Days 10-12 Panama. Bocas Del Toro
The Costa Rica part of the trip is over. The 5 of us board a nice little mini bus and head to the border which is a 40 minute drive away. The country side is hilly and lush with poorer thatched dwellings evident. It doesn't seem to matter how primitive the houses are, most of them seem to have a satellite dish on their roofs!
At the border we lug our bags off the bus and are immediately hassled by men wanting to assist us. A difficult way to earn a dollar. Esther, our guide for the Panama leg finds us. She is a portly very black skinned Caribbean woman of Jamaican descent and an English accent very difficult to follow but very enthusiastic. We follow her to the first point where we line up for our exit sheet to fill in. We line up again to have it processed. The sight in front of us makes me really wish that my camera is not so deep in my bag but here is not the time to unpack it. Ahead of us is a very old and dilapidated railway bridge with gap. Holes and rickety timbers. Next to it is the original steel walkway, parts in rusting state of disrepair. This crosses a reasonable size river. This is the border crossing over which we have to walk and trundle our bags. I must say I felt very nervous crossing but was reassured by the more seasoned of the travelers that there are much worse ones to cross, particularly in Africa. This knowledge doesn't make me feel any better. On the other side is another queue at a very worn out grotty looking building set to the side of a very grotty little village that I guess survives due to the border. The sun has come out and it is hot and humid with a lot of muddy puddles to avoid. You wouldn't want your Louis Vuitton luggage here!
The passport is signed and we are given customs forms to fill in then off to the next queue to pay $3 and a little paper stamp is fixed next to the printed stamp, the next queue where the customs form is snatched from my hand , go I am told so I do as they suggest with the others behind me. This took around an hour but other travelers tell us it can take 4 hours depending on the queue and how the officials are feeling on the day! We are loaded onto a disgusting dirty little Mini bus with no air con and all the windows open. Esther starts talking and I have no idea what she is saying due to the noise and the accent. At least we are handed printed sheets ( with badly written English) with a little bit of info on Panama in general and the area. We discover that our itinerary has been changed and we have 3 nights here now and not 2 as per the original itinerary. It does seem though that depending when you booked your trip, the travel notes vary so none of us really have much idea of what is going of until we arrive. The trip notes don't give any hotel info, I suspect this is so we can't check out the places on trip advisor before we leave and not book!!!
We head off in this horrible little bus and about 30 minutes later arrive at a rather smelly and grotty little ferry terminal and wait with a few locals and a few school girls dressed in their Catholic school uniform (80% Catholic here). We board what is described as a high speed launch ( and it is) don our life vests and off we set for a 30 minute trip from the mainland to Colon Island. This place is an unexpected pleasure!!!! As the island approaches we see colorful buildings and restaurants on the water front, lots of very nice catamarans and sailing vessels moored nearby, very pleasing!
We climb off the boat, grab our bags and head up Calle trecera (3rd street) to Hotel Laguna. Looks OK! Staff very pleasant as they usually are then lug the bags up 3 flights of stairs. Met halfway by hotel staff who assist at least!!! First time!!! As usual we are given the worst rooms in mediocre hotels, tiny window overlooking next doors gutter. gecko tours do us proud with their hotel selection. Have to squeeze past bed to get into the mouldy bathroom with the broken shower hose and glass door hanging off one bracket. Bad luck really, hotel full. Can't work out why though the cleaners can't scrub the mould off the glass and the tiles. I understand that it is very humid here and hard to keep mould free but why can't these places keep up simple standards of cleanliness? Bedroom looks more like a ski chalet than a tropical room but it it is clean and bed OK. Walls are paper thin and the reason that I am writing this at 4.30 is because the neighboring room came home at 3 am and put on TV so I have been listening to a Spanish soap opera for the past 90 minutes!!
The town is similar in architecture and feel to Key West in Florida but not quite so exclusive and sophisticated, high end backpackers place! It does have a nice vibe and as we have discovered, some good restaurants at reasonable prices, good bars and great music, mainly reggae.
We settle in our rooms then meet with Esther in the foyer and head off for a late lunch and a quick meeting to map out the next few days. Esther it turns out is very nice but more of a facilitator than guide and considering she lives in the area she doesn't actually seem to have much local knowledge except where to eat and is a little put out when we decide that we will do our own thing for dinner as 2 of the girls want to head off on their own.
Us remaining 3 make plans to meet at 6 for an early dinner and that is when we discover it is actually 7 pm and that there is a time difference, none of us had been made aware of this! these are the simple things that we don't seem to be informed about.
We find a place called Boca Bamboo , it is big, has a massive screen showing good music video clips and has a special board at reasonable prices which is good for our youngest tour member Davidson as this trip has broken his budget. The trip notes say $25 a day is enough, it is if you don't want to buy water , have a drink and are able to find the cheapest restaurants in town. $40 would be a fairer sum for a tight budget as neither of these countries have been cheap to eat. I digress! We were very happy with our choice, food was good, drinks a reasonable price and a live reggae band came on and they were very good.
As usual I was home and in bed before 9. The heat, the humidity and this cough drain me!
What is helpful here is that Panama currency is the USA dollar so no more converting! What is annoying though is that the prices given are not real as 7% tax is then added on plus a 10% service charge. We discovered that this service charge (tip) is a new thing here and used to be discretionary but we all know that backpackers are very tight with money unless it comes to buying alcohol then it is a free for all. Have actually found this amongst the younger travelers, it is always a fuss about how much gets spent at restaurants, tips, travel etc but money is always available for alcohol ( except Davidson who hasn't spent anything on alcohol).
At our meeting with Esther she talked about the tours that were available to us the following day and how we needed to book our tour for the following destination as it would be Sunday when we arrived there and the offices would be closed. (Only one day in Boquette now as 3 here and I have opted to do a half day coffee plantation. Tour).
Davidson is desperate to have a surfing lesson and us 4 girls opt for a day tour on a boat, dolphin spotting in Dolphin bay, red frog beach and snorkeling, buy lunch if you want it but we have all done this before and decide to take out own food and drinks. ( a very good move we discover as the food place looked rank)
We are ready at 8.45 as we have been told to be and take the 2 minute walk to the boat to discover it leaves at 9.30 and the other small group of people are 20 minutes late. We are then told that red frog is closed to us due to high seas so we are going to Zapatillos beach instead. We spot the dolphins and get a few pictures, then taken to the spot where we are meant to order lunch which is prepared whilst we are at the beach but as previously said we just hang around for the boat driver to return. We think he is pissed off with us as he would probably get a commission on the food.
We get to the island and are told that we have to pay a$5 fee to the rangers as it is a national park. We haven't been told about this and know damned well it is going in his pocket as no tickets are produced. We bring this up with Esther and yes she forgot to tell us about this but we should have be given a ticket. Something that we didn't like was that the assistant on the boat was the drivers son and he was only about 12 years old and he wasn't there for the fun, he was working and he was the one who had to collect the money from us. We asked why he wasn't at school but no answer .
The beach was actually a little island and was gorgeous. We didn't see the interior of the island, the idea was that we just swam and that we did, lovely sand and warm water that was safe to swim in. We spent 2 hours there, the boatman said 3 but it started raining and the clouds were getting heavy so we wanted to leave. There were actually about 6 boat loads of people.
We returned to the restaurant area which was also the fuel stop and a little further out where we were to snorkel. The boy gathered the snorkels and masks. No fins. Off we went. Meryl and I went in first then Sarah joined us. We were very disappointed as there was very little to see, the equipment was terrible and kept leaking so head up every 20 seconds. We didn't last long. Annoying as on return we discovers that the boatman could have pointed us in the direction of the reef which was a little further over and we could have at least seen something! Actually don't blame him, the tour operators should be responsible for this as they take the money and make most of the profit and I am sure the $5 was the money the driver got for the trip out. We also discovered that most of the boat men are indigenous and it is difficult to get them to send their kids to school. We all agreed that the big tour operators should know this and not encourage their clients to use this service as it promotes child labour.
Poor Esther got an earful when we returned. Particularly when we saw the opposition tour people with a much better tour for $15 more including lunch and 2 snorkel reefs. If I get a bit more sleep and my sunburn isn't too bad in the morning, I may be tempted to have another day at sea!!!
We all had various plans for our second day on Colon but a bug struck everyone in various forms and we all got up late and faced a morning of constant rain. The girls went off with Davidson in the afternoon on a local bus that took them to what sounds like a nice beach and Meryl found them there later in the day.
I strolled around the town, got some breakfast then booked on a return taxi boat to RedFrog beach which is privately owned land. For $10 I had a return boat trip and a good walk through the property and found the beach but I had decided not to expose my skin to any more sun and once again the water was too rough for my liking but it was a pleasant afternoon.
We met up for our final dinner where once again we jumped into a water taxi and headed over to another island and had a very pleasant evening sitting in a restaurant by the water called Bibis. Not a late night as once again we were on the road again the following morning bright and early.
We have all quite enjoyed this place and Geckos finally got something right by keeping us there for 3 nights which gave us 2 full days. I guess if everyone had been feeling OK it would have been better but we have a mix of coughs and gastro between us with Meryl suffering both!
We have endured our share of rain on this trip which none of us expected so the lesson is that if the sun is shining, get out and do something!
Our beach trips have now come to an end and tomorrow head off on a rather long journey to Boquete which is in the mountains and famous for its dormant volcano (the highest peak in Panama) it's agriculture due to the fertile volcanic soil and its coffee, due to the town being 1200 meters above sea level.
Hasta luego amigos!
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