Bocas del Torro

Crossing the Costa Rican – Panamanian eastern land border is simple: Just walk across the bridge and you’re in Panama. Now you have to look for the officials to get your passport stamped since there are no clear counters for passport control. The eager local taxi drivers will of course guide you once you’re in Panama to the hidden offices around the corner and above the supermarket to legalize your status in exchange for offering you a ride to where you want to go. The first difference I actually noticed was army presence here or the lack of army presence in Costa Rica.

Another HUGE difference is air conditioning!! Almost all the taxis and cheap buses here, as well as the hostels had AC! It was a real blessing for the longer bus rides.

I took a few buses including a very pimped up microbus, whose driver kept driving on the same gear for ages so he can voice whatsapp, to get to the boat for Bocas del Toro. Bocas del Toro is a Panamanian archipelago (group of islands) in the Caribbean Ocean and Isla Colon, where I stayed, is the main island. The island has two beaches, but I only had time to go to star fish beach, which unfortunately did not feature any star fish that day. But apparently, the day before was a good day for star fish. I guess you can’t always be at the right place at the right time.

On the way back from the beach I sat next to Grazia on the bus, a gynecologist and single mom from Uruguay and she seemed curious about what I was reading (an arabic book called “the blue elephant”). So we started talking about life and how she’s looking forward to having her two “kids” (actually already graduated and working) finally leave the house, so she can start to reduce her costs and travel more. I don’t know much about Uruguay except for their football players and down to earth ex-president, so I asked her about the situation there. Although the ex-president was a simple man, she did not agree with some of the policies that were enforced during his term, especially because there are lots of kids not going to school and not working. Even though the government pays the kids (not the parents) to go to school! We also talked about the Syrian refugees in Uruguay and she said that they are trying to leave Uruguay to go to Germany and make more money to support their families. But the fact that Uruguay, a country across the atlantic ocean offers refuge to Syrians made me think, that the situation there can’t be so bad after all.

I stayed in a relaxed hostel on the main square, which was for sale and it made me think about it for a while. Actually Panama would be a great place to start a business in Latin America. Mainly because they don’t have their own currency, well they had a really cool one called “Balboa” (like Rocky’s last name) but they gave it up and now everything is in US dollars. So if you start a project here, you wouldn’t have to worry about currency devaluation or exchanging local currency back to USD or EUR when you decide to leave.

In Bocas, there was definitely more night life, great live music, good street food and a reggae island vibe with Drug (cocaine and weed) dealers riding bikes all around town and sharing the streets with the police on their Quads (beach buggies). A group of people at the hostel went to a secluded beach called wizard beach on another island (Basimientos) and were approached by the police on the beach and warned to be careful since there have been some muggings on the trail to the beach. A few hours later, that’s exactly what happened. They were stopped at gun point and lost 4 dollars that day. But the shock of being stopped at gun point wasn’t easy of course. They say Bocas is the most dangerous province in Panama but to be honest I felt quite safe the whole time I was there.

I took a boat tour to the national park there, which basically consists of a few secluded islands with jungle and sea turtle nests. We also saw some dolphins on the way and this time a lot of star fish, which I discovered actually move themselves and are not moved by the water.

I liked the vibe on Bocas and decided to stay an extra day to go to Red Frog beach on the island of Bacimientos with some people from the hostel. This beautiful stretch of beach is protected inside a park, where the poisonous but also hard to find red frogs live. We didn’t see any ourselves but we did see a very green iguana. The life guard working at the beach turned out to be the guy from the night shifts at our hostel so we hung out with him and found out that he is also training for national athletics squad (800m). Another very impressive and hard working person. He goes jogging early in the morning, then to the beach for work followed by another jogging session, then starting the night shift at the hostel and if there is a party going on that night, going to party for a few hours, which we also did. Bocas was fun, but it was a lot of laying on the beach, so it was time to go in to the jungle and get moving again.