Panama - Boquete

The Local Buses (old school buses from USA)

We both really enjoyed winding down in Santa Catalina, although looking forward to our trip to the mountain region of Boquete. After another 4 bus journeys we arrived in Boquete in the afternoon, it was noticably cooler and wetter at 1800m, I guess this is to be expected. We were coaxed into staying in a cheap and cheerful hostel, well actually it was more like this guys house; you walked into his living room to him either watching football or his kids playing nintendo. This wouldn't have been so bad if the bloke didn't drag you into a 20min conversation every time you went to the loo.  Saying that he was very friendly and drew us a detailed map which we used to get up to the water fall in the mountains.

A samosa flavored pasty

It was a fair old trek to get there; up slippery mountain paths and through thick jungle and past scary dogs (Ben even offered one a banana to keep the peace, which unsurprisingly, the K9 declined) . Being at such a high altitude made the hike all the more difficult, but it was part of the experince that made the waterfall all the more beautiful. On walk we stopped for lunch overlooking mountain valleys whilst Ben got stuck into a Central American pasty (empanada), which is not a touch on the real thing...

On our way down the weather started to do it's thing and has one of it's flash down pours... when we say flash, we actually mean relentless! It started raining at 13:00 and didn't stop for the rest of our stay. This was a shame as it meant that we couldn't walk around the coffee plantations like we planned, Boquete is world renowned for its coffee; it's geisha coffee retails for mere $170 per pound. It was a relief to see the back of Boquete, not that we wouldn't recommend going there, we were just unlucky with the weather and our choice of hostel (we find the simple things can make or break a place).