My Swedish neighbor from Boquete recommended an excellent book to me about Boquete that was written in 2001. The book gives a very detailed history of Boquete.

The book is in Spanish and is called, Boquete: Rasgos de su Historia, by Milagros Sánchez Pinzón. If you want to learn Spanish this is an excellent book to read: great detail, written in a very smooth, Spanish style that is easy to understand to the non-native speaker. From reading the book I came to learn that the town of Boquete was really established in 1911, that was the year that a municipal government was set up, though there had been people coming into region much earlier than that. The rich volcanic soil attracted prospective coffee growers and coffee has remained one of the mainstays of the economy in Boquete. The town attracted not only Panamanians but also people from Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Canada. They settled in the area for the same reasons people are settling there today: a climate and countryside that is exceptionally healthy and an environment that is relaxed and friendly, if you play your cards right. 

I opened the book and read first about Emilio Christian Kant who was born in Russia in 1864 in the home of his German parents, Julius and Louisa; he studied medicine at the University of Dortat, but his joining the Imperial German army stopped his studies. He was deserter from the German army as he hated military service; after deserting, he made his way to Africa; from Africa he went to the U.S. and from the U.S. to Costa Rica where he joined forces with Minor Copper Keith, the great American railway builder of Central America and founder of the United Fruit Company. Keith, from Tennessee, built the railway in Costa Rica that connected the highland capital of San José to the Caribbean port town of Limon. The railway was completed in 1890 and laid the foundation for the Costa Rican banana economy. Kant at the age of 24 arrived in Panama from Costa Rica. He bought land in a place called Alto Lino where he helped found the coffee industry in Boquete. In the book on Boquete there is a picture of Kant taken sometime between 1900-1905 that shows him sitting on a high mountain peak, probably overlooking the town, with some other Germans and a group of Panamanians: in the photo he is holding the old Imperial flag of Germany, while a Panamanians fly their national flag in the background. Kant would stay on in Boquete and find a wife, have 10 children and die in 1927.

Another foreigner to move into the area at about the same time as Kant was an Englishman by the name of Henry John Watson. Watson was born in Conventry in central England in 1870. He was educated at a British nautical school which allowed him to acquire the rank of captain and commander; after finishing his studies he went to work for the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. After visiting Boquete, on a job that took him to Panama as a sailor, he stopped sailing and became a coffee farmer and hotel owner in the hills of Boquete. He met a beautiful part Spanish, part Panamanian girl by the name of Manuelita who he fell madly in love with. They married and built the first hotel in the area, the Hotel Lino and had eight boys. Watson’s family had been involved in the coal mining industry in England and so he used some of the family fortune and invested it in Boquete where he became one of the largest coffee producers. He also became a great collector of indigenous art which he uncovered while building the hotel. The hotel was famous in the area and hosted many famous vistors: presidents of Panama as well as the famous naturalists Henri Pittier. Watson also built the first power plant in Panama outside of the American controlled Canal Zone; in 1914 Boquete received electricity from a plant set up by Watson. 

Boquete also had a railroad that connected it to the town of David 40 kilometers away. Charles Lindbergh also visited Boquete and stayed at the Panamonte Hotel in January 1928. His trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris occured the year before. There is a picture that shows Lindbergh eating an orange and sitting on a bench in front of the Panamonte Hotel.

You should know that there are more stories like the ones I’ve talked about above in Boquete: Rasgos de su Historia . What you might find very interesting is that since living in Panama I’ve seen these same kinds of stories from a century ago unfold in front of me today: foreigners – both male and female - falling in love and making a life for themselves in Panama. Foreigners and romance and making an adventure of it is something that seems to be in the air in Panama. 

We finished lunch at the Bistro Boquete and as I was playing with my camera, one of the expats at the bar asked me if the new batteries I was putting in my camera worked. I replied that yes they did work. He told me that when they didn’t he always took them back and demanded new batteries. “You can do it”, he said. He introduced himself as Matthew from Wyoming. He was a Vietnam veteran, and had moved to Boquete with his wife whom he had met while living in the States. He told me options were running out in the States, people were losing options so he had left. He went on. His sons were with him, he wanted them out of the States before their draft numbers came up. They were in kindergarden, he later revealed. He wanted them to have dual citizenship so they could choose whether to be drafted or not. He told me that his wife’s family was big with the new phone company – I had passed many of their  billboards during the drive to Boquete - but that his wife’s family was also into eggs and it was funny how something could grow so big in such a small place like Panama. He wanted to know if I had lots of homework when I was in kindergarten as his kids were getting lots now that they were attending school in Panama. He mentioned to me that he had vacationed in Costa Rica the winter before and that you had to be careful in Costa Rica as people were dangerous. 

There might have been more to this little “bistro” than I had realized - though I decided the moment I had entered the place that I didn’t want to know what that “more” was. And as I connected the dots of his monologue, and it was a one-sided conversation, I realized that everything he had said to me added up to nothing and that he had really made no impression on me and so we said goodbye without any difficulty. 

We jumped in the car and started the long winding and incredibly beautiful drive to Alto Quiel and the house of our friend Doña Beatriz. Alto Quiel is 15 minutes from Boquete by car.

We arrived to a set of concrete tracks that ran through green grass that led to Doña Beatriz’s house. There were four of us in the car and the small Toyota didn’t have the power to make it up the wet hill. We tried and almost got stuck; after which, we almost slid off the road down a small hill. I backed the car down the hill and the others got out and I climbed the hill alone. I pulled in the stone driveway of Doña Beatriz’s house and noticed there was no one at home; only three dogs, each of which was strategically placed around the exterior of the home. I got out and watched the others climb the hill that I had just driven up. When completing the climb they looked winded and walked straight by me without saying a word as though they were mad at me for being able to climb the hill in the car without them. The chained dogs barked wildly in the underbrush as a young girl walked by us in a dark blue light raincoat. She did not say a word to us and headed down a path that led to fields of vegetables, though the fields were not visible from our position near the house. There was a soft rain coming in from off the nearby hills. The fields were a deep brown to black color and onions grew around as well as some fruit trees – mango and lemon – and we hid from the rain under a small tin roof. After some time and along a path came Doña Beatriz with her planting clothes on: holes in everything and a roundish straw hat that looked very beaten. She said hello to Gabi and acknowledged me with a nod and inside we went. The rain was lighter now and it settled into a fine mist: the long tropical clouds cut through the tops of volcanoes outside and the bright reds and oranges of the exterior of the house began to become luminescent in the 3:30 light. 

We had bought some red wine and cheese in Boquete for our host. She offered us food and we were not interested in food, but she brought out a plate of oranges and grapes and apples which went very well with the inexpensive French red wine we had bought. We talked about the house and a little about what had happened since we had last visited: we talked to each other very quickly and darted around the house, trying to open wine and running into each other and talking in formal tones but with scattered thoughts.

The house was a very large A-frame with a second story balcony you walked out onto in the front. She told me a Brazilian she had met in Boquete had painted the house for cheap, but on the condition he could you use the paint he had: orange, yellow, dark green and a very light red pastel color: the house had a happiness to it that was infectious to the red wine. 

We sat down at the table and Gabi talked in rapid fire Spanish that I didn’t quite get, though I understood the gist of it. I then asked Doña Beatriz what she thought of the new foreigners that had moved into town. The question was loaded dice because she knew I would ask it. And she might have guessed what I thought I would hear. It was the question I was meant to ask, or so I thought. She told me that some of the foreigners were only interested in the young girls; they wanted nothing to do with people like her; she had hoped to meet one of them and make friends, or who knows what, romance, maybe: she told me she was through with men, but that she would have liked to take care of someone who was at the end of their life.

I changed the subject and asked her about the Romanian gypsies she had let live on the farm since the last time we had visited 10 months before. She smiled and said oh, god, they were terrible; the wife smoked five packs of cigarettes and coughed all the time and the husband said he could make sausage on the farm and so her daughter had bought a sausage making machine for the gypsies in the hope they could sell the sausages in the town of Boquete, but the gypsies had made sausages that tasted like “bacalo from the sea”; in other words, not good. Now you might ask how did Romanian gypsies come to live in her house.

The Romanians arrived in Costa Rica with the idea of permanently working and living in Costa Rica; the arrangement to go to Costa Rica from Romania had been made through a Romanian who lived and worked in Costa Rica. The gypsies used all their money to get to Costa Rica from Romania; they were broke when they arrived in Panama. In the end, the arrangement in Costa Rica was a fraud and needing to exit the country, they had somehow made it over the border to Panama. Doña Beatriz’s daughter then met them after having taken her mother – Doña Beatriz – to have eye surgery in Panama City for her cataracts. The daughter took to the Romanians because she wanted to help them: her brother-in-law who works in Panama is Romanian, so she wanted to sow good faith with other Romanians. So she decided to help them. 

On the side of her mother’s house in Alto Quiel, the daughter had built a small concrete addition which consisted of a small bedroom and small bathroom. Comfortable for a weekend getaway - she is a lawyer in Panama City, but was born and raised in the fresh air of Alto Quiel, so she needs to go to the mountains to relax: this was where she stayed. The Romanian family of four or five moved into this small room and began to do little else other than to make bad sausage and smoke tons of cigarettes. 

In total the Romanians were there for six months: Doña Beatriz finally chased them away with her Brazilian shotgun that had no shells. They scrambled off and away. She laughed when she told us that the gypsy mother had walked outside, just before being forced to leave, and spun around in a circle, then held her breasts, and asked Doña Beatriz, “how much to you think I could get a night in Panama City”. The first time Doña Beatriz had asked the Romanians to leave they had said "no way, we need to stay; its not time to leave". That’s when she got her Brazilian shotgun out. It was a funny story and when she grabbed a knife in the kitchen, after recounting the departure of the gypsies, the black plastic handle broke and she said to me, "just like the gitanos". 

We talked and had good time and laughed and went outside to look around and walked up to some greenhouses that had corn growing in them, beyond the greenhouses a stone driveway led to some wooden buildings where a dog barked and wood smoke swirled around in the moist air. People went in and out of the house and glanced at us from a distance and then went inside. The barking dog approached us and then walked away slowly and then began to run playfully to the wooden houses. There was a stone road that ran perpendicular to the road we had walked on into the fields. We headed back to the house and then Doña Beatriz and Gabi walked up the same road we had and talked. My friend Jim and I walked around the house looking at the flowers and vegetables that grew everywhere. If you come to Boquete and decide to stay, get into gardening even if you don’t like it; try it. It’s the best way to meet people in Panama, because people love to talk about their gardens and give you seeds and suckers to plant. Panamanians enjoy meeting people in this way.

We left Doña Beatriz’s house at 3:30 and headed for a development in Boquete that is popular with expats. But when we arrived to the main gate of the complex they told us the power was out and that they were working on fixing the problem so we could not go in: fair enough. We checked into a great little hotel in Boquete called Isla Verde. Little German roundhouses in a beautiful small piece of land with hills and a small outdoor restaurant made of glass. The rooms were nice: refrigerator, stove, no oven, and tableware for eating in. The floor level had a double-bed and there was a ladder that led to a loft that had two single beds. We went into town and ate at an excellent Mexican restaurant called Tacos y Tacos that made great burritos; the inside was made of the same rough wood as the outside. We had a good time. Gabi told me the beans tasted as though they had come from Costa Rica; it was an interesting comment because Doña Beatriz told me she liked to buy her foodstuffs in Costa Rica, especially cooking oil.

Early in the morning I got up and drove up to Alto Quiel and far beyond. I took the road until Volcan Baru National Park. There was talk of connecting Boquete with Cerro Punta, another town in the highlands, but that plan has been cancelled. The Park would be left to nature: you could hike 12 kilometers through the Park and arrive to the town of Cerro Punta from Boquete, a walk that would take you through a beautiful tropical forest filled with plants and animals that you could really only dream about. I went back to hotel after the drive; the others had breakfast, I ate some Spanish ham and Panamanian white cheese on local crackers and a coke: the long six-hour drive to Panama City would take most of my energy. We had bags of vegetables and fruits from Doña Beatriz’s garden, but for the first three days after the trip to Boquete I only wanted to sleep; that’s how exhausted I was by the long drive there and back.

Short Trip To Isla Grande

Well I had not planned going to Isla Grande again for some time but Ron Keith came to town from Nashville and he wanted to head to the island to have fun. Ron is a good friend of the Cash family and has been coming to Panama since his military days in the U.S Army in the mid-1970s. He brought along a friend, Dave, a CPA from Nashville who wanted to Escape America and have some good clean fun; I like it when people like this visit us in Panama. Time to have Fun! Off we went with a little drinkd, food and music. We were headed to the island, a great ritual: feels great to get to the fresh air and Caribbean Ocean. The late evening light was perfect on the ride out and so I took some pictures of the landscape and farms on the way to the island. We stayed at Ron’s former house on the island, drank, swam in the ocean, and took a boat ride with Dave to a secluded island and mangrove swamp. We passed the old French lighthouse on the ocean side of the island and went into the night. 

The second morning on the island I was invited by a good friend in the nearby town of Juan Gallego to take a walk up into the hills to where his family had just recently built a house on their farmland. The walk was brisk and helped me sweat out the night before; I was covered with sweat after the long walk. We grabbed some fresh bananas on the way up and ate them. Most of the walk was over open hillside cattle pasture. And an isolated tree appeared now and then on the hillside seemingly guiding our way up. In the small valleys trees grew around small streams that flowed off the hillsides. There were monkeys running around in the trees and the palm trees flowered with little fruits called corozos, which I was told were fed to pigs or used as a hair gel for slicking your hair back. Berto, my friend, took me to his property and introduced me to his parents; we took some photos; he showed me a tree where someone who had stayed with his family had hung themselves a month before: apparently the sucide victim had tried to kill his girlfriend out of jealousy; he thought he had killed her, but she had survived with out too much damage because her brother had intervened before something really bad had happened. She had been cut but not badly. However, the boyfriend mistakenly thought, for whatever reason, that he had killed the girl and so he hung himself. He climbed a small tree that was 20 feet high, tied the rope to the highest limb and had jumped to his death, leaving his rubber sandals next to the tree. 

We descended the hills and crossed back from the mainland to Isla Grande after having had a morning snack and light conversation with some of the fine people of Juan Gallego.

Hotels

Hotel Isla Verde, Boquete Click Here

Other articles by the author:
 

• Lost Valley Of Panama ~ Agua de Salud
• Santa Catalina And Coiba Prison Island ~ Little Known Frontiers
• John Wayne Island ~ In An Imaginary Tropical Western
• Hiding Out In Panama - The Hotel Ideal
• Travel To Nombre de Dios ~ A Very Famous Unknown Place
• Living And Investing In Panama ~ What To Look Out For
• Looking At Property On Contadora Island ~ Exploring The History And Landscape Of An Island
• Isla Grande ~ The Lost Sides Of Isla Grande.
• An Interview With John Carlson ~ Talking With An Old Hand About Investing In Panama
• Altos del Maria - Another Look
• Carnaval 2003 - Hanging In
• Cerro Jefe ~  In An Old Cloud Forest
• Daytrips In Panama ~Looking At Real Estate And Passing Through Colon
• Deep In Veraguas - Traveling Down Backroads In Panama
• El Cope, Cocle ~ And Some Other Ideas
• On The Pacific Coast Of Panama - Traveling Through The Mountains And Beaches Of Panama
• Up On The Contential Divide And Down In The Desert ~ Hiking And Discovering Panama's Beauty
• Playa Grande - The Beauty Of A Remote Panamanian Beach
• Italy In Winter - From Rome To Venice
• Panama And Costa Rica - Thoughts On Both
• The Panama Railroad ~ Panama City To Colon
• The Chiriqui Highlands - R&R