The Banana Inn Bocas Town

Jeg kom til oya isla Colon i Bocas del Toro grytidlig mandags morgen, etter aa ha kjort nattbuss hele natta og en liten baattur.Det er en nydelig liten oy i naerheten av grensen til Costa Rica i karibien. Hostelet jeg bor paa er et typisk backpacker hostel i skikkelig surfestil. Folte meg hjemme her med en gang. Atmosfaeren og menneskene her i Bocas og paa hostelet faar en til aa fole seg som hjemme og veldig avslappet. Det er et veldig lite sted med hus ...

... in Boc*s. They do * v*riety of nights th*t involve drinking copious *mounts of h*ppy hour speci*ls (beers 50 cents *nd mixes * doll*r) *nd *lso h*ve * "Power Hour" whereby the unlucky ch*llenger h*s to down * tot of beer every 60 seconds. Yup, you guessed it, we h*d *rrived *t p*rty centr*l. THe girl th*t checked us in looked like she h*d suffered * m*ssive h*ngover th*t d*y, *sking Al*n *bout 4 times to spell his n*me... A... L.... A.... N. simples. Our room w*s ...

... thing and the weather on Bocas, I really couldnt be stuffed doing much. Had some beers at the hostel with some yankee guys, caught a boat to the main island for tea, came back and watched angels and demons, then went to bed.
Good to have a day doing absolutely nothing, especially with limited alcohol too!

11th August
Beautiful day for once, but I had made my mind up to go to Panama City on the overnight bus that ...

... nose of the board, for which we had to pay. My best guess is that it happened while taking the water taxi as the board bounced around as we skipped across the waves, but regardless it was an additional pain in the ass. Overall, including the board related costs, taxi fees and National Park entrance toll, we ended up spending about a dollar a minute for some pretty lame surfing - not cool at all.

In fact, the only saving grace for our time in Bocas was the ...

... once we tasted the food. When we finally found another place that was open, we discovered the exact same menu, realizing that it must be the same owners/food...hahaha! Overall, had a great experience in Bocas and were so lucky with the weather as it's notoriously stormy this time of the year, 3 nights was just the right amount of time there, would go back in a heartbeat and you must stay at Olas! What up Yariv! Off to Boquete via Aeroperlas!!

... 8:15 a.m. It was a beautifully landscaped establishment. We were greeted by Jeff, a tour guide who led us to where we would board the canoe for the hour and a half adventure down the rivers. The guide asked us if we cared if it rained and we didn't as we had our ponchos with us so it didn't matter. It was the most beautiful trip, the calm, quiet water, the beauty unsurpassed as we canoed down the tropical jungle. It began to ...

... shade of trees you can still get burnt. We all headed into town around 4pm and did some tourist sopping and booked a boat tour for the next day for $20 each. We also enjoyed some happy hour drinks, which ran about $2 each. Dinner was a Buena Vista. While my meal of chicken satay was probably the least impressive meal I´ve had in Panama, everyone else enjoyed their meal. The Mahi-Mahi catch of the day turned out to be Jaime´s favorite meal thus far in the ...

Bocas del Toro, on Isla Colon in the Carribean, is descibed in the guidebooks as an ecological paradise. Unrelenting rain and wind however meant it didn`t quite live up to the hype. Getting to Bocas was quite the ordeal, and little did we realise that getting off the island would cause even greater anguish. The storms soon closed all routes to the rest of Panama, leaving everyone stranded for five ...

The last few days that I was at the turtle project were really good, and the weather finally came around! It was sunny and HOT the last 3 days, and I spent a lot of time just lounging on the beach and swimming. I had a morning beach patrol on the white sand beach one morning (nothing again), a morning hatchery shift, this time from 6am to noon, and another night patrol, again with no luck. We also had a mini-Olympics type tournament complete with beach volleyball and coconut toss (ran ...

... that the place was not safe to walk around as there had been armed muggings recently. We feel he was just trying to get a higher fare as he was offering to take us to a point on the other side of the Island, but we decided it was not worth the risk for an additional $5 Balboa (the town of Bastimentos does look like its a shanty town). We got off the boat and paid a $2 balbao fee to get into the private park, and thats really were paradise started yet again ...