Blogs from Bocas Del Toro, Panama, Central America Caribbean - page 29

Isla Bastimientos is about a five minute boat ride from Isla Colon (Bocas del Toro) but it is a world apart. Most of the people here are African in descent and many speak a dialect called Ngobe-Bugle. The feel is very Caribbean rather than Panimanian and the food and music reflect this. We are staying in a hostel over the water called Tio Tom which is run by a German couple. Our first night we shared a dinner of Schnitzel, cabbage and potatoes with them. After settling in, we went for a walk to the end of the settlement, (it is about 500 meters from end to end) and then took a trail through the edge of the jungle by the water through a coconut grove and to a series of beaches. Here the fish were ... read more

We started with a 5 AM wake up call-which in Panama seems to be the owner poking his head in your room and mumbling something. Then we went downstairs and were aided in hailing a cab by a lonely and friendly graveyard shift police officer who looked like he was ready to go into combat. On the way to the airport our crazy cab driver missed our exit and decided to back up on the highway to our exit. Upon arriving at the airport we were informed that out flight was changed from 6:30 to 8:30 (it least it was still AM). Then the plane pulled up...Marianne got very nervous (and so did I) because the plane looked like Zsa Zsa Gabor could have flown on it in the 70s. Fortunately, the flight was tranquilo and ... read more

We took these pix for Walter and Cindy, of their beautiful property in the Darklands near here...... read more

Once we had done the clear up at fieldbase and offloaded the venturers on the 14th May all staff headed for the beers and then the two day party in Cahuita on the Caribbean coast. Suffice to say it involved a luxury hotel (compared to pallets on the floor anything is luxury!), lovely food, games of pool, and copious amounts of alcohol - rum and coke at 3am in the swimming pool having gone for a midnight swim on the beach and finished mad cap dancing at one of the local bars. We also undertook a gorgeous walk through the Cahuita national park headland along sandy beaches to the park ranger station where Rich and Katy had done a phase helping build trails for the park rangers to patrol the turtle nests with quad bikes. It ... read more

Misty Bridges,….visions of the sweaty clamouring heaving silicone of a budding porn queen….no, rather the engineering/meteorological interface phenomenon suffered by early risers on a stormy day, the tourista cop, maybe, and the parallel travellers come back to haunt me. Finally it had rained in Panama after threatening for weeks, or maybe I brought it back to P City from Colon (don’t mention the irrigation) after the transit. Whatever brought it on, it worked, so I left early and went West, funny set-up, but Panama actually runs East - West, not North - South as you would think!…I only discovered this as we went up the canal, at one stage I glanced at the compass, we were heading WNW, I nearly stopped drinking!, but they assured me with another can that all was well, but it still ... read more