Blogs from Panama, Central America Caribbean - page 149

I have not written in a few days because we packed up from the main island, Isla Colon, and then took a boat over to the roadless island of Bastimientos, which is so much better than what we have been dealing with. I have a room that sits over the ocean in a thatched roof hut, you can open up the wooden barndoor-like windows and gaze out across the bay to a variety of small, sparcely inhabited islands. The weather has been great, and most days we take a ridiculous jungle trek across the island to one of the beaches- usually about an hour's walk through knee-deep(not kidding) mud and water, with the trail disappearing and re appearing at random. There is an amazing beach with great body surfing that we usually go to, Wizard's beach, ... read more

The first leg of the trip is to Panama City. Margaret and I will go to Colon by train to view the canal. We will head to Costa Rica. We would like bloggers to tell us how to get to Monteverde. The road sounds rough. Do we have to rent a car or is there some type of bus? ... read more

Well we arrived in Panama city this morning around 6am...I think. The bus terminal was by far the biggest we have been to so far, and Panama city seems to be the nicest of the cities. The only trouble is that, I guess, due to the size no one knows where anything is. We got in a cab and asked to go to the hostel. The cabby's response was, "which way is it?" I figured that wasn't a good sign. So, after pointing it out on the map, and him asking several other cab drivers we were on our way. About half an hour later, and somewhere in Panama city, we were still looking for the elusive hostel that we find ourselves in now. Of course he did not know where he was, so I was ... read more

Its´s been a while, but want to fill in the missing gap of my travels. After a great Christmas in Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica, I continued traveling south on the 27th of december. With some great people I met, I continued traveling to Bocas de Torro, some island on the caribian side of Panama. We had a great boatride through mangroves and the last part, the ocean where we arrived at Bocas... Some lovely islands where we enjoyed ourselves whith trying to surf (on too low waves), dolphin whatching, island hopping and for the rest hanging out in a relaxed hostel with a lot of other travelers. For new years we went to a bar (the sunken ship...) realy cool place an outdoor place build above the water with in the middle a sunken ship ... read more

At 7pm on Tuesday 22nd November, after 10 hours spent waiting for our paperwork to be stamped by one official, signed by another who would be "back in 10 minutes", witnessed by someone who was currently away on vacation, signed by someone else, and finally copied, stamped and returned by the official head of the Officious Officials only in the minutes between 3:23pm and 3:27pm whilst both reciting 'the Officious Officials Official Statute' and smoking a ceremonial pipe, our high seas adventure began. Those present were yours truly, Jessie (see previous blog entry), Johannes (a German), Drew (an American), Andre (another American), Captain Hernando (aka El Capitan and 'that massive pain in the arse' by the end of the journey) and our trusty stead, 'Marie-Jo' (a 31 foot sailing boat). The skies that had been shedding ... read more