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Published: October 5th 2015
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A speeding ticket wasn't going to stop our bus driver from hauling a$$! Well we just wrapped up 6 days in Panama. We began our 12 hour journey from San Jose to Bocas deal Torro last Saturday. On our way Kev and I joined up with a bunch 21 year olds that were studying abroad that we met on the bus. It was the first time for both of us crossing over a border by foot. We were greeted on the other side by many people.... Kev had to fight off a couple of little kids that were trying to steal his bag. Going through "customs" was laying out all of our bags in a shack while a dog sniffed for drugs. The dog went crazy sniffing my bag but I swear I didn't have any drugs! After taking 3 buses, 2 taxis 1 shuttle and a water taxi, we finally made it. We wanted to keep feeling 21 again so we decided to stay at a party hostel right on the water. Super cool place but only cool for one night. The party music didn't stop until
3:30 am so we were happy to leave and go to our Airbnb. This place was located on another island that was very secluded. We stayed with
Crossing the border into Panama by footAmanda and Asher, a couple from the states that actually lived in Philly for 2 years. Small world! They moved to Bocas del Toro 9 months ago and are starting up their own little adventure resort. We were recommended to take a water taxi to another island. We were dropped off at a secluded spot named Wizzard Beach. We arrived on this somewhat deserted island to two military guards and a retired navy guy from Seattle. Pretty random. We were warned that there are bandits that hang out in the jungle with guns and rob people. Another highlight of our Bocas trip was snorkeling around the islands and watching a tourist almost get his nipple ripped off from a sloth our tour guide took from a tree in the wild. The tourist thought it'd be a perfect Instagram op to take the sloth and hold him on his bare chest....bad idea, sloths have inch long nails that they use to hold onto the trees with but in this instance he decided to go for the nipple. It was pretty funny watching the tourist squirm to get the sloth free. The lesson we all learned was to leave wild animals alone,
Border crossing into Panamain the wild. After Bocas the rest of our Pananma trip was spent on the bus. When traveling in any Central American country amultiply how ever long you think it is going to take by 4 and expect to take many buses, shuttles, taxis and possibly even a donkey! Just joking, we didn't ride a donkey, at least not this time! After getting out to surf almost everyday in Costa Rica, Kev was still in search of more good surf. We travelled one day for 12 hours by 8 different legs of transportation to a very small town called Santa Catalina. The only things you would go there for is to surf and to scuba dive. We arrived in the dark and were dropped off where our hostel was supposed to be. There we were standing in the dark with our packs on, thunder and lightning all around us, walking down a dirt road to our hostel. We never stayed at our intended place because we couldn't find it and there were 4 dogs barking at us as we tried looking around. We said screw it and walked back towards town and rented a tiny cabin for the night. There
Made it into Panamaweren't any waves so we were out of there the next morning. 7 hours later we arrived at a town one our outside of Pananma City that is not worth writing about. Friday we made our way into Panama City. We checked in to our hostel before heading to the canal. The hostel was pretty much a converted tool shed with a toilet and a bed. That put us at 1 for 3 with hostels in Panama. It was neat to see the Panama Canal and the history behind that went into engineering it but if you don't get to see a ship go through like us, it leaves you feeling a little underwhelmed. There was a ship coming through but we would've had to wait a couple hours and there was a serious storm we needed to get ahead of. Another area we checked out was Casco Viejo, which is the equivalent of old city Philadelphia but with a Spanish conquistador flare. As luck would have it, we connected up with our Amsterdam friends we met in Costa Rica. We caught up on a few weeks of travel stories and had some beers before wishing them luck on their
Traveling to Bocas by water taxi with our new 21 year old friendslast couple weeks of their trip. It was nice seeing people that you've met before because there have been so many people that we've met already for only a short amount of time. We are looking forward to hanging out again in Amsterdam. This long blog post has been a product of sitting in the airport waiting to get to Houston to see Kristines parents for 10 hours or so before heading to Peru. Hopefully we won't have to many more airport posts, but we think may be false hope.
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