The next stop in our shotgun tour of Panama was Boquete (pronounced with an inflection on the last "e", and not "Bocket" as we found when trying to catch a bus there). Boquete is a tiny village famous for four things: picturesque public gardens, coffee plantations, white water rafting ... and rain. We manage to experience three out of the four in our short time here; the copious quantities of the last item making visits to the first largely pointless. Nevertheless, it was possible to glimpse a very nice chilled-out mountain atmosphere in the short gaps the mist and rain allowed us.
Probably our favourite feature of the village was the improbable 24 hour supermarket, stacked with American style goodies, just a two minute walk/swim from our hostel. I say improbable because here was a fair sized 24 hour supermarket, comparable to a Tesco Metro, situated in a village the size of a postage stamp. In fact the supermarket pretty much was the village. In any case, the steaks, pork chops, tuna sandwiches (made with Hellman's mayonnaise and Lurpack butter!) and mini lemon meringue pies went down very nicely over the 3 nights we spent in Boquete.
On to the white water rafting. Continuing our trend of participating in semi-dangerous adventure sports, we booked a full day outing on the roughest river available. The rapids went up to class 4+. The highest you can go without a certification is class 5, so these were pretty big without being all-out mental. The river itself actually winds through Costa Rica for a bit, so after a few teething problems with some of the other rafters in our party forgetting their passports, we were ready to raft.
The day started well, with the long lost Mr. Sun even making a brief appearance. This made getting completely soaked by the first class 4 all the more bearable. After that the rapids came quick and fast, as did the shouts from our steersman and guide at the back to "Paddle harder!" There was barely time between rapids to wipe the water out of your eyes, let alone rest. After half an hour I was knackered!
Then came the inevitable near-death experience, courtesy of Miss Elizabeth Beresford. After a particularly bumpy class 3 (only class 3 for goodness sake!) I felt something had changed in the aqua-dynamics of the raft. Looking round I saw that Liz was no longer in it. That would explain it then. On further inspection, I noticed that she was thrashing blindly in the water just a few feet from us. She was also just a few feet from going head first into another rapid. I shouted a lot, and the guide (rather more helpfully) extended an oar for her to grab onto. However, because of all the spray she didn't see the oar until the last minute ... when it was too late.
As I watched horrified from the raft, Liz plunged straight into a particularly meaty class 3. She then failed to resurface. For ages. We were told later by our guide that this "ages" amounted to just 3 seconds, but that 3 seconds is a long time to be in a rapid. It certainly felt like it watching from the raft. That 3 seconds was also exactly the amount of time it took me to consider jumping in after her, only to reconsider, and calculate that I could wait at least another 10 seconds without significantly reducing my chances of rescuing her ...
She did, fortunately, resurface, and was then collected with extreme nonchalence by the rescue kayaker. This did nothing to reduce the impact of Liz's exclamation: "Oh my God! I almost died!" when she was deposited back on the raft. Luckily she was far enough away from death to enjoy the rest of the rafting: 4 hours of strength-sapping, near constant white water, much of it in torrential rain. It was awesome! At one point our guide shouted above the thunderstorm: "This next rapid is a class 4, but gets to a class 5 in the rainy season!" Apparently we weren't in the rainy season ...
In any case, despite getting very wet, and Liz almost dying - it was a great day. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures, because taking a camera white water rafting would be a very silly thing to do. The pictures above are after we finished ... and are soaking.
The next day - and our final day in Panama - it was raining. We did however manage to make it to a coffee plantation. More specifically, we made it to a coffee house adjoining the coffee plantation, but I think given the circumstances, that definitely counts. It was here that I had the best cappuccino I've ever tasted ... and then danced in the rain with an umbrella.
All that we had left to do then, was to buy the biggest box of cookies seen outside of the US and sit in our warm, dry, hostel room eating them for the rest of the day. Next up ... Costa Rica!
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