Apart​hotel Boquete

Aparthotel Boquete
who we are

​Your hosts at the Aparthotel Boquete are an international couple: Volker Piasta of German nationality and María del Carmen Santamaría, a native Panamanian.
We both bring relevant experience to our new venture and hope to make your stay in our Boquete apartments enjoyable.

Volker was born in Germany and grew up in Berlin, where he studied Electrical Engineering at the TUB and worked as a development engineer. 
At age 40, he decided to move to the beautiful Tuscan hills in Italy, where he bought an abandoned farm, started to produce excellent olive oil and transformed the medieval farmhouse into a flourishing agriturismo guesthouse. After more than 20 years in Tuscany, he decided to restart again, went to Boquete in Panama to study Spanish, and fell in love, first with the place and then with Maria. So he decided to settle here and start a new family. He speaks German and quite fluently Spanish and English, and still remembers some Italian and some of the French he had learned at school.

Maria was born in Boquete into a family of 10 brothers and sisters. She has always strived to learn and study alongside her work. As the (now retired) secretary of the local catholic parish, her daily life has been and is all about organizing, counseling, helping, and communicating. She pursues these activities also outside her job as an active member of the International Lions Club in Boquete. In her spare time, she is a very talented artisan who paints and creates sculptures, mainly with a folkloristic background. Her art decorates our house and the apartments and is also for sale. She is a great gardening lover, with a special interest in orchids. Maria speaks Spanish and some English, and has basic knowledge of German, always eager to learn more.

Healthy Food

​We love healthy and genuine food, bake our own bread and have a dozen free-roaming hens which produce more than enough eggs for us, so we are selling what we cannot consume ourselves. If you like fresh eggs for breakfast, just ask.

Animals

​We like animals. 
Besides our hens, we have held ducks as pets, but we donated them to the new Park of Boquete by the river Caldera, where they have more company and freedom to roam, fly, and mate.

We have a small Schnauzer-like friendly dog named Manfred who loves to be cuddled and is generally very quiet, unless he has to chase a motorbike. He has made it his life's goal to terminate all these rattling machines.

​​We also have a playful and very curious cat named Mimi which you will meet sooner or later because she loves to inspect everything.
Mimi was found among garbage, abandoned by her human mom, and she was very shy at the beginning, but once she sees that a person treats her well, she gets very affectionate.

Last but not least, we have a big bird cage with Australian parakeets in our garden under the big mango tree near the BBQ gazebo.