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By air, car or bus. You can fly Air Panama or Aeroperlas from Albrook Airport to the nearby city of David. Airfares are around $100 round trip.

From David, you rent a car or take a 45 minute taxi ride to Boquete. It also is an easy 7 hour car trip from Panama City or you can take a bus ($15) from the Albrook Bus Terminal in Panama City.

There are two options: stay in the village or up on the mountainside. A stay in a village hotel offers walking distance proximity to riverside fair grounds full of flowers, Boquete town sights and good restaurants. See our hotel listings for more information.

• Boquete Bistro - Featuring continental foods flavored with the sauces and spices of a true chef. Prices are reasonable and the servings generous. Conveniently located in a historic building with a full wall mural by a famous Panamanian artist from 1952 on Boquete's main street. Owned and operated by Loretta from Aspen, Colorado.
• Panamonte Hotel - A renowned restaurant with a menu prepared by one of Panama's top chefs: Charlie Collins. Especially recommended are the fresh trout, filet mignon and hearty seafood soup. For vegetarians, the wild mushroom polenta is great.
• Palo Alto Restaurant - Just outside town on scenic site next to the Caldera River, a very popular place with excellent international dishes. Reservations are a must; see our listing for contact information.

Golf

Valle Escondido has a challenging 9-hole golf course in a stunning valley setting—the course plays through Valle Escondido, crossing a beautiful river four times. This is one of the only courses in the world that plays through a working coffee plantation. Facilities include carts, a full-service shop and adjacent El Pueblo for restaurants, bar and coffee shop. Green fees 9 holes $20, 18 holes $30.

Explore the Cloud Forest

Boquete Tree Trek is an exhilarating, adrenaline rush ride. Glide through 3 kilometers of the canopy of a century-old cloud forest high above pristine rivers, waterfalls and landscape bordering Amistad National Park and the Baru Volcano.

World's Best Coffee

Boquete is home to a number of "specialty" or gourmet coffee farms. The special micro-climates of Boquete grow the world's finest gourmet coffee. Hacienda La Esmeralda recently won first place at the two top international cupping competitions.

Coffee farm tours include a visit to the processing plants which prepare the coffee bean for consumption and the farm itself. Coffee farms are set on mountainsides with the coffee bushes on steep slopes. All tours end with a delicious cup of gourmet coffee or a "cupping" which is the coffee equivalent of a wine tasting.

From their roadside coffee shop, Café Ruiz offers a tour of their farm and processing plant. Kotowa Coffee Estate is an excellent tour of a stunning coffee farm and two processing plants—one antique and one modern. The tour ends with a "cupping".

Horseback Riding

Boquete is the perfect countryside for horseback riding, with picturesque views of the Chiriqui river and beautiful flora. To arrange a ride, call Edward Cano at +507-720-1750 ($5 an hour—have your hotel host call him if you don't speak Spanish) or Nolo Picota +507-6644-2377 ($7 an hour). Mr. Canos' guides will take you up for breathtaking mountain views or you can explore by yourself.

Rock Climbing

7 minutes from town rock climbing is permitted on a rock formation called Los Ladrillos (The Bricks) on the road to Baru Volcano National Park. Boquete Climbing offers three rock walls —Mermelada Acil for beginners, Camino Negro for intermediates, and Camino Matrix for advanced climbers. (They are 5.2, 5.3, and 5.5 degrees of difficulty respectively, according to the Yosemite measure.) The cost is $40 and recommended age is 6 and up. Call +507-6536-6390 or email boqueteclimbing@yahoo.com

Hiking

The geography of the land surrounding Boquete is a hiker's dream. There are public trails throughout the area, which have been used by the farmers for generations. The forests are magnificent. As you gain elevation in one cloud forest nearby, you pass four distinct types of vegetation. Enjoy exuberant greenery and picturesque views, including waterfalls. You can go with a guide or you can hike the main roads yourself.

White Water Rafting for Everybody

Hector Sanchez operates Chiriqui River Rafting. Mr. Sanchez and his certified rafting staff are highly recommended based on a perfect safety record after 20 years in the business. They offer everything from a safe and fun trip down the river that any family can enjoy to more challenging "first ascent" for adventures for experts. Many consider the Chiriqui Viejo river one of the 10 best rivers in the world.
Rafting is best during the dry season (June to December) as river levels can be dangerous after too much rain, though rafting during the rainy season is possible

Eight members of our family made the trip in one raft (steered by an on-board guide) along with two kayakers providing additional safety support. It was a thrilling all day trip including 4 hours of rafting broken by a break for a riverside picnic lunch. We sometimes sped and sometimes drifted down the scenic river—as exciting as any ride at Disney World and it lasted a lot longer.

Paradise Gardens

Run by a British expat couple featuring a butterfly garden and exotic animals, many of whom were saved as this beautiful place started out as an animal shelter.

Birding (Seeing a Quetzal for Sure!)

In Boquete there is a birding guide by the name of Chago who is one of the few people who know how to call a quetzal—the holy grail for American birders. Chago is famous for his quetzal viewing tours on the slope of Baru Volcano.

Panama is the last place where it is relatively easy to see a quetzal, considered the most beautiful bird in the Americas. When we took his tour, Chago promised us we would see five quetzals. We spent an hour meandering through a grove of special trees high up on the volcano as Chago made his bird calls—and better than his word—we saw not five but seven quetzals! Chago told us of people who had made 20 trips in Costa Rica trying unsuccessfully to see this rare, magical bird.

In Boquete, Chago guarantees you will see a quetzal anytime of the year, or he will refund you part of your tour fee. Jane from the Coffee Estate Inn reports that between December and May of 2003, all of their guests, without exception, saw between 4 and 12 quetzals on a single tour with Chago. Chago's cellular phone number is +507 6626-2200, and his home phone number is +507-720-4548.

Strolling Around Town

The village lends itself to easy strolls. You can visit the riverside fair grounds with prize winning flowers displays, the small Huaca Museum, handicrafts shops, coffee shops and dine at one of Boquete's fine restaurants. Souvenirs included necklaces bracelets and dresses made by the Ngöbe-Buglé Indians.

A must-do is a visit to "My Garden is Your Garden" a beautiful private garden of local, wealthy family filled with whimsical figures made of flowers.

Resort Communities

More and more people from around the world are deciding to make Boquete their paradise on a more permanent basis. It is hard to imagine a more ideal place for a permanent home, or second home. In fact Modern Maturity—the magazine of the AARP—selected Boquete as one of the top four best places in the world to live outside the United States, a rating based on safety, beauty, climate, infrastructure, stability and cost.

Boquete has an ever growing number of residential projects. Prices are about half of anything comparable in the U.S. and also less than Costa Rica. Two of the best are Valle Escondido and Cielo Paraiso.

Valle Escondido is Boquete's original premiere resort community—the dream-come-true of an American developer who fell in love with Boquete and this hidden valley. Valle Escondido is a planned, architecturally attractive residential community with all the amenities you would expect from a world class development including a 9-hole golf course, a spa, a quaint shopping village, riverside cabins and villas offering overnight and longer stay accommodations.

On a plateau with spectacular 360 degree views of mountains and ocean, Cielo Paraiso is an exclusive resort community of estate residences with a golf course designed by Michael Poellot, opening in 2007.

Boquete's Best Bargains

• Finca Lerida Coffee Farm Tour - only $17.50 for a tour of the farm and processing plant for one of the top 25 coffees in the world. Call +507-720-8065.
• Golf at Valle Escondido - for only $15.21 on a challenging 9 hole course in gorgeous surroundings. Call +507-720-2897.