Nine Degrees North - Part 4

continued from Part 3

Get up early in time to catch an early  boat from Bastimentos to Almirante.  Early enough that the sun was barely off the ground.  It's been raining off and on since yesterday and the road downhill is slippery.  I'm careful to not fall, using a walking stick much of the way  Lots of folks using walking sticks around these parts.  Basically, it's a good strong small branch from a tree.  We catch the boat over to Bocas town and another to Boquete via Almirante.  We've got a wait in Bocas, time for coffee and a snack, chatting a bit with others in the waiting game.  A young woman from Germany, another from Switzerland, two more from India via Germany.  Four additional Americans.  

Across the water, we leave our life jackets behind and get into the shuttle van that will take us up and over the hills, through the woods and into the rainforest.  When we’re on this road, that's it.  No intersections, no crossroads, no frontage roads.  Just a road.  Plenty of little covered bare-bones stops for people along the road to wait for the next ride.  Which seems to depend on IF there are any empty seats, or spaces on the bus.  Buses come by often enough here in mid-Panama.  

The trip itself was beautiful, slipping through rain forest, quiet sunshine and wet drippy clouds as we skirted over the tippy top of the mountains, blessed with a rainbow or two.  I'm convinced these drivers are the best in the world.

Dropping down from on high into quite dry vegetation, flatland and ... OMG.  We run smack into a four lane hiway and are quickly speeding past fields spotted with grazing cows.  I hadn’t seen that kind of road in a while.  I had been so throughly in love with & engulfed in the laid back country culture of the past several days.  A bit of culture shock going off in my head, and my gut.  Pedestrian bridge overpasses from one side of the concrete biway to the other.  A myriad of cars rushing by, more than we’d seen in several days.  Over to the left of the

road, far in the distance, a big fancy golf course sprinkling valuable H2O over a lush gleaming carpet of green.   I'm thinking back to the past few days, side by side with families who've set up elaborate water catching devices just to stay alive.  

Boquete sits in a beautiful fertile valley, below  Barú Volcano, bisected by Rio Caldera.  We're at 3900 feet above sea level, similar to where Tom lives in Mt. Shasta.  It’s much cooler than the Caribbean coast.  Population about 18,000.  Ten to fifteen per cent expats, mostly from the US and Europe, others who have moved here from other Central and South American countries.  

It seems as if everyone here has a car.  Lots of  guys a lot older than me driving around in their new SUVs.  The main Street, Avenida Central runs the entire length of the town, north to south.  Local boutiques, eateries, bars, lodging and transport services cluster around the main plaza.  Leaving downtown, you have a choice of several paved and gravel roads that climb into the hills and forests.

Many of the new ‘locals’ tell us that business, real estate in particular, is thriving here.  Dozens of bars, restaurants, cafes and more than 50 hotel/B&B, hostels, etc.  Way too much enterprise for me in this part of the world.  We overheard much talk about housing developments, single family home sales, politics, taxes, fences, business.  It's election time here in Panama.  Wherever we go, we hear and see pick-up trucks roving up and down the streets, blaring loudspeakers to encourage a vote for their guys or gals - scores of political signs and billboards around, wherever we go.

The town of Boquete is small enough that you can easily walk it, similar to Bocas town.  The town square, just off the river, is flanked by the old Post Office where we bought stamps and mailed off a few post cards.  The post cards in Bocas and Boquete aren’t much to look at.  I think that’s a business opportunity waiting to happen, folks.  Seriously, some of the ugliest post cards I saw, had the whole left side writing side covered with a recipe for Panamanian Bread Pudding, or Flan.  While I love Panamanian Bread Pudding and Flan, I wanted to find some beautiful picture-perfect post cards of rainforests, every shade of green you can conjure up, flowers, rainbows, song-birds.  We eventually found a rack, somewhere, with some half-way decent cards.  Business Op, I’m telling you.

The locals, and me, too, enjoy mingling and meeting up on the square.  When I'm off to see the world, I want to feel the people.  Town squares are the best place to do that.  Families, working stiffs, women folk, groups of kids enjoying some kick back time beneath the many big shade trees and covered concrete benches that border the square. Over to the corner one day was a big covered booth set up by Claro, one of four cell phone carriers in the state.  I had their sim card in my phone, so I know  their logo.  I'm thinking that Claro must also be a sat TV provider, due to all the bright red satellite dishes sitting on roof tops from Costa Rica to Panama.

The flowers, shrubs here were amazing.  Pines, leafy trees, flowering trees, plants, bushes and hibiscus everywhere.  I'm astounded to see hydrangea and begoinias as well.  Lots of hummingbirds buzz buzz buzz.  

The cultural divide is alive and well here in Boquete.  We pass by youngsters playing futbol in a big empty lot, yelling and laughing, surrounded by a wire fence and a tiny shack of a home on the  squash gardens. 

Right next door is a $300,000 house for sale, fairly new, a western looking job.  Large houses sit high overlooking the entire valley, surrounded by small shacks hidden by the rainforest vegetation that covers this beautiful countryside.

I don’t know why, I was just a bit taken aback by all the westernization of this one-time beautiful former gold mining town.  I know it happens everywhere.  I see it happen everywhere I go.  Friends told us that 10 short years ago, there were two hotels when they moved to Boquete.  Now four score + of them.  

Maybe some of my angst was related to was overhearing one of the Americans sitting next to us in a restaurant regaling her visiting American friends of her house-building plans.  “Oh, yes, well, of course it will have three levels of security, steel fences, barbed wire on top and steel gates on all the windows and doors.”  Really, it was sad.  

I found my self giggling one day, walking back to our little little apartment from town.  We passed a video arcade, door wide open, all the windows blacked out with heavy paper.  We could see 5-6 TV screens set upon dusty 6’ long tables along the walls.  A couple of puberty age boys sitting there, hand controllers, fingers alive, playing video games.  Reminded me of hometown USA, so many years ago, when noone had computers at home.  I think that’s how the locals in Boquete live.  Though, like I said earlier, I do see lots of sat TV dishes.  Futbol is alive and well!

Tom was off on the Pipeline Hiking Trail one day, where he had a good hike, binoculars in hand, hat on his head.  He was able to catch a glimpse of several different birds, met some fine walkers and discovered a waterfall along the way.  I, on the other hand, was spending that particular  afternoon walking,  relaxing and meandering through the shops along the square.  I settled into a quaint open air tavern and had a nice cold local beer.  Spent a while sketching and writing.  And then -  getting my long awaited mani-pedi with Shirly, who has a shop kitty-korner to the square. 

Sherly spoke a little English, I spoke enough Spanish. We had a good time together.  After a bit of brutal contemplation, I picked bright red for my toenails, and clear for my fingers.  After a while, we were enjoying each other's company, she asked me why I picked 'clear' for my finger nails.  In my best Latin American Spanish, I think I told her, “A my casa, yo ‘garden’, trabajar y yard, paint - no buena nails.”  You can see me flitting and playing with my fingers in the air to demonstrate.  

“Ahh, pintura, trabajar, jardin, si buena,” Shirley replied as we both laughed.

We'd arranged ahead of time a reservation with Richard and Dee’s AirBnB, the Garden Oasis, just a few blocks from the square.  They told us they'd moved to Boquete from San Francisco several years ago, when, as Dee tells it, we fell in love with the place.  They barely stepped foot there and voila!  They owned a coffee plantation & a home.  

One beautiful early eve, Richard took us on a quick tour of his organic coffee plantation.  Pretty amazing place where we learned how tough it is on small farmers to compete with the big guys.  It’s all about the shipping costs, the volume of beans ready to sell, or lack of it.  He employs one local guy fulltime, and many others during various times of the season.

We bought a few bags of his coffee on the spot right off the shelf across the room from their roaster.  Smooth, rich and tasty coffee that I'm enjoying right this minute. 

Driving in the SUV with Richard the 3-4 miles up the mountain to his farm, we passed by several locals walking alongside the narrow two lane road in the midst of forest and coffee plantations.  The workers and other local natives who don’t have cars, so they walk up and down the mountain as a matter of course.

We learned that Richard & Dee’s Finca Dos Jefes coffee farm helps to support several Ngabe Bugle children in their nearby school, I believe grades 6-9.  The kids benefit from Dos Jefes vegetable and fruit gardens and orchards.  We were very impressed and happy to hear this bit of news.  We want to continue to buy coffee from Finca Dos Jefes, to continue to support that work.  I really wasn’t too surprised to hear how much this retired couple from San Franncico is doing in their new town.  Richard told us he was formerly the Director of Meals on Wheels, SF & Dee, well she was a teacher before retiring.  We met some good people on this trip & new friends.

See final chapter 5 .... soon to come