Chiriquí Chatter

Yesterday I was able to get up to Boquete and see the Flower Festival. So far the only year I have missed was 2006. While the flowers are always pretty, this year, I felt they were not up to their normal standard.

Dick, one of my Chiriqui Chatter readers was in town and was able to go with me, so he got to see what all the talk is on the Internet about Boquete is really about. Yesterday may not have been the best weather to really show off Boquete because there was a constant Bajareque (misting rain) the entire time we were in the fair grounds. Also looking at the muddy grounds, it is evident that Boquete has been getting much more moisture than David.

Besides the main attraction of the flowers, there were a couple of buildings where they were exhibiting and selling crafts from many areas. In this regard, it is an international fair because there are booths showing items from Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru and other countries.

This is one of the building exhibiting crafts.

Risakua had a booth exhibiting many paintings by local artists as well as a lot of Indian Molas.

In this building they had several Chinese motorcycles and motor scooters on exhibit.

Since the fair is really about plants, lets head on out and take a look at this years festival flowers.

One of the things you will see a lot of in Chiriqui is flowering trees. This one doesn’t have a lot of blooms, but it will give you some idea. You will see them in various colors, yellow, orange and various reads.

Probably the most disappointing flowers were the roses. The flowers were pretty sparse and not all that pretty. For pretty roses, you need to see the ones that my friend Jerry is growing in Cerro Punta.

I always like this oriental cactus. I have several small cactus plants in my collection.

One of the booths I noticed that was new to me was a satellite Internet service. It says iDirect, so I assume it is an offering by DirecTV.

These flowers were happy.

If this was here in 2005, I don’t remember it.

This bed was next to the fence adjacent to the parking.

I liked this cactus, but it is a little large for my collection.

A happy purple flower.

These flowers are close to what I would normally expect at this fair. And yet the colors are not nearly as vibrant as past years.

The river was really rushing and showed that the mountain area is getting plenty of moisture.

More flowers.

This bed was outside the agriculture of Chiriquí exhibit.

Here were the vegetables on exhibit inside.

Last flower photo I took for the day.

All photos from this year’s fair are located in the photo album.

In my opinion, the best flower festival I have seen was 2005. Unfortunately that was the time of the big rain and about 5 hours after I took my photos Boquete had a downpour that took away the flowers and flooded the riverbanks. The photos of the festival for 2005 can be seen here

Tags: Events