Boquete – Day 2: The Art of Doing Nothing
BOQUETE
Day 2: The Art of Doing Nothing
February 12, 2023
That morning I woke up to a cold and rainy day – the castle warm and cosy. I knew I only had one day in Boquete and that I should make the most of the little time I had left on my trip, but this time round, my laziness got the upper hand.
I’d be giving up a climb to Panama’s highest point, from where both the Pacific and the Caribbean can be seen – assuming the summit isn’t swallowed by clouds. But honestly, I was at peace with that decision. Instead, I spent the day chilling in the castle, catching up on my writing, getting back into drawing, and watching Netflix like any other millennial would. It felt good to simply hang and laze about, despite the quiet consternation brewing somewhere inside me.
Old School Travelling
As much as I loved hanging out on my own, I was somehow drawn into a conversation with Elsa, a sixty-two-year-old Australian woman who really seemed like she wanted to talk.
She told me she’d been travelling for around nine months, having started in Europe while visiting relatives. Now, after many years of hard work in the TV industry, she was enjoying her well-earned retirement, travelling the world and ticking things off her bucket list. Among these were a month-long trip through one of the US canyons, seeing Cirque du Soleil in Vegas, and a handful of other long-held dreams. After nearly twenty years, she’d returned to Central America to visit a few places that had always stayed with her.
She told me all about travelling back in the day, how backpacking twenty years ago was a completely different beast. None of the luxuries we’re used to now – private transport with pick-ups and drop-offs, accommodation in remote areas, blogs or online travel guides, and worst of all, no phones or internet. Apart from Lonely Planet books, they’d arrive somewhere and figure things out on the spot, knocking on doors until a friendly local offered tips or a place to stay. Proper Che Guevara style.
Funny thing is, at the beginning of my trip in Central America, I had found myself yearning for the kind of journey Che had made on his motorcycle. With all the comforts that come with progress, modern backpackers rarely have to improvise their way across borders or sleep on strangers’ floors just to keep moving. Everything is mapped out, reviewed, and bookable in seconds. And while that convenience makes travel safer and more accessible, it also strips away a layer of rawness. There’s less friction, fewer moments of genuine vulnerability, and fewer chances to be truly lost – both geographically and within yourself. Or at least that’s how I saw it.
But somewhere along the way, I realised that authenticity doesn’t live exclusively in hardship. You don’t have to suffer to travel meaningfully. The compromise, I think, lies in choosing intention over nostalgia. Using modern tools when they serve you, but still leaving room for uncertainty. Taking the shuttle instead of hitchhiking, but talking to the driver. Booking the hostel, but saying yes to the invitation that comes after. Progress doesn’t have to erase connection; it just changes the way you seek it. And maybe the real journey isn’t about recreating someone else’s past, but about finding depth and honesty within the reality of the present.
The Ravage of Progress
She then went on about how much the world has changed over the past two decades, comparing present-day Guatemala to Mexico in the 1990s, and modern Nicaragua to what Guatemala used to be like back then.
She spoke of a time when locals still wore traditional clothing in daily life, cooked what their grandparents had cooked, and lived at a pace that hadn’t yet been dictated by tourism, global brands or social media. Back then, Westernisation hadn’t fully arrived, and while life was undoubtedly harder in many ways, it felt, in her words, more rooted.
That immediately took me back to my first visit to Latin America some five years earlier, trekking through the Sierra Nevada mountains in Colombia on my way to the Lost City. I remember feeling genuinely taken aback when I saw indigenous people wearing Coca-Cola T-shirts and football kits instead of the traditional attire I’d expected. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” I’d thought at the time, clinging to some romanticised idea of authenticity that existed more in my head than in reality. Looking back, that reaction says far more about me than it ever did about them.
It took me five years to fully come to terms with that feeling. I finally made peace with it in Belize, after an eye-opening conversation with Ishmael, a man who worked closely with the country’s prime minister. He told me something that stuck with me ever since: that everyone deserves development, even if it comes at the cost of losing parts of one’s culture. Not erasing it, but allowing it to evolve. And in that moment, I realised how selfish it is to expect people to remain frozen in time for the sake of my own nostalgia. Culture isn’t a museum exhibit. It’s alive, adaptive and, like the people who live it, constantly changing.
A Tale of Nostalgia
From there, we moved on to the wonders Central America has to offer. Over the decades she’d spent travelling, she’d seen more of the world than I could ever hope to fit into a single lifetime, and her stories carried that quiet authority of someone who had watched places change rather than simply pass through them.
She explained that during her earlier travels, most of the Mayan ruins I’d recently been lucky enough to visit hadn’t yet been unearthed. The few that were open to the public were visited by a trickle of people rather than crowds, and climbing the pyramids was not only allowed but expected. She described standing alone atop temples at sunrise, with nothing but jungle stretching to the horizon and the sound of birds breaking the silence. While most touristic sites don’t allow that anymore, I still got to experience that plenty of times – my favourite memory being that in El Mirador. But to experience places like Chichen Itza or Machu Picchu without crowds? That I would’ve killed for.
The same was true of the natural wonders. Back then, climbing volcanoes wasn’t something people did simply because it was there or because it made for a good photo. It required effort, planning and, more often than not, a genuine reason to go. Cenotes weren’t yet polished attractions with queues and entry fees, but half-hidden sinkholes discovered through word of mouth, where you’d lower yourself into cool, dark water without anyone rushing you along. Experiences unfolded slowly, shaped more by curiosity than by algorithms. I can’t quite say the same about my trip – my itinerary built around countless blogs I had encountered while planning my gap year.
She admitted that there’s an undeniable nostalgia, and even a sadness, in seeing how much has changed. I could relate to that deeply. Every time I visited ruins on this trip, I was struck by a strange, almost illogical sense of nostalgia – a longing for something I’d never actually lived through. Standing among collapsed temples and weathered stones, I found myself mourning a version of the world that existed long before I did, imagining what it must have felt like to see these places alive, purposeful and woven into everyday life rather than preserved behind ropes and information boards. It wasn’t sadness exactly, more a quiet ache – the awareness that some things, once lost, can never truly be reclaimed.
Maybe that’s why those ruins hit me so hard – they stand as proof that everything changes, whether we’re ready for it or not. All we can do is bear witness, carry what resonates with us, and hope we find a way to make peace with the passing of time. Or at least that’s what Elsa thinks. Despite how much the world has changed, she doesn’t resent it. Instead, she’s learned to appreciate progress under a new light. Listening to her, I realised that every generation gets its own version of wonder. While hers was quieter and more solitary, mine was louder and more crowded – though no less real.
As she excused herself for the night, we ended the conversation on a bittersweet note. She said that while she probably wouldn’t be around to see these same places in another twenty years, I would. And when that time comes, I’d have to reconcile my memories with a new reality, just as she was doing now. As difficult as that might be, she reminded me, it’s also a natural and exciting part of life and change.
Just before leaving, she turned back to add one final thought – to go easy on myself. After I’d told her how I’d “wasted” my time in Boquete by simply resting, she reassured me that everyone needs downtime, and that Boquete isn’t going anywhere. I could always come back and do everything I’d missed, and if I didn’t feel like it, that’d be okay too. The world is a huge place, after all. Have I mentioned how inspiring that conversation was?