Day 22 - February 21

We arrived at the coffee plantation around 10:30 Saturday morning, and the first thing that hit me wasn’t the view…

…it was the air.

Not warm. Not humid.
Soup. We were breathing soup.

Apparently, higher elevations in Panama get more rain, and WOW, you feel it immediately. I also had this mental image of a nice, flat little farm you stroll through, holding a coffee cup, looking sophisticated.

Instead, it was a mountain.

Everything was incredibly hilly with this reddish-orange clay soil that was basically a slip-n-slide from the rain. But at the same time, it was completely quiet. No traffic. No horns. No city buzz. Just birds and jungle sounds. The kind of quiet where you instinctively lower your voice for no reason.

Luis showed us around and told us they planted 2,500 coffee plants in two weekends during Covid, which now sounds absolutely unhinged after seeing the terrain.

He walked us through the whole process — flowers, beans, growth, harvesting — and what shocked me most is that it’s still almost entirely manual. Workers live on site and hand-pick every single bean. Then the beans get laid out on drying racks before roasting and grinding.

We stepped into the drying shed, and it was like walking into a sauna you didn’t consent to.
SO. MUCH. HOTTER.
Which makes sense… but still felt rude.

The wild part? The plants grow quickly… but take two years before they produce fruit. Two years of work before one cup of coffee exists. I will now never casually complain about coffee prices again (ok, I probably will, but with guilt).

Then we went to the canal — and pictures truly don’t prepare you.

The ships are not big.
They are offensive.

An average ship holds up to 8,100 containers, and what you see above the water is basically only half of it. There is an entire underwater skyscraper attached to it.

What shocked me most, though, was how slow they move.
Painfully slow.

Which is when Luis casually reminds us that this is literally his job — he pilots tugboats and guides these floating cities so they don’t destroy the canal or themselves. Having him there turned it into a private tour while the kids played tag behind us, living their best lives.

We kept calling them over:
“LOOK! The water level dropped!”
Kiefer: glances over — “ya cool.”

Zero appreciation for the engineering miracle moving millions of litres of water and thousands of tons of steel 😂

We also watched a 10-minute informational video, which I believe the adults found fascinating, and the kids survived.

Before dinner, we stopped at Luis and Tiffany’s for a swim.

Luis refused to get in because the water was “too cold.”

It was 31°C.

Living here changes a person.

We headed downtown to an Italian restaurant with Luis, Tiffany, the girls (Scarlett, Arianna, and Raven), and Kiefer. Everyone was exhausted in that happy vacation way where no one has energy, but no one wants the day to end either.

Scarlett and Kiefer shared a pizza, I had gnocchi in a literal pizza crust bowl (amazing the first time AND the leftovers), Paul and Tiff talked shop, and I chatted with Luis about his family and what it’s really like living in Panama full time.

And then… outside the restaurant… I found Luigi.

An actual car that looked EXACTLY like Luigi from Cars.
There was no universe where I wasn’t getting a picture. Vacation rule: if you find a cartoon car in real life, you document it.

The kids all get along so well, which honestly makes everything easier than any sightseeing plan ever could.

And that ended up being the day in a nutshell:

rainforest mountains → world engineering wonder → kids unimpressed → 31° pool “too cold” → pasta with friends

A very full, very good Saturday.