November 5 & 6, 2009

Travel to and in Boquete

I spent all day on the 6th traveling to Boquete. First by taxi from my hotel in Panamá to the big bus terminal, then by bus to David (7 hours), then another hour in an old yellow school bus up a canyon to Boquete. The bus ride was uneventful, mostly. We traveled along the Pan-American Highway so it was paved and four lanes most of the way. They showed us American movies dubbed and subtitled in Spanish (mostly containing people kicking, stabbing, and shooting one another) which I didn’t watch a whole lot of. I’m really not sure what I did for all those hours. I dozed quite a bit, but never slept. I didn’t read, I didn’t listen to my ipod, I did thoroughly adore the adorable baby sitting across the aisle from me, but I’m sure that wasn’t all I did. At one location there was a checkpoint and they made all the men get off the bus with their backpacks. No one around me really knew what was going on, the girl next to me said “I think they are looking for someone.” Hmm.

But I got to Boquete safe last night, checked into my hotel, showered and changed my clothes (both things I hadn’t done since Tuesday). I didn’t feel like venturing far, so I ate a pasta dinner at the hotel, also the first real meal I’d eaten since Tuesday, and went to bed early, thoroughly exhausted.

I slept in this morning and decided my goal for the day would be to walk along every street in town to get a feel for the place.

Boquete (bo-keh-tay) is small, about 3500 people, or 2-3 times the size of Ned. It feels like a small town, and it is tucked up a canyon, next to a raging river in the mountains.

The elevation is only about 3200 feet, but it is at the foot of an 11,000 foot volcano. I plan on climbing that at some point while I am here. Basically the town is Nederland if you double the size, replace the hippies with Panamains, keep the Yuppies (there are a lot of ex-pats), and put it in a jungle while keeping the pine trees.

I walked out of town one way, father up the canyon, and passed a heavenly smelling coffee factory. I kept going and came to “Mi Jardin es Su Jardin” or my garden is your garden, this slightly delusional private garden some guy with too much time put together, but it is free and open to the public. So I went. There were about a thousand Coi swimming in the ponds, and the pictures will just have to describe the rest.

Yes, that is a topiary brontosaurus.



Don't touch the burritos.

I walked back down the canyon and had the best cup of coffee of my life at Café Ruiz (and I don’t even like coffee). I then walked up the road that follows the river and found a washed out house next to a little drainage:

And destroyed bridge over the main river:

Then I came upon this landslide which has completely closed the road.

From what I gather, some incredible rains came through on Tuesday, and at 3 pm, the hills let go all along the east side of town causing some pretty massive damage. In addition, the river became a torrent that afternoon and completely wiped out the bridge. For those of you who care (and the funny thing is, I know a lot of you do), the abutment scoured out and literally washed away (from what I can tell, the bridge used to cause a huge constriction in the flow; it doesn’t any longer…), the deck dropped, and well, the whole thing is pretty much gone (I kinda wish I could have seen it happen). As if there was ever a better time for an engineer and geomorphologist to come to Boquete on vacation…

The crew working on cleaning things up was super nice, and spent a long time talking with me. I decided to come down everyday day and check out their progress which first of all is interesting to me, and second of all, will help me learn some construction Spanish which will be helpful for my career. Third, they might let me help them and if they do, perhaps I can drive the backhoe. I also should go take picture of the bridge devastation from the other bank, you can see a lot more. And, I’m not sure these hills are done sliding and this river is done eating into its banks...stay tuned...I’ll post right away if something geomophologically interesting goes down.

I then got stuck in a downpour walking back to my hotel, I knew it was coming since all the little creeks started looking like this:

And it’s been pouring rain ever sense. So I’m siting on the covered veranda of my hotel, overlooking the river and watching it get higher and higher and muddier and muddier. This rain is incredible. I’ve never seen it rain this hard for this long. Think a summer thunderstorm downpour intensity and keep it going for 4 hours. And it is still going strong.