Boquete, Panama: Christ, It's Rainy

By the time we got to Panama I had precious little time left before my flight back to the States.  We decided that we'd had enough beaches for a while and headed for a town in the mountains: Boquete.  Quite frankly, we got too much of what we were looking for.  Rather than too hot and sunny, Boquete was too cool and rainy.  Every day.  Starting at noon.  Oh well.

We managed to squeeze in a tour of a local coffee plantation before the rain set in.  Coffee likes mountains, so nice views were unavoidable.

Coffee plants are surprisingly scrawny things.  More like bushes or tall saplings.

Coffee beans en vivo.

Remove the green outer covering and you find a red layer.  Remove the red layer to expose the bean itself.

It's quite a process from coffee plant to coffee cup.  First the outer layers are removed.  This plantation was famous for using jerry-rigged automobile parts but still producing world class coffee.  There might be a Jeep transmission in there, somewhere.

After removing the covers, the beans dry outside for several weeks.

Oh, yeah, show off those drying coffee beans.  After drying outside they are packed in canvas sacks and cured for another couple of weeks indoors.

Finally, it's time to roast 'em.  This is a miniature unit, fit only for tourist sized quantities.

It gets hot inside and goes 'round and 'round.  As I recall, it's about 3 minutes for a light roast, 5 for medium and 7 for dark.

Ach! Hot!

They smelled soo good.

Cheers!

 While in Boquete we also went for a bit of a hike.  There's a waterfall and maybe a glimpse of the famous Quetzal (bird).  Okay then.

 It is riotously green and vibrant jungle inhabited by a few locals eking out a living growing maize.  I always feel terribly awkward crossing their land: I am so rich in comparison, both materially and in terms of my choices in life.  I am free to go for hike for no better reason than to enjoy the countryside while they are all but tied to the land they need to feed their families.

 And what's this?  Why, it's a cute little child staring forlornly, uncomprehendingly at the strangers traipsing through her world.  What does she have to look forward to in life?  How long will it be before she is pregnant and married and just as trapped as her mother before her?  I know I'm projecting a whole helluva lot, here, and that "white guilt" has been done many times over by many others.  But.. fuck.  Sometimes it's hard not to feel like a royal asshole.

It's a rain forest.  It's quite wet.

After a couple hour hike the valley suddenly closes in around you.

And there's a waterfall.  I'm sorry, but I really am jaded on the subject of waterfalls.  Meh, I say.  Meh.

Far more interesting to me were the bizarre and beautiful flowers alongside the path.

I mean, look at these things.

Have you ever seen their like?

I have not, except perhaps in other jungles in the course of my recent travels.

The colors and shapes and sizes are just completely different than the flowers of North America.

Close up!

This was growing right outside our hotel.  As though such a thing were perfectly normal!

Leaving Boquete was tough because I left Michal there as well.  I had a plane ticket back to the States (purchased mere days before we met.  This!  This is what happens when you make plans that can't be changed!) and she had to get up to Mexico, from where she would return to Israel.  We'd had a good run: a month or so, and three different countries.  And we both had commitments: I a wedding and a funeral and she university.  This is life, right?  Nothing gold can stay.

Sigh.