Bocas del Toro – a must see backpacker’s paradise in Central America. Don’t get me wrong, there are gobs of luxury options as far as accommodations and dining are concerned for the more well-off crowd. I ran into a friend from Quepos there who had planned on staying two days and ended up staying a week. For a number of reasons, Bocas easily takes that span of time to escape from once you get sucked in.
The archipelago comprises islands fit for scuba, surfing, beachgoing, snorkeling, sailing, and dolphin or turtle watching tours, just to name a few. As far as business goes, it seemed like a really easy place to set up shop. A girl from Montreal who had just opened a poutine stand was going to be turning a profit in her third week on the strip. She opened at the peak of the backpacker season, so who knows how she is handling the ups and downs of the rest of her fiscal year. I wished her luck and had the plain fries (I had a bad experience with poutine at a crappy sports bar in September, but I had some fantastic smoked meat that made up for it gastronomically).
Without further adieu, I give you Bocas:
Of course you know by now that all images pop up in this window without leaving the page. Click them so the next time I use the term “without further adieu” it can actually mean something.
![]() I have pretty much given up on Costa Rica – I cannot recommend traveling there when there are cheaper places that are just as nice in Panama and Nicaragua. |
![]() Two teams, each behind a line, one sock in the middle, same number of players on each side. The referee yells out a number, and that number of people hold hands or lock arms and try to get the sock back to their goalline without being touched. You are allowed to throw the sock, and the kid in the blue there is allowed to completely ignore the “being touched” rule, while he cheers for himself and the other team complains. Maybe it took me so long to understand the game because of that kid. |
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![]() Location, Location, Location . . . This one just wasn’t close enough to the center of town to really take off. |
![]() When there is no path anymore, but you can hear voices, you go toward the voices. When there are no more voices, you are kind of screwed. I went to Bastimentos to hike through the jungle. These two girls had gone the day before and said I would see monkeys (no monkeys). They said it was an hour and a half hike to the Wizard beach, but if you take the wrong turn on the first turn of your journey, it is a bit longer and a lot muddier. Of course, it was an interesting adventure and I had plenty of time to explore, so I had fun. I came up upon some Washingtonians with the wrong kind of footwear for their excursion. In the mud, there were more busted flippy floppies than I bothered to count. I started blazing what looked like a trail and told them to follow me, and they did. Knowing me, your only question should be how far downhill it went from there for those guys, and my answer would have to be “pretty far.” New sandals were in order. |
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![]() That tree is Beached As! It’s heaps beached! |
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![]() We talked about the Montreal girl who came down to Bocas to open a french fry stand. She bought her location on a sidestreet to the main road in a fairly well-trafficked location for $1,800. She couldn’t have spent more than $5,000 for the entire setup. I am thinking about going back down there to see how easy it would be to set something up. She told me that her biggest issue was her potato supply. (edit: I don’t want to deal with potato supply – not considering this business plan.) |
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![]() When I typed this into my Flickr account, I couldn’t just type “OMG LULZ” in the description of this picture without it being reformatted to “Omg lulz.” Why would Flickr want to reformat my LULZ? I think they are anti-1337. Can’t they tell that I am making fun of the 1337 with my LULZ? |
![]() Well, I thought I was talking to Goyo on the phone, but apparentlly, I wasn’t. When I arrive at 1 on Saturday to pick up my bike, it’s nowhere to be found. Goyo didn’t get the message and the bike was put on the ferry. When it got to Bocas, I didn’t pick it up, so it went back the next morning, and then back out to Bocas the next day. Since the ferry comes in at 5:30 and the Panamanian Border closes at 6, I am stuck in Bocas for another night. My last post, you received my photoblog at about 7PM EST, a few hours after I took this picture and spent the rest of the day at the internet cafe writing the captions for the photos. I get to the ferry at six and the guy wants me to pay for every trip that my bike was on the ferry. The firefighters on duty negotiate down to one trip for me and all is right with the world . . . except that I decide to drive to Changuinola and halfway into the trip realize that I have no headlight again. |
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![]() The sport you’ll invent becaus you’re TOO ENERGITIC FOR NORMAL SPORTS! I think this is the great idea of some Latin American guy who watched Super Troopers too many times. |
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![]() It was rainy when I was there, so I only stayed a day. I went out to meet Shiri at Rocking J’s. This was the hostel that had the best layout I had seen thus far into the trip, you should take a look at the website. There was a pile of tiles and some tile-affixing cement behind a building and people were encouraged to adorn anything they could with art. It was a very chill place, but I wasn’t so taken with Puerto Viejo. The town was there so foriegners could come to surf and smoke weed (which isn’t the worst reason for a town), but I just wasn’t into that scene so much at the time. |
![]() That is all. |
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![]() I went back to the casino, took out $40, and promptly lost it all on the tables. I did get a complimentary water, though. |
![]() Just a sidenote: this is a picture of me minutes after I lost my second credit card. It would have been fine if I knew this at the time of the picture, but I didn’t find out until 5PM, after the Doctor’s office (which could have been the place I lost it) closed for two more days. Thus begins the comical saga of abhorrible customer service I receive from Bank Of America. |
![]() I was the size of my hand – as amusing as it was terrifying. |
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Thanks for giving me a fantastic place to vacation! I've been looking for a place to go.
It's so strange how many different species of animals there are in the world. It's so cool to be able to travel and see how different places are.
I would love to go where there's an ocean. That's beautiful!
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