He wants Boquete. I want Santa Fe. Now what?

Boquete, Panama: 

Somewhat cute, cool, wet, flooded with foreigners and sweet restaurants, great bakeries, classy coffee shops, and lots of high end homes including various castles.

Boquete is Expat Central - totally the opposite of Santa Fe. Looking over our pictures, we focused on the outlying mountains and scenery, and spent very little time in the town. The hills surrounding the valley are full of gated communities, large estates, and coffee fincas.

Then, when Jeff said that we should look for places to rent in Boquete . . . the hair on my neck bristled.  "Oh really?!"

I thought Jeff was thinking, "How could we go wrong here?" 

I was thinking, if we wanted to live in Sierra Madre, California, why go to the trouble of going to Central America?!!



JEFF: My thought was to look at the price and condition of rental homes in Boquete before we returned to Santa Fe. Call it due diligence. I do like Santa Fe, but I was concerned about its isolation for a first-time rental  situation. Boquete is at the opposite extreme.

Funny thing happened.

We did something completely different, and we'll tell you about it in the next post.

Boquete is known for its "spring-like" climate - a rare thing in hot Central America.

Basalt columns make a great climbing wall.

The streams around Boquete are pure, fresh mountain water flowing straight out of the high, rainy jungle.

"Queen of the Night"  grows along many of the mountain roads, rivers, driveways, etc., etc.  (Queen of the Road)

An abandoned dream estate - decaying by a river in the jungle.

Back in the Bromeliad zone.  Bromelaids are beautiful - but too much of anything can kill, as this tree attests to.

These jungle mountains are part of the Amistad National Park, the only inter-national NP in the world, partly in Panama and partly in Costa Rica.

90% of Panama's veggies are grown on the slopes of Volcan Baru.  This is a view of the Boquete side of the slopes.

Every day the afternoon clouds roll in from the Pacific Ocean which is only 33 miles south of us, or from the Caribbean, just 20 miles to the north.  This is a skinny place, indeed!