Taming the Caldera River in Boquete from 2008

Above, the Hotel Ladera gets flooded as the banks of the powerful Caldera River move inland and wipe out the Panamonte Bridge.  Many of you who were living in Boquete in the year 2008 will remember the big flood, and of course there have been bigger ones and smaller ones, but every year, nature decides just how servere that the flooding will be. 

The Rock Restaurant below gets a soaker, and not for the first time.  We have seen the Rock Restaurant being re-built a few times as the river overflowed and surrounded all the buildings in the area.  Over the years the boulders have been put in place to try and direct the river flow, but in extreme rainy events, the river goes where the river wants to go.  I have seen some of these boulders get tossed around like they are plastic play things.

For the past few years Boquete and Panama in general have been in drought conditions, very dry in fact, with not nearly as much rain as we have had in the past, however the future weather forecasts talk of much more rain to be falling in years to come, which will be great for the Panama Canal that can use the extra rainfall.  If we could dig a trench from the Caldera River in Boquete to Lake Gatun near Panama City, we could solve the Panama Canal problems and their need for water.  lol

The rainfall and the water from upriver, will travel wherever it wants to, once the hard rains begin to fall and it happens in multiple inches per hour.  When there are trees and debris upstream that fall into the river and cause a log jam, the results can be devasting for any structure in the path of these jams when they break.  We all remember the Panamonte Bridge going down, and fortunately, the new bridge had just been completed or there would be no way to cross Boquete from one side of the river to the other side.There were hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures taken at the time of the 2008 floods and other years as well, so let me place some here in front of you to have a look through. It is quite amazing what mother nature can do when she gets nasty and needs to let us know her feelings.  https://www.boqueteweather.com/flood.htm