Panamania

The Costa Rica - Panama border crossing

C enjoying our balcony

We had a really hard time leaving Puerto Viejo…in fact; we probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the Semana Santa crush.  Feeling remorse over leaving our extremely chill and accessible beach, we wandered around town on our last day trying to find another hotel room but alas, everything was booked solid. We continued on to Panama in a tourist shuttle. Some fellow travelers assured us this was not much more costly than taking the bus, though I have my doubts. The pre-arranged shuttle-border crossing-shuttle-boat was convenient, though I don’t think next time I’d just wing it.

Red Frog Beach

Old house, Isla Bastimientos

Altogether it took about three and a half hours to get from Puerto Viejo to Bocas del Toro.  The Panamanian islands are lovely and extremely popular. We stayed in Bocas Town on Isla Colon. The area has a reputation as a party destination but I found that apart from the main drag, the streets were quiet and residential.  Our hotel had a balcony, where we spent a lot of time enjoying the frequent afternoon downpours.

There was one beach within walking distance…not lovely but still sort of special for its local flavor.  There was a fair amount of trash, but also an old cemetery and an athletic black dog with one brown eye and one blue who played fetch with us for hours. It wasn’t a bad place to float in the water in spite of the eel grass and every afternoon a group of young men appeared to play soccer in the sand (occasionally resulting in passionate disagreements!)

Panama hat, cigar

One day we took a water taxi over to the town of Old Bank on neighboring Isla Bastimientos. Fantastic. Sleepy. Sticky. The feel of the “real” Caribbean. Laundry hanging limply in the afternoon heat, televisions murmuring, some little girls playing in the path.  We wandered up the hill for around 15 minutes, arriving dripping in sweat to the little organic coffee shop on the crest. After sipping our beverage (locally grown in Boquete, we were told) we headed back down, bought some picnic provisions at a dusty, Chinese-run grocery shop (somehow two cans of beer, nuts, bread, bananas, olives, and tuna amounted to under $4) and took another taxi to Red Frog Beach; a sorely disappointing experience. We’d been promised something pristine by our guidebook – obviously a mistake to rely on one at all. In reality it was quite a circus: golf carts shuttling people to a beach crowded with sun bunnies, men drinking beer and flexing, huge families erecting tents and spilling into the water buried in inner tubes and aqua wings. Instantly fled back to our sand-flea ridden beach on Isla Colon and welcomed the silence. One plus was that on our way out, we spotted a sloth hanging in one of the tall trees near the water. The Argentinian couple sitting behind us in the water taxi told us the name in Spanish is oso perizoso…literally, “lazy bear”.

Bocas Town

House, on the trail from Old Bank

Another highlight was renting a bicycle and peddling north along the quiet road until it turned to dirt. There was a cove with a little beachfront restaurant serving seafood and cold beer (even on good Friday, during which alcohol is prohibited on the rest of the island). Another thirty minutes along the path leads to the windswept and mostly deserted Playa Bluff. Hefty swells and a mean break close to shore make swimming nearly impossible, but it is definitely has a certain “end of the earth” charm.

Other than that C and I relaxed, ate seafood and vanilla crepes, drank rum, swam, strolled around town, and occasionally retreated to the computer lab for air conditioning and homework.

The border crossing back to Costa Rica was ridiculous; hours waiting in line during a torrential downpour, standing ankle-deep in mud, our passports nearly soaked.

Bike + Beach

C on "our" little beach, Isla Colon