Panama

Saturday October 30^th, day one of vacation, day one of travel. Because we had classes in the morning on Saturday we weren’t allowed to leave until noon, which foiled our plans to take the 9,00 bus to Panama. We booked a night at Hostel Pangea in San Jose and almost half of the program ended up staying there. It was a fun evening as they had a Halloween party at our hostel – little did I know this was the first of many hostel parties. Some people had planned costumes, but I had to follow tradition and not figure mine out until the absolute last minute. Seeing as I had a limited wardrobe (i.e. the five days of clothes I packed for Panama) I ended up being “night”, wearing a sarong with stars and moons on it. Coincidentally, “day” was also at the party. We did not meet though, we happened to always be on opposite sides of the room. I called it an early night because we had planned on leaving the hostel at 7.30 am for day two of travel.

The entrance to our hostel, Mondo Taitu

Bridge at the Costa Rica -
Panama border

On Sunday we managed to drag everyone out of bed to grab breakfast and leave on schedule at 7.30. We had been told that the bus to Panama can fill up quickly, and it doesn’t originate in San Jose, so we got there an hour early. This probably wasn’t necessary, especially since the bus stop was on an unmarked corner in a kind of sketchy part of town. So sketchy, in fact, that we had a visit by the tourist police telling us to be careful and always watch our stuff. Everything was fine and we made it on the bus and were able to relax, until we got stuck at an accident for almost an hour that involved a truck and a bridge. The only other stop we made was to get lunch outside of Limon. The second leg of the trip ended at Sixaola on the border between Costa Rica and Panama. There we got off the bus, got our passports stamped on the Costa Rican side, then walked across a bridge that looked like it had seen better days, then had to run down to a little shack to buy out bus tickets back to Costa Rica before going to get stamped on the Panama side, then we got a sticker and paid a dollar tourist tax and then finally coordinate leg three of the trip, a taxi to the port town of Almirante. The fourth leg of the trip was on the water, a ferry over to Bocas del Toro. Finally in Bocas del Toro we walked the last part of the trip to our hostel, which was at the far end of town. Everyone we met on the way informed us that our hostel, Mondo Taitu, was the party hostel, and it definitely looked it when we got there. It had character for sure, but unfortunately along with that came a bit of dirt and grime. We were split up into two rooms and I was with Jenn, Liz, Tessa and JB in an eight person dorm room. The first night there, there were two other Australians in the room. After getting settled we walked down the main drag to grab dinner at a vegetarian restaurant we’d heard about, Natural Mystic. The food there was surprisingly good, I had a veggie bridge with yucca fries and everyone else raved about their food as well (hummus, falafel, corn tamales, coconut rice, etc.). After a long day of travel and already having celebrated Halloween the night before, none of us were so inclined to joining the Halloween party at the hostel, which was conveniently located almost directly below my room. Fortunately I was tired enough that I feel right asleep with music blasting and the one fan not on all the way.

Playa Wizard

Coconut at Playa Wizard

I started off the first full day in Panama with a run through Bocas town with Jenn. It was a good way to kinda explore the town, although it barely took us 20 minutes. When we got back, I took advantage of one of the nice things our hostel had (no, not warm showers…), free make your own pancake breakfast! Liz and I were the only ones that stayed to make breakfast, saving money and cooking too! We packed snacks/lunch and hopped in the water taxi that we had negotiated a $7 roundtrip ride to Playa Wizard with. We were all stunned as the boat came around the point and a gorgeous, deserted white sand beach with palm trees stretched out in front of us. The entire afternoon we were there, we saw at the max, 10 other people. Julia and I walked the length of the beach, with cameras of course, and soaked up the sun. We met one of the other few groups there, two Germans and an Aussie, who had been working on cracking open some coconuts for awhile and they kindly shared their success with us. It was picture perfect – eating coconut on a deserted white sand beach, so of course, I got some photos. We had a bit of a bumpy water taxi ride back, but it was worth it because we were back in time to go to a yoga class at the Bocas Yoga Studio. It was very relaxing even though I hadn’t done yoga in a very long time, and it was definitely not a beginner class. Getting a group of eight to move fast after a calming yoga class was like herding cats and resulted in us eating dinner at around 9.30 at El Limbo. I had a delicious plate of Creole style mahi-mahi which was worth the wait. The only thing that wasn’t worth it was the issue we had with the waitress thinking that some people hadn’t paid for their dinners, when they actually had. There had been rumors that there was live reggae at Casa Verde so when we were done at the early hour of 10.30, we made our way down and caught the tail end of the music. It was a cool place with a little stage area and bar right on the water. We ran into two of our friends from the program there and also the people we had met on the beach earlier. Everything pretty much died down after midnight because the bar wasn’t allowed to serve alcohol for the next day (midnight to midnight) because it was Dia de los Muertos. When we finally made it back to the hostel, Liz and I were the only hardy souls who stayed in our room and didn’t switch to the air conditioned room.

Dolphin!

Playa Red Frog

We had booked a dolphin/snorkeling/beach tour the day before for Tuesday, so we actually had a somewhat structured day in front of us, although we soon realized that the structure wasn’t very rigid. The tour that was supposed to leave at 9.30 got going around 10.00. It was a gorgeous sunny day for a tour, although sitting in the front of the boat on a sunny day resulted in a bright red scalp for me. We weren’t just lucky with the weather; we also say quite a few dolphins too, although we seemed to be a bit too close to them for their own good. After the dolphins left, we moved on to the snorkeling part of the tour. Unfortunately, my snorkeling was postponed for a bit because they didn’t have enough snorkels for everyone on the tour to go at once. Jenn asked them if our guide could grab some from one of the many boats nearby that were done with their snorkels, so luckily I didn’t have to wait too long. While I was waiting for a snorkel, I was just out treading water, without realizing that there were quite a few jellyfish swimming around. I was more than glad to get a snorkel and mask so I could avoid swimming into the jellyfish. Even with a mask this was difficult at times; at one point I looked up and saw a jellyfish not even two feet from my face. We went our separate ways rather quickly. The snorkeling wasn’t the best at this place, but we were able to see some cool coral and fish along with the jellyfish. After we decided that we’d had enough close encounters with jellyfish, the tour took us to Playa Red Frog, where we had a few hours to eat, relax and enjoy the beach. Unfortunately we had to pay and take a short truck ride to get over to the beach, which we weren’t aware of ahead of time. This was a more popular and accessible beach, but it did have a few things in common with Playa Wizard, like the white sand, gorgeous blue water, palm trees, and surprisingly the same people that we met the day before. Small world. After the beach we moved on to Hospital Point for another snorkeling excursion, this time with sufficient masks. This point was where the banana companies had built a hospital for their workers a long time ago. I think there were some cool ruins in water, but I wasn’t able to see a lot because the water was so cloudy. The water was also a lot rougher there, so I was glad when we left because I was feeling queasy in the boat and in the water. That wrapped up our tour and when we got back on to the main island around 5.00, we did some souvenir shopping and walked around town. Back at the hostel I lost my last roommate as Liz moved to the air conditioned room, but it was fine because I met a couple of really nice British girls who were travelling down from Costa Rica.  The production to get ready for dinner began and we were ready for dinner earlier than the night before. We were still all hungry and then menu at Om Café was enough to make our stomachs growl. We had a delicious meal of Indian food (chicken curry and naan for me). The lack of alcohol led to an early night for almost everyone in Bocas, which meant my room was very quiet again.

Panamanian flag at Red Frog

Bocas del Toro

Wednesday was greeted by another morning run, this time by myself though. I ran further away from the touristy area of Bocas and Isla Colon, towards the mainland. We had breakfast a German bakery where we had some delicious bread fresh out of the oven. We were able to sit outside and watch the parade for Dia de Panama, independence day. We hadn’t planned much for adventures for the day and we split up, as some of us wanted to go to the beach right away and others were planning on getting a later start. My only goal for the day was to get in a kayak. After a series of unfortunate events, this did not happen and we ended up back at Playa Red Frog. The little strip of beach by the kayak rental place wasn’t a suitable place for the people who didn’t want to kayak so we took a boat over to Red Frog and had a very similar day relaxing on the beach. This time we did see a red frog, so at least we knew we were at the right place. Back in Bocas we got ready for another yoga class, which was equally relaxing and fun as the first time. Luckily our speed after yoga was faster than the previous time and we were eating dinner at Natural Mystic (it was a day of seconds, Red Frog beach and Natural Mystic) before 10.00. It would have been nice to branch out and try something with more of a Caribbean flair, but it was nice to all be together on the last night. Our hostel was celebrating our last night with a pirate party that was going full swing by the time we got there after dinner. It started raining earlier that evening and it kept up most of the night. That was probably the only time I was glad we were staying at the party hostel, when I knew I wasn’t going to have to run out in the pouring rain when I was ready to leave. Unfortunately, everyone decided that we should still venture out into the downpour to try and go to another party. The cover charge was so high that this only resulted in a group of very wet and somewhat disappointed people returning to Mondo Taitu. I, however, was happy to be back at the hostel where I had dry clothes and a bed waiting for me. At 2.00am after being out in the rain, any bed under a roof sounded very pleasant, especially with an early wakeup call hanging over our heads.

Painted palm trees on the bus ride back

Thursday morning was crazy, waking up at 6.15 to get ready to leave and catch the 7.00 ferry back to Almirante. Luckily I had packed the night before, but I did have to do some last minute arranging of my bag since a few of my clothes were still soaked from the previous nights adventures. I should have expected it, but it was still frustrating trying to get everyone out of the hostel on time. At 7.00 we were all on the ferry, but in varying states of tiredness. We retraced our steps part way, taking a taxi not all the way to the border, but to the town of Changuinola, where the bus to San Jose left. We are really good about worrying about buses because we got to the bus at 8.00 and had two hours to wait. The bus driver wasn’t even there yet. We all relaxed when we got on the bus, but it wasn’t for long because we were at the border within 15 minutes and had to get out to repeat the whole crazy process. Luckily this time we were like experts and we blew through everything. Unfortunately our bus wasn’t as slick as we were and we had to stop for around 20 minutes to get a tire changed or something and we all sat on a very stuffy bus not knowing what was going on. Everything got fixed and we made it into San Jose with all wheels attached. When we got in, our taxi driver who was taking us to the next bus station told us that the buses weren’t going to make it to Atenas until 10.00 at night because it had been raining so hard and lots of roads were closed because of landslides. He tried to convince us to let him drive us all the way to Atenas, but after we saw some of the staff at the bus station we figured that we would be fine to take the bus back. We made it back to Atenas well before 10.00 pm, but the situation was worse than I had expected. There had been a couple of big landslides and by that evening 20 people had died because of the weather. From our program, the group that had gone to hike Chirripo, the highest peak in Costa Rica, got stuck in San Isidro and the conditions were so bad that they didn’t make it back to Atenas until Saturday. We hadn’t realized until then how lucky we were to make it back from Panama, and on top of everything, we had nice weather most of our trip.