Visiting Panama Soon -- Boquete & Pedasi

http://indacampo.wordpress.com/  This person lives in the Padasi area so her blog might interest you.

Bring comfortable clothes for warm weather and some layers for the cooler weather of Boquete. Bring good walking shoes. Avoid short skirts or shorts (women dress modestly here). Sunscreen and sunglasses are good or buy some here. Bugs aren't much of a problem. It's rainy season so an umbrella is handy.

http://boquetetravelguide.com/  This site has lots of info about Boquete for visitors.
http://www.hablayapanama.com/  These folks also have activities in Boquete, and you don't have to be a student.

Oh! don't forget your camera

Kris

MizzouFan wrote:

Hi All,

Awhile back I posted some questions regarding the "best" place to visit and live in Panama - Previous Thread

Well, just as a follow-up, a friend and I will be visiting Panama within the next month. While we'll only be there for about a week, we're planning on spending a day or two in Boquete with the remainder of the time in the Pedasi/Playa Venao area.

If anyone has any suggestions on what to bring for the trip (sunscreen? bug spray?) or things to do (rock climbing? kite surfing?), please let me know. Also, if there's anyone that lives in the Pedasi area and wants to get together for lunch, send me a private message. I'd love to get some information about living in Panama from someone who has done it.

I'll update this thread after my trip with my thoughts.

Thanks!

If you need to know anything about Pedasi/Venao area contact Charlie on:
thepanamaportal
His blog is great and his knowledge is amazing..
Bilingual

Just to follow-up on my own thread....

My friend and I arrived in Panama on 6/30, at around 3pm. After getting our luggage and a rental, car we headed for Boquete. It's quite a long car ride from Tocumen (the int'l airport) to Boquete so we split it up over two days. The first night we stopped in Las Lajas and were lucky enough to find a B&B late into the night -- Residence Las Lajas. The owners were awesome; they basically saved us from having to sleep in the car (long story) and gave us a nice, clean room which ended up having an awesome view. Not only that, but our breakfast the next morning was amazing. I can't recommend their place enough if you're ever in the area. We checked out the next morning, went to the nearby (basically deserted) beach and then hopped in the car to go to Boquete...

The drive to Boquete was nice with some good scenery. We arrived around 1pm local time and decided to get a room at a hostal right off the main road and then walk around. Our hostal was pretty run-down but it was sufficient for a night (and only $10/person). My initial impression of Boquete was that it was a nice, friendly town. The scenery and views are quite beautiful too. There were a lot of people out and about, with a good mix of locals and foreigners. Like most of the towns I saw in Panama, some parts of it are a little bit older and dirtier (at least, compared to where I live in the States) but I never felt unsafe or threatened.

There are quite a few little stores and shops with some trinkets and souvenirs.  We tried to go on a nature walk around the town but we eventually got rained out. After all, it is the rainy season and it simply poured most of the afternoon. After getting out of the rain and drying off we eventually ended up eating at a little cafeteria right off the main road -- the food was cheap ($3.50 or so for a lunch/dinner plate) and was pretty good.  In fact, we ended up eating breakfast there the next morning ($1.75 for eggs, bread, and a cafe con leche) before heading out for some rock climbing.

There are quite a few activities that you can do in Boquete (rent ATVs, rock climb, rafting) but I'm glad we chose rock climbing. It was a beautiful morning and our rock climbing guide was amazing. I would absolutely recommend going if you're in the area.

We left soon after finishing rock climbing so that we could move on to the Pedasi region. I'll see if I can post some pics of Boquete. While we didn't do a whole lot of exploring, it was nice town and I can see why a lot of expats choose to live there. For those of you that are interested, I'll update this thread with some of the other stuff we saw/did in Pedasi, Playa Venao, and El Valle.

Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to answer; thanks for reading!