Boquete

People lived in the Boquete area long before the Spanish arrived. Archaeological studies date early farming settlements around Volcán Barú to between about 300 BC and AD 600, and petroglyphs carved into rocks at Caldera are a record of those villages. During the colonial period the steep highlands were cut off from the rest of the isthmus and served as a refuge for Ngöbe people from the centre of the country and for Miskito from the Caribbean coast. The name Boquete is Spanish for a gap or opening — the pass through which gold seekers once looked for a quicker way to the Pacific.

Settlement began in earnest only in the second half of the 19th century, when families came up from Bugaba, Gualaca and David, joined by a small number of immigrants from Europe — Yugoslavia, France and Germany among them — and from the United States, who started the first coffee plantations and farms. By the early 20th century there were hamlets at Lino, Quiel, Bajo Mono, Los Naranjos and Bajo Boquete. Remote from David, they asked for a district of their own, which was created in 1911. The first seat was Lino, but the capital moved to Bajo Boquete, a change made official in 1941.

A coffee festival began in 1950. On 9 April 1970 a severe flood killed eight people and affected one in three of the district's inhabitants; after the recovery the festival became the Flower and Coffee Fair in 1973. In recent decades a large residential development aimed at foreigners and the arrival of many retirees from North America and Europe turned a quiet farming valley into a well-known home for foreign residents, though agriculture, above all coffee, remains its main industry.

Boquete's culture is a mix of highland farming town and international retirement community. The Flower and Coffee Fair in January is one of the most important fairs in Panama, with flower displays, stalls and music, and an orchid fair follows later in the dry season. The town's patriotic parades in November, for the separation from Colombia and the other national holidays, are as much a part of the calendar as anywhere in the country.

The newcomers have added their own institutions. The Boquete Jazz & Blues Festival, founded in 2007, is the second-largest jazz festival in Panama after the capital's. A group of immigrants formed a theatre company in 2005, and its riverside venue in the centre became the town's first performance space in 2009; it later began staging plays in Spanish too. Its weekly Tuesday market and community meeting became a fixture where foreign and Panamanian residents trade and mix.

Beneath that, the district has three main communities: Ngöbe families from the mountains, many of whom work on the coffee farms; Panamanian townspeople whose families settled the valley; and foreign residents from North America and Europe. The relationship between them, and between old farming habits and new tourism, shapes much of local life. Coffee is a matter of pride, and the valley's estates have won international fame for the Geisha variety.

The Boquete district had about 22,400 inhabitants at the 2010 census, about 4,500 of them in the corregimiento of Bajo Boquete, the town centre, with Los Naranjos and Alto Boquete the other large settlements. Some 14 per cent of the population is of foreign origin, and more than 3,000 foreigners from over 30 countries live there permanently — Americans and Canadians above all, with large groups from Colombia, Venezuela and Europe.

Agriculture remains the main industry, despite the tourism boom. Coffee is the leading crop, and the valley's volcanic soil also grows flowers, vegetables, strawberries and oranges. The coffee harvest depends on seasonal Ngäbe pickers. Tourism and the expat community have brought a wave of hotels, restaurants, tour companies and building, with more than 50 places to stay in the district, from backpacker hostels to spa hotels.

The day starts early, with buses and pickups heading down to David and vans climbing to the farms. In the wet season afternoon rain is part of the routine. The pace of development is a local concern, along with the 2007 warning by geologists that Volcán Barú is still active and that an eruption could reach the town.

Boquete eats like the rest of rural Chiriquí, with a richer mix of produce than most of Panama: the valley is one of the country's market gardens. Local fondas serve the Panamanian standards — rice and stewed beans, sancocho soup, stewed beef — and breakfasts of hojaldras, a fried bread, with eggs. Fresh fruit, from papaya and pineapple to the valley's strawberries, fills the covered market by the square, and strawberry sellers trade near the bus stop in the centre.

Coffee is the town's glory. It has been grown on the slopes since settlers laid out the first plantations in the late 19th century, and since the 2000s the Geisha variety, originally from Ethiopia, has made Boquete famous among coffee buyers, with lots selling for record prices at auction. Estate tours walk through the whole process from red cherry to roasted bean and finish with a tasting, and cafés in town serve beans from the surrounding valley.

The large foreign community has given the town a choice of restaurants unusual for its size, with Peruvian, Mexican and international cooking beside the fondas, and bakeries and cafés catering to residents as much as to visitors. Trout, farmed on the other side of the volcano, also appears on menus in the highlands.