Bocas del Toro Day 4

---

Today we are taking it easy. We were going to head to Bastimientos to stay out there but from what we've heard from other guests & Matty, it doesn't sound like it can even compare to being out here. It was an easy sell actually, we love it out here & could stay a long time. Plus Matty offered to buy us dinner if we stay, so that was another easy choice. He's an excellent chef & we have eaten very very well here.

I sat upstairs on the "comfy chairs" overlooking the water. We've named them the comfy chairs because they have lots of cushions & they are comfy. The kitty that lives here, Mineux, has one chair all to herself, she's almost always sitting in it, unless she's sitting next to me at the table begging. Matty makes the best espresso every morning & he keeps offering to refill it & since i never say no, I am totally absolutely wired by the time Geoff gets up. 😊 This morning Matty brought me a couple of slices of delicious papaya. I'm telling you, those little treats are really nice. Once Geoff was up, we firmly decided to stay here & had some breakfast & headed to the beach.

It takes all of 5 minutes to walk to this beautiful beach. The sand is so incredible. It's made up of teeny tiny pieces of broken coral & shells & is soft & a beautiful tan/orangey color. The beach is called Playa Bluff (it's the same one we've been going to looking for turtles at night). What is super special about this beach is, not only its beauty, but the fact that it is almost always completely free of other people. It's far enough out of town (about 15-20 minutes in a cab, because the road is pretty bad in parts) that the majority of people don't head out here. All ours!! he he he he.... We spent the afternoon soaking up the sun, reading, swimming, shell collecting. A perfect afternoon. Now that the countdown to going home is on we find ourselves talking a lot about how lucky we are & enjoying every single second while we have it. It's not too tough when we are places such as this. Once we'd had enough sun we headed back to our hotel & spent the rest of the afternoon working on the blog. We've decided it is quite a time consuming project, but one we will be glad we did once we're home. It takes us about 45 minutes to upload one blog usually. It's kind of a fun process & we've become quite a team about it. We made ourselves another cheese & green onion quesadilla to snack on & tide us over until dinner. It feels like we have the whole floor that we are on all to ourselves. There's one other room on this level but I've only seen the guy staying in it once or twice. Perfect kind of floor mate!

While sitting in our wooden deck chairs working on the blog, Matty came by & said he was going surfing. So, we decided to follow him down to the beach & watch. The beach we went to is on the other side of the hotel & we were promplty distracted with the millions of amazing shells on the beach. There were zillions of teeny shells that were in perfect condition. It was so fun. We collected bunches of them & intermittently watched Matt surf. Once we had collected enough shells & Geoff said we should save some for other people, we headed back.

At dinner tonight it was just us & a French couple named Herve & Dorothee......They are both teachers who are living in Bogota teaching at a French school. They were super sweet & we had a fun time talking & getting to know eachother. We were thinking about doing a snorkel trip out Bastimientos tomorrow but they said their experience wasn't anything we would want to do. They said the snorkel spot probably had 100 people in it & 10 boats & everything was crowded. That doesn't sound like something we would love so we're going to regroup & come up with another plan. Tonight at dinner there was apparently a new batch of June bugs that had just hatched because they were all over the place. We learned that they are really not the smartest bugs because they frequently fly right into you/the wall/the table/anything stationary & then die because they hit so hard. They would literally dive bomb into us. We were all a little startled by them. Dorotee was the funniest. She would jump up out of her chair & rattle something off in French while swatting at her back or shoulder &, since Geoff was sitting next to her he'd usually respond that it was gone. We were all laughing about it. The universal language of "is it still on me!?." Our dinner was fabulous. Geoff had a tostada that he named "Nachos on Steroids" because it was so good & piled high with meat & cheese & toppings. I had a delicious veggie pesto pasta that was probably enough to feed 4 people so I had a lot of leftovers for lunch tomorrow. The Frenchies ordered dessert & gave us bites of it. Another thing I've noticed about the French during our travels, they love to share. It's really endearing.

After dinner we sat & talked with Matty for a bit. He's a funny character. Totally a nice guy with a seriously rough around the edges quality. He reminds me of just about every chef I've ever worked with. Great at what they do in the kitchen & super intense outside of it.

Off to bed. We've decided that tomorrow we are going in search of La Piscina again so that we can get our Goonie names from Matty. We failed once, we don't want to fail again. This time we'll wear shoes.....

---

Photos

Banana pancakes!
Geoff's new favorite.

The wall just outside our room.
It is made from empty glass bottles.

Bananas!
They are just so fresh in this part of the world.

Matt catches a wave!
He was cactually pretty darn good.