Wednesday, April 30 - Friday, May 9, 2008
After my time was up in San Pedro, Costa Rica I took the bus to the Panama border, and then took a 45 minute boat ride to Bocas Del Toro. I made this trip with my roommate Jake in San Pedro. He didn´t get to travel much with me during the month of April when I stayed with him because he was working hard with school etc., so he decided he wanted to come to Panama with me for a few days.
In order to pass to Panama we had to cross this bridge that was a little freaky to cross over because it was over water and it was missing a lot of boards and definitely did not feel that sturdy. As you are walking on this you could easily push someone right into the water because it is missing so many boards, but luckily it didn´t happen to me...lol. Once we got to the border and got stamped in we took a taxi to where we needed to take a 45 minute boat ride to Bocas Del Toro. The first day and night in Bocas was pretty fun, and the water there was a beautiful Carribean blue color. I was not impressed with the friendliness of the workers at the restaurants though. I felt like they were almost upset that we were looking to dine at their place, and the service was also terrible. I think a lot of the places just get fed up with our the tourisits because this is an area where there are more English speakers than Spanish because of so many tourists.
The next day in Bocas it ended up raining, and we were planning to snorkel. We heard that it was going to rain the next few days, so we decided to continue to David, Panama because I had to go there next to eventually make my way to Panama City anyways. There was not a whole lot happening around there, but the people were very nice here. There are not many tourists there either which is nice, but it was HOT! After a couple nights there, Jake decided to go back to Costa Rica, and I continued on the extra 8 hours bus ride to Panama City. Once I arrived to Panama City I had couch-surfer Miguel that was nice enough to let me stay at his place. I took a 20 minute taxi to his place for $3 (taxis there are so cheap), and Miguel and his roommates made me feel right at home. Once I arrived I checked my email and I finally heard back from the captain of the boat that was taking me to Cartagena, Colombia. So I called him, and he told me he was leaving at 6 am on Friday out of Portobelo (1 hour north of Panama City), and when I told him I was in for the trip it ended up that I was the last person to fill the spot. Unfortunately, I was only able to spend two nights in Panama City, and Miguel had told me I could stay as long as I wanted. He was a great guy who toured me around in the two nights that I was there, and he and his friend (Justin) and Justin´s girlfriend (Sol) decided that they would give me a ride to Portbelo on Thursday morning because they were going to look at properties in that area.
Once we arrived Portobelo (small iffy town of about 1000 people) we continued on to check out some properties on a couple different islands not far from Portobelo (Isla Grande and a couple others). It was very nice of them to tour around the area, and I ended up seeing some great places in short time. Once we were done, we all decided to head back to Portobelo, and they were going to stay in that town as well because they were going to check out other properties around there the next morning. It was about 5:30 pm on a Thursday and we could not find a place open to even eat, and by this time we were all a little fed up with this town, so I just bought some crackers at the supermarket that had barely anything to tie me over till the morning when I catch the sailboat to the San Blas Islands. We checked a couple hostels in Portobelo, but they all looked pretty shady, so we ended up getting a room a little outside of Portobelo. After hanging outside our room for awhile Justin and his girlfriend got into a little argument, and they wanted to leave rather than staying overnight. So they all felt bad that they were going to leave me, but I said it was no problem at all, and that I could just get up extra early and walk to where I needed to be to catch my boat. I was lucky enough to have them give me a ride in the vicinity of where I needed to be! So I said goodbye and thanked them and they headed on there way. Meanwhile, I just went to bed early, and kept on waking up every hour worried that I was going to over sleep. Eventually, I started walking at 5:20 am to the dock where the boat was going to pick me up. It was pouring down rain so I had my rain jacket and poncho over my back pack to keep it dry. As I was walking the rain finally stopped, but I was sweating from trying to hurry to the dock, and as I walked by this one house on the street these two dogs came running down from their house to the street barking at me. I just continued walking fast and I could hear the barks of the dogs getting closer and closer. Luckily, as I kept walking faster and faster and not looking back the dogs finally gave up. I was quite scared and worried that these dogs were going to bite me before I even made it to the dock to hop on the boat, but I was all good, and made it to the boat right on time.
Good-bye Panama...soon to the San Blas Islands...then to Colombia!
The only thing that sucks is that I found out my camera is not focusing right and I wasn´t able to take many pictures...luckily I will be able to get some pics from other people to post from the San Blas Islands....
