Panama City, covers Mango, Bastimentos Cave, surf
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2008
1
11
12
Trip End
Mar 24, 2008
Panama City,
Panama
Monday, March 24, 2008
Still so much catching up to do on Travelpod! We got to having so much fun on Bastimentos that we didn't keep up with the postings. It's fun to remember and relive all the fun things we did! But first, to introduce a new character. Her name is Mango, at least that's the nickname she chose for herself, I never did catch her given name. She's in her late 20s and from Germany. She's a student of Biology and Art and was in Panama partly to do some work with the Smithsonian Institute. She has traveled all over
Mango and Keli in boat to Cave
! She was staying at our same Beverly's Hill and we had lots of fun running around Bastimentos with her. Very nice person, very bright and positive personality, loves trying new things.On Saturday morning (22 Mar), we three decided to take a tour to the Nivida cave, which we had read about in the Lonely Planet guidebook. We read that we should contact someone named Oscar at Roots restaurant and he would set us up with some of the local guys as our guides. Arrangements were easy, and we all showed up at Roots at 8am, having been warned to NOT BE LATE! Or the boat would take off without us. Whatever. At 8:40a, things finally started happening and we all hopped into the boat with our guides Miguel and Doesn't-Talk-Guy, along with a young American couple from New York, 7 of us in all. Miguel was very personable and fun to chat with on the 20-min open ocean boat ride to the far corner of Bastimentos island. Dave accidentally knocked our beautiful camera out of Keli's hands while on the boat, thank goodness it landed inside not in the briny deep!
When we reached the far side, we slowly crawled into a channel in the mangrove swamp that rings much of the island. Soon, we came upon two young native boys (Ngobe-Bugle Indians) in a dugout canoe with handmade wooden paddles, who asked for $10 to let us continue on towards the cave
Miguel our cave guide
. Miguel and Doesn't-Talk-Guy paid. (Not sure what his real name is, he said fewer than 20 words in the entire time we were with him...) The trip through the mangrove channel continued for another 15 mins.We finally arrived at a little dock where we tied up the shallow launch we had been riding in, and hiked 10 more minutes through the soggy jungle, coming to the mouth of a very dark cave. Words will not be able to describe what it was like inside, check out the photos for a better idea! There was a stream running out of the mouth of the cave towards the ocean and we started our journey by stepping into the middle of the stream. We each were given a flashlight so we could see the large colony of bats hanging upside down from the cave roof above us, there were at least 100 near the cave mouth!
We continued on, sloshing through the stream as the cave narrowed more and more. Keli's ability to balance was VERY useful, since the most appropriate shoes she had were dress sandals with ½ inch heels. Dave was wearing his sneakers, with full knowledge that they would probably be ruined (yes they now smell AWFUL.) The water was cool but not cold, which was lucky since we soon came upon a section of the cave where the water was up above our waists
Mangrove channel to cave
! Bats were flying around our heads and we could hear their echolocation clicks and squeaks quite clearly. Mango, the committed biologist, could only say "Oh, they're SO CUTE!"The scariest part of the caves was where the water was so deep it was up to our necks. Simultaneously, the ceiling dropped down to where we could barely squeeze our heads through! It took some force of will for each of us to go through that section, and we each had some fearful thoughts about what could happen. We finally got to the farthest section that people can get to and our guides had us turn off the lights. Pitch Black. Not the tiniest trace of light at all. Luckily, we were able to get the flashlights to turn back on a few minutes later! On the way back out of the cave, we took a little detour to a deep pool in a side chamber of the main cave. It was about 12 feet deep and was in a sort of mini-grotto, with a large boulder on one side. We were able to jump off the boulder into the deep water! We could also tread water and swim from side to side of the little pool, which was about 10 feet across.
Finally, we headed back out of the cave and made our way back to Bastimentos town. The daylight and warmer air temps felt great! We all agreed it was like nothing we had done before and was a very cool experience
Native boys in dugout canoe
.After the cave, still Saturday, we had to run back across to Bocas the main town in the area to hit the ATM and for Keli to submit her homework at an Internet cafe. There is no ATM on Bastimentos and no one there accepts credit cards!
Number of countries surfed: NOW 4 !!! (US, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama.) Late Saturday afternoon, we returned to The Shop at the top of the hill to rent a surfboard from Javier. He had a decent 8-0 board for $20 rental that he said we could keep til the following morning for an early-morning surf session. He also had a hand-drawn map of how to get through the jungle from his house to Wizard Beach. What a trek we had! It took us about 30 minutes slogging through mud and dodging the most nasty-looking spiders before we finally found the beach!
Wizard Beach is a stunningly beautiful wilderness beach and we had it completely to ourselves in the late afternoon. The surfing was not great, just too many mixed-up waves going every direction at once, most not breaking enough to ride. The paddling was quite exhausting. But now I can say I have surfed Panama!
Miguel cave guide
We hiked back to town with the board, arriving just before it got completely dark. We dropped off the surfboard at Beverly's Hill and had dinner at the usual Red Rooster. It was definitely a different place with alcohol than the previous night was (previous was Good Friday and no one was drinking.) We met Joseph again and he was playing Reggae and Beatles for the tourists and his playing was much less sweet and beautiful than it had been the sober night before. At the end of the night, we asked him to play any original songs of his own and it was right back to his excellent self. He played one about his mother soothing him and his brother when they were babies that was so wonderful! And then he really blew us away playing a song he wrote combining Salsa and Calypso styles. Truly amazing...
The following morning we did NOT wake up early enough to go surfing before having to return the board, just too tired from a long day previous! But we did take a long hike to another wilderness beach, this one named Red Frog Beach. Bastimentos island is just gorgeous, whether you are in the middle of the jungle or on a beautiful beach swimming in clear turquoise waters. We hustled back from the beach in time to catch our boat across to Bocas town for our flight back to Panama City, and now we are caught up! Back to real time in this blog...
Comments
I like Mangos
Mangos are very good. I do find that I like them :-) I can't say I care much for bats. Those pictures just rock! I esp. like the ones with you and the surf board :) Cheers! Love the postings