Panama

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We arrived in Bocas del Torro (a Caribbean island off Panama) after a painless journey around lunchtime. Once we had settled ourselves into our hostel and reacquainted ourselves with the German couple whom we had befriended in El Castillo we headed to Wizard Beach. Like Cahuita, the Caribbean culture dictates that most things are in English as well as or sometimes instead of Spanish. The local Caribbeans here speak a dialect akin to Patwa although it often seems to be injected with some Spanish as well.

We were a little surprised to find that Wizard beach (the nearest beach) was nearly an hour’s treck through muddy jungle and were very ready for a swim by the time we got there. It was spectacularly beautiful however, surrounded by jungle with white sands and deep blue water broken up by the white crested colossal waves. We spent a while playing around in the surf, took a stroll down the beach and found ourselves a boat home to avoid a treck back through the jungle in the near dark.

The following day we took ourselves back to the beach with sandwiches in hand and spent a pleasant day wondering through the jungle that lined the beaches in search of a secluded spot, eventually returning to the main beach admitting it was the best of the bunch. Again we hitched a ride back on a boat and dolled ourselves up for a fancy dinner to celebrate our years anniversary. Unfortunately the fancy restaurant we had chosen for our fancy dinner had run out of chicken and was thus closed, so we settled for a not-quite-so-fancy but still good Caribbean fare instead.

Soon we were back on the road again heading to David. In David we found a surprisingly nice hostel with a small swimming pool in the garden and spent a pleasant afternoon relaxing and recuperating after a beautiful but exhausting journey. We left early the next morning for Panama City.

We took a cab to our hostel, ‘Luna’s Castle,’ from the bus station we now know so well. There we made some food and then watched a film in the hostels ‘movie theatre’. The following day we visited the canal. It was actually really interesting, Dad would have loved it. We spent around an hour looking around the museum documenting the different phases of canal construction before going out to the viewing deck to watch two ships coming through the locks. The ships are driven through the locks by a special canal ‘pilots’ and are kept in line by tiny trains called ‘mules’. The journey through the canal takes around a day. On our return we bought some fresh fish from the docks and James barbequed it while I made some rice and sauce to go through it. We also ate freshly baked banana bread that one of the owners had decided to make. Again we spent our evening residing in the movie theatre.

We went to a marine reserve the next day. Not the most impressive but we did get to see our first sloths at long last. They were surprisingly difficult to see, resembling hairy greyish brown coconuts high up in the trees. We then returned to the hostel to get ourselves ready for our flight to South America!

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