Hangin' With the Beach Bums
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2006
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Trip End
Apr 01, 2008
Bocas del Toro,
Panama
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
I, however, had never heard of it until I started researching this trip, but I have since learned of at least one friend who has been here. I cannot speak to the beaches, diving, attractions, or "tematic" parks because I never left the town, other than to cross over to a bar on another island one night, because I didn't feel the need to wake up at 9:00 a.m
Atlantic Ocean View From Hotel Deck
. to pay for one of the boats that ferry people around to the different beaches. Plus, I needed some quality time with a good computer to deal with an IRS issue back home.And I was out until after 2:00 a.m. every night, working on the restaurants, nightclubs and tourists part of the Wiki entry. It is touristy, running the gamut from backpacker's hostels to upscale resorts. I stayed at a middle of the road hotel which had a restaurant over the water, but so did half the other places in town, which made for a lot of nice places to sit, eat, read, drink or talk. However, despite the tourists, there are a lot of Panamanians who work there, although they supposedly live on the mainland, and they seemed particularly friendly. That most of them speak good English helps, but there was also a lot of the Caribbean Rastafarian good-naturedness. And the money is easy - U.S. dollars, although they make their own coins wof the same size and color as the U.S. but with different impressions (the quarter, for example, has the national coat of arms on one side and a picture of the explorer Vasco Nunez Balboa on the other) which is a bit jarring at first.
The first night (Wednesday) I had an excellent seafood salad and seafood soup on a deck overlooking the water, followed by meeting some of the local older American expats at the favorite bar for the local older expats in white t-shirts and shorts cleverly named Bohmfalks
Austrians Angelica, Katie, Ingrid and Eva
. Need I even mention that there was a big Parrothead banner, a Conch Republic flag, and I heard no song more recent than Styx' Renegade. I was informed, however, about Bocas' rotating party-system, meaning that each bar/club had its own night to be where everyone went, which is not unusual in party towns, but it helps to learn the circuit.That night was "Agua," a bar/hostel, a $1 water taxi across the channel from Bocas town on another island with a deck surrounding part of the ocean to swim in, swings, a slide, etc., $1 beers and $2.50 tequila shots. In other words, all the makings of hostel revelry/ugliness. I, however, continued my new efforts at tact, this time to serve the higher purpose of hooking up, which failed miserably since I spent most of the night talking (and biting my tongue) to an attractive dreadlocked woman with a rocking body from Oregon. Why did I have to bite my tongue? Well, although she seemed genuinely nice in that love everyone hippie-dippy way, her work was a direct-marketing scam related to taking a blue-green extract to create and release bone-marrow stem-cells in the blood stream. She gave me her card ostensibly so I could e-mail her about having dinner or drinks the next day (she bailed), but I did learn about the quackery that is "StemEnhance." Ok, I also found the nude photo on her personal website, but I was doing scientific research
Bar Boat
.Thursday, following a good chicken liver pate and some disappointing clams, I hit a couple of different happy hours at bars with waterfront patios and checked out the band at Bohmfalks, then it was Ladies Night (free knockoff tequila shots for the ladies) at "La Iguana," a reggae bar with a waterfront patio, to yet another bar with a name I cannot remember, but it was something like "Hondo Murtido." The high/lowlight of the evening was spending most of the evenin talking to slash hitting on this group of four Austrian girls. They were all hot, but way too young and I think we all knew it.
Friday was pretty much more of the same, after a rather amusing search for a local Rasta bartender who a friend of mine told me to say "Hi" to (the amusing part being that he did not remember her at all, but assumed he had banged her, when he hadn't, which explains why he wouldn't remember her two years later, but implied he got lots of white girl ass), with the highlight being going on this dude's party bar/boat thing. It reminded me of the moving art car bars at Burning Man or some of the more elaborate bar floats at "Bay to Breakers," but it cost him several thousand dollars more. It was pretty much round, with the bar in the center, powered, slept three, had a head, and he rented it out to party groups
Bar Whose Name I Forgot
. He promised to take us out on it if he rounded up enough girls, but his luck was apparently no better than mine.Overall, I had a good time, but it is still low season and the amount of people could only support one hopping scene per night, and you saw a lot of the same people (and the same drug dealers and the same police officers watching the same drug dealers) each night. The diving and fishing are also meant to be good, if that is your thing. It's not really a true "local" Panamanian experience, but it is much more of a good mix than staying at an all-inclusive resort.
And, with that, I was off to:
Panama City, Panama
