Blogs from Panama, Central America Caribbean

After a couple of days break in the jungle it was time to head back to the Caribbean Ocean and make our way to Bocas del Toro up along the Panamá/Costa Rica border. Oskar, Matt and I headed off early-ish and caught a local bus to the port town alongside the islands and then a boat to Coloń Island the main island of Bocas del Toro. Upon checking in the boys and I managed to gain the luxury of not only having an 8 bed air-conditioned dorm to ourselves almost the whole time we stayed there (2 nights quickly turned into 6), but also our own kitchen/dining area that was kind of an annex to the main hostel that we quickly took over and hosted our own shindigs in (power in numbers). One of the nights ... read more

Today is officially our final day of our month-long tour through Central America. Over the past 28 days we have been through 5 countries, seeing and doing some amazing things including swimming with the dolphins, peering into an active volcano full of lava, canyoneering down cliffs and zip-lining across valleys. Its been an amazing 4 weeks and thoroughly enjoyed every minute and the people we've met along the way. Our final day begun with a sleep-in, whooop!! No Olly Murrs 'Troublemaker' would wake us up this morning. We had a free day in Panama City and we thought we'd get our 'chores' over and done with first. We had breakie at the hotel, I put on the biggest load of washing ever in preparation for our summer gear hibination as we would be travelling south to ... read more

Once again Olly woke us up early as today as we had an 11 hour travel day to Panama City! Unfortunately so early that no breakie places were even open so we packed some muesli bars and what we thought were bananas! We met the group at 7am and make our way to the public bus stop to board a chicken bus again. We managed to get seats together this time which was good but we did not have a good start! When Ben got on the bus I noticed that there was a GIANT red ant crawling on the rim of his cap. I was sitting next to the wide open window and he was in the aisle seat. It was the largest ant I have EVER seen and I was like “OMG Ben...” and ... read more

We were awake nice and early for our big day on the rapidos (god my Spanish is getting good). Well, it wasn't because we were so excited/nervous that we couldn't sleep. It was because (1) the curtains in our hotel room were basically a sheet that didn't stop any morning light coming through; (2) the bed was so uncomfortable that Rach and I both found ourselves sinking down into the middle; and (3) the hotel backs onto a supermarket delivery dock and a bloody big semi decided to rock up at 5am, and keep the engine running as the entire thing was unloaded. It sounded as though it was backing back right into our hotel room! Anyway, so wasn't a great start but we had to be up anyway. We grabbed a quick breakie at the ... read more

Ok I am finally writing a blog! Yes I know the last 4 have been angelic bens! But I'm baaaack! And touch screen typing on my iPhone while on a 7 hour bus to Panama City! So it really is guaranteed quality. I'm mainly doing it cos after 3.5hours of homeland episodes and a dead laptop I am extremely bored and hot and annoying Ben. So I think in a way I have put myself in time out for the sake of our relationship! Hence a blog of some sort is coming your way!Ok so I am told I am in charge of describing our day at red frog beach in Bocas del toro! It was suuuuch a long time ... read more

We said farewell to San Jose, thankfully for the last time and jumped onto our public bus that would take us to Panama border. Apparently there are only 2 land borders into Panama on the west side from Costa Rica and luckily we were taking the path less traveled. We had managed to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones this morning that aired in the US only last night. As I said yesterday, amazing wifi! It was done between 5am and 5.15am when we had to leave!! So we caught up on the latest from Westeros and that took us up to the first stop. We had 10mins to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. There was a random little fresh juice shop and we thought that would be the best option for ... read more