Bocas del Toro
Christian May 16th, 2008
We arrived around 5:30am to the little town of Almirate after a 9 hour overnight bus ride from Panama City. It was pitch dark and we had no clue where to catch the ferry. Taxi’s were waiting for the tourists to take them to the docks, so 6 tourists and all their luggage where loaded into little pick-up trucks for the 5 minute journey to the ferry. Casey got to ride inside while I got to ride in the truck bed with the luggage and one other guy. We were dropped off and told the ferry wouldn’t actually be leaving till about 7am. Finally the owner arrived and started turning on lights and getting our names and money. He also brought with him to work 2 furry puppies that we played with while we waited. Eventually, we boarded the ferry and were on our way for the 25 minutes to Bocas Town. The ferries were pretty fast speed boats and we found ourselves there pretty quickly, once off the boats we walked the few blocks to the main street only to realize none of the hostels/hotels would open till 8am a whole hour away. So we waited around in the hot sun and checked out different places to stay. We decided on the Dos Palmes, which we were happy about since we got cable tv and air conditioning.
After a much needed shower we set out to check out the small town. We discovered that there was only one ATM machine, a few small supermarkets, and no beaches on the island! It turns out that you need to take water taxis to other islands to check out the famous beaches. Round trip costs between $8-$12 each! So we were a little disappointed, but grabbed some lunch and took a nap. That night we checked out some restaurants in town, and discovered that they were very expensive (by our backpacker standards) but decided to take our chances on one and enjoy happy hour. We both got chicken dishes served with rice, very small portions and we both left hungry and $22 poorer. We could of eaten way cheaper and bigger portions in the states! We watched some TV and went to bed only to wake up to rain! It rained all day and into the night with some pretty spectacular lightening and thunder. We were a little worried since our hotel sits right over the water and had visions of being swept away by a big wave. We had decided to take a boat tour of the islands since it was our last day, but we both woke up not feeling so great from our pizza the day before. We went on the tour and soon felt better (thank god) while our speed boat zoomed across the water to ‘Dolphin Bay’. We thought it was more like ‘fin bay’ because all you saw were fins every once in awhile and tons of tour boats floating around looking for a sight of the dolphins. Casey and I felt like it was more of a dolphin hunt and were glad when we moved on to the next island. We were given an hour of snorkling near some coral and even saw a barracuda. It was decent snorkling, but we were dissapointed when we saw some people just walking on the coral! After that, we ate lunch. Casey and I packed sandwiches since it was $9 for a dish at the restaurant. We could not even sit at a table, since there was a table usage charge. Then we were off to the beach. We went to Red Frog beach. It was very nice and had some good waves to play in. After about an hour and a half and some sunburn we headed back to the main island. We spent the night getting ready for the trip to Costa Rica the following day, but stopped at an American owned restaurant for a great dinner. Then it was off to bed for our early wake up.
- Panama
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