It's ten o'clock Sunday night, the music is blaring into our room from the festival out on the street, and we've just finalized our travel plan for tomorrow. It's amazing the difference technology can make for avoiding that, "oh no, what do you mean there are no rooms left in the city and we've missed the last ferry out" sort of occurance. Hopefully things will go smoothly; we've got two buses, a border-crossing another one or two buses and a ferry to get to where we're going, but at least we know there's a hostel expecting us!

We left Panama City on Friday night and took the overnight bus to David. It's been awhile since I've done one of those, and I'd sort of blocked out how unpleasant they can be. Just the concept of sleeping sitting up is bad enough, but add to that the sub-arctic temperatures and the fact that every time you start to fall asleep they flick on the lights and tap you on the shoulder to show a ticket, a passport, or just to say hello, and well, it's not so fun. We not-so-quickly switched on to another bus, apparently the "red devils" are a national phenomenon, and arrived in Boquete just after 8 in the morning.

We arrived at the hostel exhausted, grabbed a coffee and tried to check in. They assured us that by 9:30 our room would be ready. Ola made the split-second decision to hop on the waterfall hike that was leaving that moment, and I decided to sit my butt down on the sofa and wait for my much needed nap. At 9:30 they promised me it would just be another twenty minutes, so I went for a wander around town, which consists of about four blocks, got more coffee and waited…and waited…and waited. I finally got into my room at 11:45, promptly fell asleep and was then awakened by the city clock chiming that it was noon. That's when the music, sirens, and horn honking began. Apparently the "flower and coffee festival" is more heavily focused on the discos and djs than anything else. And the lack of glass in our street facing window meant that proper slumber was not likely in the cards for us.

I joined up with the tour for the afternoon portion where we went to a small canyon for cliff jumping into the river, which was AWESOME, and then soaking in the hot springs. We met some really lovely people, mostly Canadian, and had an all-around wonderful day. We went to the festival in the evening, saw some less than interesting flowers and ate a lot of meat on sticks. Then we tried to sleep. Eventually we realized that ear plugs were an absolute necessity; we could still feel the room vibrating from the music, but at least we could shut out some of the noise. I awakened around 4:30 only to realize that the partiers were still going strong. When I woke up again about 6:00 the music had finally ceased. We asked the guys at the hostel about it and they happily explained that it was a ten-day event that the Boqueteñas looked forward to all year. It was a chance for them to be crazy. Under the right circumstances I can get right on board with that, but we're still tired and so the "crazy" is a little overwhelming.

Today, we went for a long walk in the morning through the surrounding hills. We found a strawberry café and had some fantastic shakes then stumbled upon a little café attached to a coffee plantation and sampled what is said to be "the best coffee in the world" called Gesha. It was certainly very tasty even without cream or sugar, but I'm not sure that it was worthy of the nine-dollar-per-tiny-pot that came with it. Then in the afternoon we went on a coffee plantation tour. We got to pick our own beans, taste several different types of roasts, and were taught how to differentiate the flavours and refine our coffee palates. While it would have been nice to see more of the production process, it was an excellent experience for coffee lovers such as us.

We finally sat down and made our plans this evening, deciding, after much back and forth, that perhaps it was time to exit Panama and head to Costa Rica. The madness outside started revving up just after 6:00 and as I lie in bed writing, I feel as though there's a dance party in our room. I'm really not a fan of sleeping with earplugs, my ears like to breathe, but we really have no choice in the matter. The only concern is which one of us is actually going to hear our 5am alarm. Buenas suerte to us!

And to the mad people of Boquete, so long and thanks for all the coffee!