Honduras to Panama

The journey from Honduras to Panama brings forth 4 flights, 3 taxi journeys (including a sizeable de-tour to avoid an equally sizable protest against a hydro-electric dam project), 1 bus ride and a little bit of jogging.

It’s dusk when I arrive in the town of Boquete, which is a key coffee growing region in Panama. With both an attractive town and scenic, mountainous surroundings, Boquete is also an important tourist area and home to a growing retirement population from North America. All of this activity is forcing up the price of real estate in the local area with the  impact of a loss of agricultural land, including areas planted to coffee.

Whilst not enjoying the profile of other Central American coffee origins like Costa Rica, Panama produces some excellent specialty coffees, particularly around Boquete. In amongst the standard commercial coffees it may have been previously recognised for, the varying regions, Arabica varietals and micro-climates all contribute to a wide and complex range of tastes and flavours in these fine coffees.

Roasters and coffee importers in the UK have been strangely reluctant to embrace this origin and as a result much of the coffee, whether filler for coffee blends or boutique micro-lots, tends to head for the US. As a result, having previously visited Guatemala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua in years gone by,  this feels like quite an adventure!

Local Beers

Balboa and Atlas are advertised everywhere but remain sadly untested due to an inconvenient bout of something tropical.