about 10 km. About halfway we stopped in a shelter to eat our snacks and look out at the nearby view point. Everyone else stayed in the shelter, and Jeff and I were the only ones to go and check out the view. It was foggy, so there wasn´t much to see, but I can´t understand not even looking! Our snack bags included pears, bananas, nuts, a granola bar, a bottle of water and a juice box. Del Monte brand makes a popular brand of juice down here, and they are divine! They are only 25% juice and insanely sweet, so we don´t drink them often, but they sure are good. I especially like the pear, peachy and pineapple/guava flavor, but even the apple is more tasty than US apple juice (which I don´t care for at all).

View of white from the view point

Beautiful moss and lichen covered trees

These stepping blocks were available for stepping on most of the way

High altitude cloud forest.

The park entrance on the Boquete side. The pretty yellow flowers on the left are one of my favorites, they are called angel´s trumpets.

Although the views weren´t spectacular and it was wet and muddy the forest was pretty and we enjoyed ourselves. It rained most of the way, so we walked in our rain jackets with the hoods up, but the tree canopy did an amazing job of sheltering us, so we never got soaked. If we had it to do over again, we probably would have just done the hike on our own either round trip from Boquete or through to Cerro Punta and taken the bus back. The trail is well marked, and its actually pretty easy to get there in public transit. We hadn´t done our research about it though. We would have preferred to get an earlier start, as it seems nicer out early in the mornings here. Also it can be frustrating hiking with others. This was definitely the easiest way to accomplish this hike, and sometimes we take the easy way out.


For dinner I was hoping to find us some hojaldras to eat, but was unsuccessful. Hojaldras are like Indian fry bread, disks of a pizza like white flour dough that are deep fried. They are certainly not healthy, but are very delicious! I guess they are more common for breakfast and that´s why we
couldn´t find them at dinner. Instead we went in a rotisserie chicken place and had sides of patacones and yuca. These sides were smaller than the ones at the place in David and thankfully didn´t come with the rich sauce. After our appetizer, we went for rice, beans and sweet plantains at the locally run cafeteria restaurant Sabroson.


Our dorm room is next door to a sports bar type restaurant that has loud live music each night. I am glad that it is primarily a restaurant and not just a bar, because the music stops at 10. When it is playing, it´s so loud, that you´d swear you were sitting on the stage with the band! Even though the hike today was not hard, we are feeling exhausted, and went to sleep as soon as the music stopped.

A nice $4 dinner

Friday January 19th


I woke up at 6 AM again and sat on the back patio to watch the sky brighten. From back there it actually looked like it would be a nice day out. The back patio faces the lowlands, the area where David is located. A walk to the windows on the other side of the building revealed that it was indeed still misty and miserable out. I waited until 8 for Jeff to wake up. We ate peanut butter and banana arepas for breakfast and made the decision not to go hiking again today.


I discovered that our hostel has an oven. I have stopped looking for the oven at hostels because there almost never is one and even if there is one they lack temperature controls. This hostel has both an oven and temperature controls! When I realized this, I began running all the possibilities through my mind. We really should just stay in Air BnBs more so I can cook whatever I want! Anyway, I decided on oven baked fries and veggie burgers. After breakfast we went out for supplies, buns from a bakery and lots of veggies from the produce market.


After shopping I spent some time in the Internet cafe captioning photos for a blog post. We’ve had lousy internet for what seems like weeks, and I haven’t been able to upload any blogs, so I’ve fallen very far behind. The internet at our hostel has been ok, especially early in the morning when I am the only one awake! Captioning photos doesn’t work the same in the app, so it’s nice to use a computer. It’s also faster for typing. The cost was $1 for 1 hour. Although blogging is a pain, especially when I fall behind, it allows me to relive past days, which is fun. It´s also nice that I have a neat little record of our travels if I ever want to look back on it sometime in the future.


Back at the hostel I got busy making the veggie burgers and fries. I also cooked a big batch of rice, and two different veggie side dishes so I could get lots of cooking out of the way in the middle of the day when I knew the kitchen would be less likely to be busy. I use a really simple veggie burger recipe that’s made with cooked rice, raw rolled oats, beans, sauce of your choosing (to bind) and whatever spices you want. The fries I make are parboiled first, and good thing, because I don’t think the oven gets as hot as it says. It didn’t come out as good as at home, but still pretty good! And Jeff helped too!

The hostel from the street. It´s a cool old wooden house.

Homemade veggie burgers and fries!

After lunch we went out for a walk and to visit the fair. It’s called the fair of the flowers, so we thought at the very least there would be lots of flowers to see. There were flowers, but they were all planted in the ground, in elaborate patterns. It wasn’t like in the US where you see vases of individual prize winning flowers on display. There weren’t many flower beds to look at either. The fair was mostly full of souvenirs for sale and food. There were probably 50 food stands selling the exact same things! Spiral hot dogs on a stick, pre cooked and assembled fast food style hamburgers, rotisserie chicken, French fries, boiled yucca and patacones. Stand after stand with exactly these items. They even all had the same yellow paper for wrapping up the hamburgers in. Boquete is known as a strawberry growing region, so the dessert stands all had a strawberry theme, strawberries and cream, strawberries soft serve, strawberries with condensed milk! You can also find fresh strawberries for sale, but they don´t even look good to us.

Everyone has to pose at the entrance for a photo

Lot of photo opportunities

Heart shaped flower display

Jeff recognized these flowers and said they are among his favorites for their vibrant color

A gas powered strawberry soft serve ice cream machine!

A display of the strawberry desserts on offer, our favorite picture is the one in the middle, strawberries in condensed milk!!

another vibrant display

To get to the fair you have to cross a bridge over the big river that flows through town, the Río Caldera. From the bridge you have a nice view of the river and also of the majority of the flowers that are inside the fair grounds! Getting across the bridge through the sea of selfie takers was a challenge! It was $2 to get into the fair, but you could see the flowers on the way there, and all of the food and souvenirs could be bought from the many vendors filling many the streets of town. The town is packed with people and feels like one endless street fair. It looks as if the vendors who’ve set up on the streets also have tents set up in the bushes to sleep in. Guess they are living there while the fair is going on? Our two purchases included fresh sugar cane juice with lime, and strawberry popsicles that come frozen into a disposable plastic cup.

Strawberry popsicles

When trying to loosen mine from it´s cup, I instead ejected it onto the ground!

Rio Caldera and the fairgrounds.

For dinner at our hostel we heated up the veggies and rice I made at lunch time and fried up some bread dough to go with it! You can buy dough in all the stores to make hojaldras, which are the fry bread we were looking for yesterday. Hojaldras are a common meal accompaniment if you know where to find them! The dough is similar to pizza dough. It’s flattened into small disks and deep fried, which causes them to puff up. They were one of my favorite foods as an exchange student, when I frequently ate two of them as a sandwich with melted kraft cheese and ham. This treat could be purchased from the food kiosk that was located on the school grounds. I’ve been telling Jeff about them, but we’ve had trouble finding them, so I decided to just make some. They are delicious but sure are unhealthy! The veggie dishes I made are stewed cabbage, a recipe common in Latin American counties, and shakshouka, a stewed pepper and onion dish that is very common in Israel. I make shakshouka often at home, but I hadn’t tried stewed cabbage before. Both meals were really good and we have leftovers for tomorrow.

Dinner, not so beautiful, but delicious

Before bed we did some reading. I’ve started reading a book that pertains to our next destination, the Lost and Found Hostel. Reading their book is supposed to somehow make it more interesting. I was able to get it for 99¢ on Amazon. It´s a pretty short book.


It’s Friday night and I’m scared to try to sleep. The music next door is so loud that it sounds like we are right on the dance floor! The windows don’t help at all.



Saturday January 20th


The music miraculously stopped at 10 again, and I was able to get to sleep at a reasonable time.  I got up early again like I’ve been doing every day since we got here. I took advantage of the oven and the empty kitchen and a left behind whole grain baguette, and made bread pudding. It’s actually really easy to make a vegan bread pudding utilizing flax or chia seeds and fruit like mashed bananas. We have it a lot back home. I even learned how to make it in the instant pot (electric pressure cooker) this summer, so we could have it even if we don’t have an oven!

Peanut butter banana bread pudding with oats, raisins, chia seeds, flax seeds and spices.

A really nice complete kitchen at Mamallena. It looks like a 1950s USA home kitchen.

We were lazy and it was misty outside again, so we didn’t get motivated to go out until around 10. We were going to take a bus to a trail called the Pipeline trail, where a very large old tree can be admired. We got as far as sitting in the mini bus that would take us there, but we must have just missed the last one, because we sat for about a half hour and it still hadn’t departed, so we changed our minds and got out. There’s another trail in the area called the lost waterfalls. Both trails can both be done in a day, so we decided we’d just get an earlier start and do them both tomorrow.


We went and got some produce from the market and some whole grain bread from the Sugar and Spice Bakery. We hadn’t been to that bakery yet. They actually sell loaves of freshly baked real whole grain bread for $3.75. I will make us sandwiches and salad to take with us on our hikes tomorrow.


We stayed in the hostel a lot of the rest of the day reading. We went back out for awhile to get gelato and take a walk around town. The gelato place, called La Ghiotta, is actually Italian owned, and is extremely popular. They had 4 milk free flavors, tomate de arbol, guanabana, chocobanana and strawberry. We tried them all. They were nice and not too expensive, $1.75 per cone. After gelato we took a walk along some of the back roads of the town. The main roads are so busy with fair goers and bus after bus keeps pulling into town with private charter groups from all over the country. We are bracing ourselves for a ton of noise on this Saturday night, the final weekend of the fair. There are so many people in town, that they probably couldn’t all fit into the fair grounds. They are all just milling around the streets buying winter hats and gloves, heavily clothed in sweatshirts and warm jackets. We’re at 3500 hundred feet in the tropics, but by the way everyone is dressed, you’d think we were in Alaska! It’s definitely cooler here than in the lowlands, but it’s not that cold!

Gelato flavors, chocolate/banana, strawberry, guanabana and tree tomato

Whole grain bread loaf from Sugar and Spice gringo bakery

A very large Arizona Yellow bells. We planted one if these in my mom´s yard. We were told by the nursery that it was a shrub. It began growing out of control and he had to rip it out. If we had know it´s potential to become a tree we might have left it.

Kombucha from the health food store. This one was so potently filled with ginger and cayenne that we struggled to finish it between the two of us. 

This is a view out the second story window of the hostel, looking on to the main square with one of the food stands

For dinner we had plantain and malanga stew. I found the malanga at the produce market, and it was the freshest I have seen. It’s a relative of taro, and turns purple when you cook it. Our stew also had lentils, bell peppers, carrots, garlic, onion and spices. We topped it with the most beautifully colored avocado.

Two beautiful fresh malanga roots

Delicious dinner stew

It is rare that I find an acceptable couch to sit on at a hostel. Most of the time the couches really gross me out, they are generally dirty and shabby. I don´t usually get grossed out by anything related to cleanliness or hygiene, but there´s something about couches. This was a very nice living room.

Sunday January 21st



Today we are moving hostels. Since it’s the fair week, most accommodations are full. We were lucky to get a reservation. I had to book two different hostels in order to have a place for all of the days that we are here. Last year 150,000 people came from all over Panama and other countries to visit the fair, so you can imagine how busy this tiny town is. There are cars parked everywhere you can imagine. The streets are flooded with people, street vendors line the sidewalk, there is food galore, all of the hotels and hostels are full and people are even sleeping in tents wherever there is space. I would like to rename it the fair of the winter accessories, hot dogs and strawberries, since people come here to buy hats and gloves and eat hot dogs and strawberries! The area is famous for strawberries, but so far we haven’t seen any that look very good, they are all light red and the white at the top extends about halfway down the fruit. They are also expensive, $5 per small pint.


We tried to get going really early, but packing up while also trying not to wake the others in the dorm is always a bit of a challenge. We usually pack up the night before when we have to leave early, but we were lazy last night. We also had to eat breakfast. We had oatmeal bars that I baked in the oven. We eat those a lot at home, but we obviously haven’t had any in awhile! You mix equal parts oats and liquid which can be juice or water or fruit purée. You can mix in whatever else you want, like chocolate chips, chopped fruit like apple, dried fruits and nuts. You put it in a baking tray big enough to make the mix about an inch or two tall, then bake at 350 for about a half hour until it dries out a bit. They are really good topped with peanut butter and freshly made chia seed jam!


We boarded a mini bus (van) and were on our way by about 8 to go hiking. We’ll be doing two trails today, the Pipeline Trail and the Lost Waterfalls. They are close together, so when we finish the first one, we can easily walk to the other. We headed to the Pipeline Trail first. The ride to the trailhead takes about half of an hour. There’s supposed to be an entrance fee of $3 per person, but no one was manning the fee station. From there it wasn’t clear where the trail was, so we took a guess and went though the fence that said in English “No Trespassing, Private Property.” It turned out to be the right way. We walked for awhile on a narrow dirt road that eventually gave way to trail. It rained and misted a light amount but there was also occasional sun and a nice forest canopy, so we didn’t really get wet. We’ve been wearing shorts with our rain jackets all week, and it’s been a great set up for keeping dry. The forest was made up of tall, old bromeliad covered trees. This is a trail paralleling a water supply pipeline that people come to for spotting wildlife and birds, especially the “resplendent quetzal.” This bird is famous among bird watchers and the highlands of Panama are one of the best places to look for them. I first learned about this bird 14 years ago when I was an exchange student. The town I lived in was also an excellent bird watching location, but since the locals aren’t really into nature, hiking or birdwatching, I never got the chance to see one. The bird is so special because it is amazingly beautiful with a shiny green body, a red chest, a few stripes of white and really long tail feathers. I didn’t have high hopes of spotting one today, but was this was one of the reasons we wanted to get started earlier. They are most commonly seen when mating and raising their young, and that season hasn’t quite started yet. The main reason we came to this trail was to see “El Cenizo,” a thousand year old tree. It apparently survived the last eruption of Volcán Barú, hundreds of years ago. The top broke off I suspect during the eruption, and regrew tall again, so the base is huge, as big as a giant sequoia, but it quickly tapers off and isn’t remarkably tall. The base is definitely impressive though, and we sure love trees! The tree was about 45 minutes into the walk. The trail is basically flat, following the gentle incline of a river. Another 15 minutes down the trail ends at a moss and fern covered cliff face with water cascading down. It was a little tricky finding the end because the tropical storm and heavy rains of a few weeks ago also damaged this area. There were a lot of land slides, so the river is full of debris and mud, which kind of washed out the trail. The trail appears to end at the river, but you just walk a short way up the river over gravel and sands bars to arrive at the falls. I suspect in drier conditions that the falls are almost non existent, because there wasn´t much water in them, and it´s been raining a little every day.


On the way back we stopped to talk to a retired American couple that we passed on the way in. We heard this trail could be incredibly busy with people looking for wildlife, but they were the only other people we saw. When we passed them they were slowly strolling and scanning the trees with binoculars. When we crossed paths with them again, they had just spotted a quetzal and took us back down the trail to where they had seen it! Amazingly it was still there, and it was every bit as beautiful as we’d heard. We have seen photos before, but there’s nothing like seeing the real thing. The males are the prettiest, with the long tail features and beautiful coloring. We got to see the male and a female too. The female is also green with beautiful colorful feathers, but lacks the long tail feathers.


I tend to have a hard time spotting wildlife, even when it’s pointed out to me. The man was very patient with me and kept pointing and describing until I saw both birds. He had really nice binoculars and also a nice camera for taking photos. He even offered to send us some photos! We stayed in the area chatting with him for awhile. He and his wife retired to Boquete 11 years ago. As a young man he was a journalist, and had lived in Alaska for 10 years starting in 1965, right after the big earthquake and had seen firsthand all of the damage. He watched the pipeline boom from the beginning stages to completion. He even had a small aircraft that he flew 6 times back and forth to his home state of Connecticut! He was a pretty cool guy! When we left them and continued our walk, we couldn’t help but wish they would invite us over for dinner! (: They did make good on sending the photos, they were in my mailbox by the time we arrived back to our hostel, but sadly no invite for dinner, haha!

The resplendent quetzal

This is a photo of the Cenizo tree. It´s not my photo. It comes from a blog called Desk to Glory. Unfortunately I forgot my phone today and we had no other photo taking capabilities.

Once we were back out on the main road, we had about a mile uphill to walk to the other trailhead. It continued misting and raining a bit but the clouds constantly shifted and we got  occasional sun too. We walked through farm fields and forested hills. It was very pleasant scenery. We had to cross a suspension bridge over the river and walk up a steep hill from the road to the reach the entrance area. It was easy to know where to turn off the road, because they have all these stupid marketing signs in English for the hike: “three beautiful waterfalls, one amazing hike!” The falls are on private property. Whoever owns them must make a fortune. They charge $7 per person! The trail was really muddy from the recent rains, and steep and slippery in some areas. We accepted early on that our shoes would end up filthy and rather than walk slowly and attempt to keep our shoes clean, we mostly walked right through the mud pits. There were a few areas where we needed the help of roots and trees to get up and down. The forest was made of much shorter trees than we had seen on our previous hike, mostly tree ferns, palms and vines. It was very dense low vegetation, and really beautiful. We walked most of the way along the river, seeing 3 raging waterfalls along the way. From the entrance, the hike takes about an hour each way. They told us 35 minutes at the payment station, but I think that’s only possible in dry conditions. We found a sandbar just down river from the last waterfall, and stopped to have a picnic. It was nice and sunny during our lunch, and we had a perfect view of the waterfall. We ate peanut butter, banana and avocado sandwiches with oatmeal cookies and dried fruit. Sadly I forgot my camera at the hostel today, so I don’t have any pictures of our hikes. I did find some to borrow on the internet and TripAdvisor.

A photo that I found on TripAdvisor that appears to have been taken from the very spot where we had our lunch, a little island in the river.

On the way back to the main road, I stopped to dunk my shoes in the river thoroughly cleaning them and my socks of the mud that had soaked into them. Jeff did not partake. Once back on the road, we walked a short way before a mini bus passed and picked us up. There was a video screen playing reggaetón music videos! We see those in most big long distance buses, but this was the first mini bus TV screen we have seen. All of the videos have some papi chulo Rico Suave type guy singing with an entourage of scantily clad booty shaking ladies dancing in the background. As we made our way back to town, the van got fuller and fuller. By the time we got out, there we 22 people inside! Legally speaking, this was a 15 passenger van!


We got out just before town at a coffee shop called Café Ruiz. They are one of the large coffee producers in the area. I felt I couldn’t come to Boquete and not take a coffee tour. Since we’d already had a coffee farm tour in Colombia and the other tour about the processing of coffee at Carpe Diem, Jeff wasn’t too excited to do another. I did a lot of thorough investigation on TripAdvisor and found rave reviews about this farm, and more specifically about the tour guide, Carlos. Based on the reviews it seemed we’d learn about a lot more than just coffee, so we booked it, and hoped we’d get Carlos!


Back in town, we returned to Mamallena and got our stored backpacks, and moved a few blocks away to our new hostel, Hostel Garden by Refugio de Rio. I think they have two locations, the original is called Refugio del Rio. We got an amazing deal here, $20 for a private room in the backyard. That’s cheaper than two dorm beds, which we were paying more than $15 each for at Mamallena. I don’t know why it’s so cheap, they could certainly get away with charging a lot more, but we didn’t complain.


The hostel has a nice kitchen and no one was using it. I found half a pineapple and half a can of refried beans and some peppers and olives in the free bin, so I utilized those along with the free tostadas I got free at Mamallena and we had bean tostadas and salad for dinner.


Often it’s rainy in the mountains towards the continental divide, but sunny in town. This was the case today, so we enjoyed the sun and the nice back yard full of wooden double lounge chairs, hammocks, grass and shade trees.



Monday January 22nd


We had peanut butter banana sandwiches for breakfast, then set out for Cafe Ruiz. It was sunny and warm out, crystal clear actually! Our first sunny day in Boquete. We finally got to see the volcano, which from Boquete, doesn’t much resemble a volcano or even an impressive mountain really.


We were picked up for our coffee tour in a 4wd SUV. Two Germans and the guide were already inside. We rode 8 km out of town to the farm. The guide was indeed Carlos!! I saw his name embroidered on his shirt, and I knew all about him from the reviews. No one else knew about him though, and he spoke in Spanish the whole way there!! (: I was the only one that could speak back. I am sure the German’s and Jeff were wondering what they had signed themselves up for.


When we got to the farm and began the actual tour he asked in perfect English if we all preferred English, and the others breathed a sigh of relief. Carlos wowed us for the next 2 hours with his vast knowledge of coffee, the industry, Boquete and Panama. The farm was incredibly beautiful. It looked more like a forest than a farm. There were lots of other plants mixed in with the coffee, like plantains and bananas, the beans known as guandú, tomatoes, squash and citrus. We also had nice views of the volcano. Jeff almost talked me out of another coffee tour, but I’m so glad he didn’t, because it was one of the best tours we’ve ever done. We learned about all of the steps involved in growing, harvesting and preparing the coffee for sale, and even learned about the marketing of it too.


In Boquete there are more than 1200 farms that represent 42 different brands of coffee. Carlos specified that the coffee farming in Panama is non-monopolized, meaning that the government doesn’t play a role in regulating the sale or the prices set. Colombia and Costa Rica both have government involvement. Colombia we learned has 560,000 coffee farms and all of them are required to sell their coffee through the government collective, Juan Valdez. In Costa Rica it’s apparently illegal to sell any of the exportation grade coffee within the country, and they are also not allowed to grow the robusta variety.


Cafe Ruiz as a company was founded in 1979, but the family has been growing coffee since the 1920s. Mr. Ruiz is still alive and in his 90s! They have 11 farms around Boquete. The coffee from each farm is kept separate. Each brand that they sell represents one of the 11 farms. The farm we toured was 60 hectares. One hectare is equal to 2 1/2 acres, so that´s a lot of land!  The farms are at all different elevations and they receive different levels of rainfall and sun. The farms closest to the mountains get a lot more rain. Their oldest farm is called Berlina, where the average age of the trees is 90 years! At the farm we toured in Colombia we learned that they cut down the trees and start over every 20 years, but not here. Carlos said they probably do that because the yields go down as the trees get older, so to keep the yields high they keeps their trees young. Carlos said his favorite coffee comes from the Berlina farm. The type of coffee grown in Panama is of the arabica variety. Arabica originated in Ethiopia, and Panama happens to be at about the same latitude as Ethiopia!

Three different colors of guandu beans growing on the farm

The forest like coffee farm and Volcan Baru in the background

The tall trees attract birds which in turn eat the insects before they can cause damage to the coffee.

A big pile of compost, made up mostly of coffee fruit peels

Coffee at different stages of growth

One of the reasons we wanted to learn about coffee in Boquete is because they are known for growing geisha coffee, the most expensive coffee in the world, at around $600 per pound. For awhile Boquete was the only place that was growing it. There are other countries where you can find it now, though. We also learned about the 2nd most expensive coffee in the world, it´s called Luwak. It’s produced in Sumatra where it’s first eaten by cats and pooped out. The poop is then processed to create the finished product! That coffee costs $400 per pound! Another interesting and expensive coffee is called black ivory. The coffee is eaten by elephants and then the poop is processed. Carlos showed us all kinds of videos and pictures using his phone. He truly knows everything about coffee!

The logo for Luwak poop coffee

The coffee harvest takes place in Boquete from October to March. This year though, the coffee began flowering two months early! Most of the people involved in the processing are native Indians of the Ngäbe Buglé tribe. The majority of them don’t live around Boquete, so the coffee farms provide housing for them during the harvest months, and they get to pick the fruits and vegetables that grow alongside the coffee. The minimum wage is $1.60 per hour! The people working in the gringo restaurants in town are making about $2.50/hour. Carlos says he makes $600/month. Meanwhile Boquete has become a major retirement community for gringos. This has forced land and rental prices up, and most locals can’t afford to live here anymore. The main road is lined with expensive restaurants that are foreign owned and the locals can’t afford to eat in them. Coffee farms are being bought up and bulldozed to build golf courses and gated communities. It’s really sad. Without coffee farms and agriculture, Boquete won’t be the same, but that’s what it will probably eventually come to. Carlos told us that offers have been made to buy some of the Ruiz farms, but so far they have denied all offers.

Native ladies sorting sundried coffee beans. These are beans that have been dried whole with the skin intact.

Tables full of coffee that has already been sorted, left to dry in the sun

Coffee dried with the skin on is referred to as raisin coffee.

Around 400 natives are involved in picking the beans. They are paid by the kilo. The freshly picked coffee is put into water filled vats. The coffee that floats is removed. The floaters aren’t thrown out, they are saved for cheap second rate coffee. The coffee goes through a machine that removes the peel. The peels are one of the next big superfoods, and about 20% of the peels are exported to the USA and Europe to make an antioxidant tea. The rest of the skins are composted. After it’s peeled, it’s fermented for 30 hours then washed. It goes through an initial drying in the sun, and must be raked every 2 hours over a 3 day period. After 3 days it goes into a drying machine that is powered by burning the papery second skin that gets removed from the dried coffee. 7 1/2 kilos of red fruit yields 1 kilo of roasted coffee.

Sun dried coffee bean without the red peel

Underneath the papery skin in the green coffee bean, they call it the almond

That’s the most traditional method of processing coffee but there’s another process called continuous in which the coffee is washed but not fermented. Another process is called honey, in that process, the coffee is neither washed or fermented, so the sweetness of the fruit remains and is left to dry in the sun with the fruit. The least processed process is called natural. In the natural process the fruit is left completely intact to dry in the sun with its skin.


After the coffee is dried it gets bagged in burlap sacks where it ages for 4 months. After 4 months the bags are opened and the papery inner skin is removed leaving just the green coffee beans. The beans then get hand sorted by size, shape, density and color. This ensures even roasting. If they didn’t do this some beans would also burned in the roasting stage.

There were rows and rows of coffee sacks in their storage room

A comparison of 1st and 2nd rate coffees. The lower quality coffee is in the front and contains sticks and broken beans.

Most of the coffee that’s exported is sold green and the buyers are the ones that roast it. They buy the beans for cheap, and mark up the price after they have roasted the beans. Pete’s coffee shops in California buys green beans from Cafe Ruiz for $2.60 per kilo, then sells it roasted for $20 per kilo! Coffee is a commodity, so the world economy dictates the price. Cafe Ruiz has specialty coffee so they sell above commodity price.


After the tour we went back to the cafe where we started. There we did a tasting of 3 different roasts of coffee for comparing. We learned that the type of coffee we tolerate the most is light roast, because it is the least burnt. Dark roasted coffee is burnt coffee. We learned also that contrary to what most people believe, a dark roast has the least caffeine, and the light roast has the most! The light roast has no bitterness to it and instead is more acidic or citrusy tasting. Carlos had all sorts of jokes. He told us that Starbucks should be called Charbucks and Folgers should be Floaters!


We were given a free pound of light roast coffee each, plus some snacks. We stayed at the coffee shop after the tour to sample some of the other coffees. We ordered a sampler trio containing 3 oz each of 3 different kinds of coffee. We picked geisha, which is currently the most expensive coffee in the world and has been sold for over $600 per pound! That tasted like normal coffee to us. We also tried honey coffee, which is coffee that is dried with the fruit layer left intact. The honey coffee has natural sweetness to it. We liked it more than the geisha. The third cup was called raisin coffee and is made with coffee beans that have been processed by the natural method, whole in the skin. We liked this coffee the most. It had no bitterness to it at all. I wonder if it would be hard to find a natural coffee like that in the US.

Our sampler trio with descriptions 

Beautiful hanging flower vines at the cafe called little dolls shoes (Zapatitos de Muñeca)

We had planned to spend the afternoon being Señor Turista, sampling small portions at multiple restaurants, but after the tour we felt kind of disgusted by the overpriced touristy restaurants in town that only gringos can afford to eat in. We ended up back at the Sabrosón cafeteria with delicious plates of rice, beans, veggies and salad for around $10 for both of us.

We can´t get enough rice and beans!

View of the main street from Sabroson restaurant

We are supposed to be leaving tomorrow. We already have reservations at the next destination, but the weather today made us hopeful that we might be able to hike the volcano after all. We signed up for a shuttle to the volcano leaving at 11:30 pm, bought some produce at the market and reserved our Boquete hostel for one more night. We ate a gigantic dinner of boiled yuca, ripe plantains, beets and a chickpea scramble with tomatoes and onions. I bought 2 pounds of beets from the produce market for making beet salad and potato beet salad for taking on the hike with us. There are a lot of scientific studies showing that beets boost athletic performance, and we will need all the help we can get!

Our appetizer, homemade plantains with Maggi ketchup. The ketchup is really good, it´s actually made with Panamanian tomatoes and says so on the label!

Yuca, ripe plantains, chickpea scramble and beets. The photo doesn´t do it justice, it was an absurdly large pile of food!

We laid down at 8 and tried to sleep for awhile. We didn’t do much sleeping. At 11 we got up and it was windy and a bit rainy. Jeff tried to talk us out of going. We looked up the weather on 3 different websites, one looked bad, 2 looked so so. I told Jeff if we went back to bed and woke up to sun I’d be really sad and annoyed with him, so we went ahead with the plan. Jeff often tries to talk me out of our plans!


The shuttle is organized by Mamallena Hostel. To sign up, all we had to do was write our name on a whiteboard in the reception of the hostel. Only one other person was signed up, and we were all there early, so we got going before 11:30. The more people, the cheaper it is, with 3 people the cost is $7 each. The ride only took 15 minutes. By 11:45 we were setting off into the dark. The other guy who rode with us charged ahead on the trail and soon we could no longer see the light of his headlamp.



Tuesday January 23rd


I had planned for us to eat beet salad before starting out so we could be super powered, but we were still so stuffed from dinner that we didn’t eat anything until we reached the top.


It took about 5 hours at a slow and steady pace. A few minutes on we came upon the other hiker, an Italian guy, about our age. He said it was creepy walking alone in the dark and asked if we minded him staying with us. We didn’t mind and enjoyed his company and the conversation. We walked 14 km or about 8 miles uphill on a rocky dirt 4WD road. It was steep in places but not bad. Nowhere near as difficult as we thought. I’d read about many people having to give up an turn back. It was a little challenging near the top because we’d been up all night and were tired and we were up high where there was less oxygen, so the final half hour or so we all kind of zoned out and just put one foot in front of the other until we reached the top. We were lucky to have had only brief light rain on the way, and we could see stars and clusters of city lights below. These were good signs!


We reached the top well before sunrise at 4:50 AM! It wouldn’t start to get light out until about 6:15, with the actual sunrise not occurring until 6:30. It was cold and windy. The top was a mess of buildings and communications antennas. We took shelter on the side of one of the buildings to hide from the wind and wait until sunrise. We put on all of our warm layers, pants, T-shirt, long sleeves, fleece, rain jacket, hat and gloves. We then got into our sleeping bag liners, which are like sheets, then emptied the few contents of our backpacks (we’d brought the big ones) and put our legs inside. We then huddled together and shivered eating our peanut butter banana sandwiches and oatmeal cookies. The sun couldn’t come soon enough!


When it started to get light out we climbed the last couple of minutes to the true summit. We watched the sun come up and light up the clouds. We had a clear view of the Pacific, but in the direction of the Caribbean there was a big cloud bank. We could see the Caribbean only in small patches, but being above the clouds was really neat. We explored the summit area for about an hour before going back down. As we were going back we saw two Swiss girls going for the summit. They were the only other hikers we saw until we got near the trail head.

Jeff exploring the top, looking towards Costa Rica and along the spine of mountains

Looking down the the town of Volcan, the one on the other side of the volcano from Boquete

The cloud bank and mountain spine

Pretty color on the clouds

Jeff standing near the cross that marks the summit, 11,400 feet

Graffiti on the rocks near the summit

Cloud bank, it was much prettier than the photos would lead you to believe

We made it!  A 14 year dream of mine come true!

The antenna village below the summit

View of the summit from the antennas

National park sign showing the elevation profile for the trail on both sides. The Boquete side is the right side.

The house of the guard of the communications towers. We didn´t see him, but heard he sometimes invites hikers in for hot chocolate.

The poopy smelling spot where we hunkered down and waited for the warmth of the sun to come.

The hike up in the dark had been interesting, seeing the sparkly dew covered vegetation by lamp light. On the way down it was like a completely new hike! The cloud forest was amazingly beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it! We saw a lot of plants we’ve never seen before. The sides of the road were lined with all sorts of colorful flowers and the trees were gnarled and moss covered. The way them grew made them look like bonsai trees, only they weren’t tiny. After a couple hours of descending, the energy high we’d been experiencing wore off. We also descended out of the cloud forest and got into a bit more boring scenery of farms. At this point, the Italian Paolo finally left us to continue down the trail at a faster pace. We took a break to eat beet salad, then slowly made our way the rest of the way down. It took 4 1/2 to get down and we were stiff and tired by the time we reached the pavement. We took a “collectivo” taxi back to town. This is a taxi that acts like a bus and picks up anyone who wants in, then drops off in a central location.

Looking back up towards the top from just below the summit area

My attempt at capturing the neat tundra like vegetation that only grows at the very top.

Mossy trees

Looks like a fairy tale forest

A view of the road/trail

Pretty flowers lining the road

Neat flower like thing growing from the center of a plant with huge fuzzy leaves

Lichen filled trees

We were back to our hostel by about 1 pm. We ate the potato-beet salad that I carried to the top and back for nothing, took showers, then slept for a few hours. We felt very refreshed when we woke back up and most of the stiffness had already disappeared.


We went out in search of dinner with the plan of trying Seño Gyros, which sells falafels. When we got there though, we saw that a falafel was $8 and a vegetarian platter was $15.50! Those are gringos prices, so we decided not to eat there. We ended up back at Sabrosón yet again with wholesome plates of rice, beans and veggies. After dinner we spent a short time at the Internet cafe so I could caption and post another blog.


We were supposed to leave Boquete today for our next destination, the Lost and Found Hostel, but we were too tired and couldn’t fathom enduring a bus ride. We decided to stay in town and take advantage of the full night in our hostel that we’d paid for. We already had the reservation at Lost and Found, but we told them we wouldn’t be coming today. It would be within their right to charge us for the night since we weren’t able to give much warning before canceling. We may end up paying for both places, but we are ok with that, hiking the volcano was well worth it.



Wednesday January 24th


We set no alarm, and allowed ourselves to sleep in. We didn’t sleep as long as I thought we would, only about 10 hours. We ate a big breakfast: peanut butter toast, chocolate chia seed pudding and a huge fruit salad of papaya, cantaloupe and bananas.


After breakfast and packing up we got on the 10:45 bus back down to David. By noon we were on the second bus heading for the Lost and Found Hostel. The ride took us down to near sea level, then back in to the mountains on a road that crosses the mountains connecting the Pacific side of Panama with the Caribbean side. After about an hour were dropped off on the side of the highway near the continental divide. We were very glad to be off the bus, we had been the last ones to board the small bus. Jeff had to stand the whole timewith large (fried chicken filled) people overflowing into the already limited space of the aisle. I got a rickety fold down seat next to the door that tilted me toward the door. I would have stood and let Jeff have the seat, but the bus assistant loaded us that way. Jeff was the only standee and probably the only person on the bus that was too tall to stand up straight! Mostly everyone here is short.


A billboard on the side of the road that says lost and found in large letters indicates that you are in the right place. There is a fruit stand there and a few houses. We bought a bit of produce from the stand, then began the 15 minute hike up to the hostel. It was an easy hike. I always try to plan not to be carrying a food bag, but always end up with one anyway. This morning at our hostel there was a free pineapple and free almond milk. I certainly couldn’t pass those up! No one wants to carry anything with them when they leave a place, so I always end up carrying it instead!

Billboard advertising lost and found on the left and fruit stand on the right.

Jeff is not too convinced

Me and my big heavy food bag

There was no one around the hostel when we arrived and even as the day went on, not many people came back from activities and few others checked in. Two days from now the hostel is closed for a day for a school group that has reserved the whole place. I imagine that’s messed with the timing of a lots of people’s itineraries and many backpackers are probably skipping this place.


We are in a dorm with 9 double bunk beds and 6 singles, so it has a capacity of 24 people. Only the ground level beds seem to be occupied. There are a few other dorms and private rooms. There is a kitchen here, but it has a tiny hotel room size refrigerator (about a one square foot size). There are 4 burners and limited cookware and utensils. This set up seems to encourage buying meals from them. We made our own lunch, but bought dinner from them.


For lunch we had pasta with curried peanut sauce and veggies. The noodles were rice noodles from the free bin a few hostels ago, and the veggies were purple cabbage, Chinese eggplant (which is always abundant and very fresh here), onion, garlic, and carrot. We didn’t know how buying vegan meals here would go, but we were pleasantly surprised with our dinner. We had veggie and rice stuffed bell peppers, two of them, served with a side of tomatoey Mexican style rice, salad and bread with several heads of roasted garlic for spreading on the bread. It was plenty of food and it tasted really good.


There was a bit of a view when we arrived, but clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. It’s been raining off and on and the wind is howling now. We spent our afternoon and evening reading and now we’re going to bed early. I finished reading the hostel book, but it was really weird. It was about cults and religion and greek mythology. It was also kind of nasty and graphic. I didn´t understand the point.

A nice view for our lunch time. Jeff really enjoys peanut butter pastas!

Stuffed peppers and roasted garlic and bread for dinner. All of the produce comes from the fruit stand on the highway or other local sources.

Thursday January 25th


We got to participate in a free yoga class this morning that is led by one of the volunteers. It was a really nice way to stretch out the little bit of soreness we have from the volcano hike. It was a little advanced for Jeff but he still enjoyed it too.

View of volcano this morning

We waited until after yoga to have our breakfast, bananas and chia seed and oat pudding. The yoga teacher Nicole ate breakfast with us. She is from New Hampshire. Afterward we all went for a hike together. There are lots of trails here, but she knew the way, and we just got to follow her and not think about where we were going. She’s 2 weeks in to a 2 month long volunteer commitment. Volunteers get a bed and breakfast, plus dinner if there are leftovers.


We hiked to a lookout at the top of the mountain that the hostel sits on. We also visited several rapids along the nearby river, a few small cascades, a very large tree, a cave and an area of the forest with wild grapefruits! I carefully searched the forest floor for unblemished fruits, and found 4! There was light misty rain and some sun too. We were well protected in the forest. It was nice having someone else to talk to on our walk. Nicole will be starting a two year long Peace Corps commitment in Nepal in a few months!

View of the lowlands from the viewpoint

The huge tree, that we think is actually just vines that overtook the tree that was once there.

Another look at the huge vine tree

Some river rapids, the water was too fast for swimming.

We were gone for about 4 hours. We’ve been reading and lounging in bean bag chairs since. Dinner tonight was veggie tacos with rice and beans and chips with pineapple-tomato salsa. It was pretty good, and it was once again nice to get to lounge around while someone else prepared my dinner. We didn´t even have to go out anywhere to get it!


There are more trails to hike, and also a few treasure hunts that the hostel has created, but we don´t have time. We will be leaving tomorrow morning, since the hostel is closing for the school group. Nicole told us it´s some weird German private school of rich kids. They just stay a night to sleep and don´t even utilize any of the trails or other hostel features. We be will continuing on to the Caribbean Coast to the islands of Bocas Del Toro.

A beautiful sunset from the hostel Lost and Found