Experience the Local Flavors of Boquete, Panama

Boquete was one of those places that I automatically fell in love it, its beauty, delicious flavors, and warm people all contributed to the amazing experience I had with the city. I’ve mentioned time and time again how much I love to do an introductory tour in a new city, especially if it includes food. It really is a great way to find out more about the city, get to know your grounds, and ask any questions or recommendations you might have to an actual local. So let me tell you about the best tour in Boquete, Panama with TourBQT.

About the best tour in Boquete, Panama

This tour starts out with the owner (Arturo) picking you up from your hotel and driving around the different districts of Boquete. Right from the beginning, Arturo was wonderful! He started out by telling us about himself, the tour and what we can expect from the day. We started driving around the beautiful areas and Arturo explained the history of Boquete and the different districts that lie between this beautiful area.

Experience the local flavors of Boquete

One of Boquete’s wonders is its delicious coffee, and for a coffee lover like myself, I was happy to be somewhere with very good coffee. We shortly drove to our first stop: Café Princesa Janca. This was probably the most unique coffee house I have ever been to because Princesa Janca is actually a former president of Panama. Here we tried delicious coffee, got a brief tour of the coffee house, but also learned about the president herself, and her part in the government and the coffee house today. Part of the coffee shop is also used as her office (which she still uses till this day), it was pretty neat to be able to learn history about the country and drink local coffee at the same time.

Our second stop was a little place called Casita de Miel (little house of honey). We started out watching a brief video of how honey is made followed by an introduction to honey, bees and the shop itself. We tried many different flavors of honey, starting at the basic honeys and working our way up to more artisanal flavors like ginger honey (my favorite) lavender honey and cocoa honey. I’ve never really been a big fan of honey, but this was some good stuff!

Followed by more sugar at Fresas Mary. This place was super cute! Everything was strawberry flavored. A local Panamanian started this business wanting to bring local strawberries to everyone. Here you can get strawberry jams, strawberry wine, as well as different concoctions of strawberry desserts. We had a delicious strawberry frozen ice with condensed milk, whipped cream, and fresh strawberries on top. So delicious, but extremely difficult to eat, Arturo told us the secret to eating this was that you have to peck at the dessert in order to break apart the work. I ended up getting a bit of a workout in haha.

Let’s get physical

After all that deliciousness it was time to do something more active. Our tour guide took us to the Panama Rock Climbing wall, where he gave us an introduction to the rock formation. It was formed naturally by the volcano when in erupted hundred of years ago and one man stumbled upon this wall, cleaned it up, and decided it would be great for rock climbing. He was the one that brought the rock climbing movement into Panama. The formation itself is extremely beautiful, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It is also the only rock formation in the entire world that was made by a volcano and people climb it today. Pretty cool if you ask me!

Now it’s time for my favorite part of the tour. We went to Jungla de Panama an animal rescue where we played with some of the cutest animals ever. I’m a huge animal lover and this was definitely my favorite part of the tour. This rescue is just incredible! The owner Dorothy is an absolute sweetheart. What she created is beyond phenomenal. Her rescue focuses on educating, cherishing, and protecting our natural environment and the animals that live in it. At Jungla de Panama they rescue at-risk animals, rehabilitate and reintroduce them into areas where they can thrive, free of conflict with unnatural forces such as loss of habitat by land development.

Jungla de Panama is an absolutely incredible place. I was able to play and feed parrots, raccoons, horses, goats, dogs, eagles, turtles, and more. All of the animals were extremely happy, taken care of, and well fed. It melted my heart to see such happy animals in such great living conditions. What is incredible about this place is that it is also a hostel. I would be in such a happy place if I was staying at this hostel. Along with staying and playing with the animals Jungla de Panama also has volunteer programs where you can help out with the animals. This is really an amazing organization and if you’d like to donate click here.

But wait, there’s more!

Now that we've had our share of amazing flavors and animals it was time to see more of the beauty of Panama. Arturo drove us to two different areas through the winding roads between the mountains where we stopped and looked at the waterfalls. Since these waterfalls are a bit touristy (though we didn't see any other tourists there) the indigenous people of the area set up shop and sold local artisanal handmade products like jewelry and their own attire. Arturo did a great job teaching us about the indigenous people, their craft, and their outfits. And the jewelry and beading they do is incredible. I might have been more impressed with all the beading than the waterfalls, both super beautiful though.

And last but not least, the tour ended at El Guapo de Boquete, a wonderful artisanal shop that makes spirits and jams. El Guapo is owned by a lovely Italian family so a lot of their flavors have an Italian twist to it, but they also include the local flavors of Panama and Boquete. Some of the things we tried were limoncello, a coffee liquor, and a passion fruit liquor, as well as a ginger pineapple jam (my favorite), strawberry jam, guanabana jam, and papaya jam. All of the products are naturally grown in Panama with no preservatives or added sugar. It was really neat to go into this shop and see everything made in-house and try the delicious flavors of Panama as well as Italy.

Overview

This was such an amazing tour! I really recommend doing this tour as soon as you get to Boquete, it’s a great introduction to the area and the different flavors that Boquete has to offer. Arturo was extremely kind and he answered all the questions I had. All of the vendors and stops that we went to were very nice and the products that each had been extremely unique and delicious. I highly recommend ToursBQT and I hope to visit them again!

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Xoxo Ania Travels 💜