Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Coffee
418
The Panama Plantations
Wear Your Panama Hat
Boquete, Panama
Boquete, in Panama—a charming colonial
mountain town with flowers spilling from
window boxes everywhere—is no longer
off the beaten track, now that it has been
rated one of the best places in the world to
retire. But for coffee lovers, it's worth trav-
eling here for another reason: Some of the
finest Arabica beans in the world are
grown in the western highlands right
around Boquete.
On the rich volcanic slopes of Volcán
Barú, Panama's highest mountain, coffee
orchards are still planted the traditional
way—combined with shade trees, a tech-
nique that not only prevents soil exhaus-
tion but allows rare shade-loving varieties
such as typica and geisha to thrive. Tour-
ing the plantations, you'll also notice that
the workers are generally indigenous
nomads, the Ngöbe Buglé people, who for
generations have tended the crops up
here and hand-picked their red coffee ber-
ries. It's a perfect model of sustainability,
proving that the old ways sometimes are
the best.
Three top-notch local producers offer
excellent tours of their plantations and pro-
cessing plants.
Café Ruiz
(
&
507/720-1000;
www.caferuiz-boquete.com), family owned
for three generations, runs tours beginning
from its roadside shop just north of down-
town Boquete in Palmira; the tours go into
special depth on their processing plant,
which also processes coffee for more than
300 smaller farmers in the area. Three
times in the past decade, Café Ruiz has won
international awards for the world's best
coffee. And in years when it doesn't win,
Kotowa Coffee Estate
(in Palo Alto, east
of Boquete;
&
507/720 3852;
www.
kotowacoffee.com) takes the prize instead.
Kotowa's comprehensive plantation tour
shores up the contrast between the origi-
nal 100-year-old mill and the state-of-the-
art processing plant (with all the latest
environmentally friendly adaptations).
Finca Lérida,
in Alto Quiel northwest of
town, offers the most deluxe tour—a day-
long jaunt up the mountainside to the Col-
lins family's ranch house, where a ramble
through the orchards and processing plant
is followed by a lunch of Panamanian local
dishes. You can stay overnight at Finca
Lérida's ecolodge (see Lodging below), an
option that's also available in bungalows
nestled in the orange grove at Barry and
Jane Robbins's coffee farm (
The Coffee
Estate Inn,
see Lodging, below). Bring your
binoculars; both places also happen to offer
spectacular bird-watching. That's what eco-
friendly coffee planting will do for you.
(
David (45 min. from Boquete).
L
$$
La Montaña Y El Valle/Coffee
Estate Inn,
Jaramillo Arriba (
&
507/720-
2211;
www.coffeeestateinn.com). $$
Finca Lerida,
Alto Quiel (
&
507/720-2285;
www.fincalerida.com).
