Panama Jack's

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Unfortunatly we left the beach without me learning how to surf properly, but I will definitly be giving it another try.
We spent an uneventful night in San Jose on the way across to Carribean side of Costa Rica, most of the worlds bananas are grow here and man there were millions of them.
A short walk across a very rickety bridge and we were in to Panama.
Bocas del Toro is a small town on a group of islands just off the East coast of Panama and it took us about 20mins in a water taxi to get there. The boat ride took us through Mangoves and coastal canels, quite a cool ride. We arrived in town to the usual welcome of many people trying to get us to follow them to all kinds of accomodation. We ended up in a hostel called "Mondo Taitu." Even though all the reports of the hostel told of great nights partying to all hours, Laura who worked there reasured us that we had a quite room. (crap)

The happy hour offered 50c beers and
$1 cocktails and the hostel proved to be the place-to-party on the island.
The place was run by Daniel and Laura, two of the best people we had met on our travels.
The shared kitchen was central to the hostel and with a great supermaket on the island, cooking dinner became an nightly event.
Sadly for me Jack Daniels proved to be really expensive, so the only time I could afford some was when we found a duty free shops when crossing borders.
So we decided to give his cousin Panama Jack a try. At $5 a bottle and great mixer with just about everything, the spiced rum turned out to be a treat. The "Boca Passion" was born when we mixed fresh passion fruit, pineapple and lime with our friend Panama Jack and topped up with ice and lemonade.

The hostel was a great place to chill out, with plenty of people to mooch around with and chat to. Being an island, you could catch water taxis to many other beaches and laze in the sun, snorkle or even swim with dolphins. The day we booked a day tour to go snorkling, dolphin watching and then onto Red Frog Beach we were schelduled to drag our lazy butts out of bed at 8am.....but do you think I could wake Ken up? After a great night of ´´Boca Passion Cocktails´´ he did not budge! Anyway, we were lucky to meet up with the group at about 2pm at the beach and at least salvage some of the planned day!!!

Tried to blow the dust off my running shoes whilst we were there. I had been dragging them everywhere with me, swearing to myself that I would start running soon (this is Mel typing now incase you are thinking that Ken is an undercover marathon runner!). Tried to keep up with Daniel, but seriously nearly died! The humidity was incredible, but to be honest at the moment I am just to unfit for my own good. We landed up running along the runway and it was so classic to see what a hive of activity the airport was at sunset. The mamas were doing their power walking, the kids playing soccer and driving those radio controlled cars up and down the runway....just hysterical! Daniel reckons that going this is one of his best times of the day, and the day they clamp down and close the airport to the public, will be the day he leaves Bocas!

We had a great time here, and reluctantly after a week thought it high time to head towards Panana City. Bocas is tiny with a small airport (probably smaller than Margate at home). We walked the 5 min over to the airport, booked a flight for that day and marvelled how clever we were to be avoiding the long 10 hour bus journey we would have had to take if the flight had not been affordable!
So onto our tiny 16 seater we went, for the joy ride to Panama City!

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Photos

Mondo Taitu
Daniel and Laura at the Hostel...fantastic fun!

Bocas Del Toro
Islands as viewed from the plane