Guess what? I hate speedboats. And it turns out that islands aren’t the best place to spend a lot of time if you never got over your childhood fear of speedboats.
After a very tearful goodbye in Barra Honda, I was off to Bocas del Toro, Panamá (located here). Bocas is a series of 42 islands in the Carribean Sea off the northern coast of Panamá. They’re the primary tourist destination of the country (along with Panama City/the Canal). They can only be reached by plane or by speedboat from the mainland. My bus from San José took us down the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. As we neared the coast, our non-airconditioned bus filled with swamp-worthy humidity. We wound our way through thick mountain jungle roads lined with waterfalls and vines for several hours before the coast came into view. It was a perfect stereotypical beach postcard: palm trees, white sand, blue sky, gentle waves, and jungle in the background. Unfortunately, we didn’t follow the coast for too long before we headed to the Costa Rica-Panamá border crossing (which was a HUGE pain). After some taxi/bus absurdity I made it to the port city to go to the islands. It was on the boat that I remembered that I HATE speedboats. Something about bouncing over the waves has always terrified me and I apparently haven’t outgrown that fear. I finally talked myself into relaxing a tiiiny bit for the half hour ride to the island but was more than happy to get off when we arrived at the island.
Bocas Town, located on the largest island, is a very confused place. It’s trying really hard to be incredibly touristy, but it also has a huge number of locals who seem to just be carrying on their normal lives, trying to work around the hoards of tourists invading their islands. What comes out is a strange clash of old and new that feels kind of awkward but makes for great people watching. Bocas is largely influenced by people from the larger Caribbean islands (like Jamaica and Barbados) and the Spanish sounds like somebody put your stereotypical “Jamaican filter” on top of an English-influenced Spanish. Weird.
My first day in Bocas, I took a boat tour of some of the local attractions. More speedboats…yay. Our first stop was Dolphin Cove. If I were a dolphin, the one place I would definitely NOT hang out is the place where there’s twenty motorboats driving around looking for me. But I’m not a dolphin, so apparently my opinion is invalid. There were tons! We puttered around with the million other tourist boats taking pictures of the dolphins that were surfacing all around us. I promise we weren’t feeding them- I don’t know why they were there. But dolphins are my favorite animal so I was quite happy.
Our next stop was snorkeling on the reef. Along with my fear of speeding over the water goes my discomfort with open water. We had an hour to snorkel and I spent the first 15 minutes just trying to get my heart rate down as I stared down through my goggles. I’m adding “snorkeling” to the list of things that I’m really bad at. Not sure why but it just makes me incredibly anxious and jumpy. Fortunately, there were lot of great coral formations, plants, and beautiful colorful fish to distract me from thoughts my inevitable salty asphyxiation. I saw a couple tiny plastic bags float by before realizing that I was looking at jellyfish. Which, of course, popped my heart rate right back up to just-jumped-in-the-water levels. After I’d seen a couple and was sufficiently freaked out, I decided to swim back to the boat to ask the tour guide if the jelly fish sting. Before I made it back to ask, I found out the answer to my question. They do. And I had the red marks on my leg to prove it. I climbed back into the boat to inspect the damage and found several swollen red patches that burned like…I dunno what, but they hurt. Our guide got me some vinegar when we stopped for lunch which helped quite a bit.
Our last two stops on the tour were a beautiful soft sanded beach (blah, blah, blah- you’ve heard me write about beaches a million times now) and another snorkeling spot which was significantly less interesting than the first. By the time we made it back to the island, I was starving and found myself a delicious dinner of fish with garlic butter sauce, coconut rice, and plantain patties. Yummm.
Day two I woke up to torrential rain on drumming on the roof. Not to be put off from my plans for adventure, I hopped on a bus to cross the island (only eight miles of it) to Bocas del Drago and Playa de Estrellas. When I arrived, it was still raining, but another couple and I waited until it slowed to a drizzle before heading off to a neighboring beach on foot. The one we were looking for was Starfish Beach. While the clouds never did actually go away, the rain stopped and we survived the walk without too much excitement. (Minus the mad scientist/expat/conspiracy theorist/lonely fisherman who we passed on the way who kept referring to George W. Bush as “emperor”). At the beach, we found the starfish, though not in the quantities we were hoping for. I didn’t know this but starfish are actually pretty decent sized and can move when the want to. I always thought they just sat there. I stand corrected.
Sunday night was a Turtle Tour. I decided that, if I could see turtles in Panama instead of making a separate trip, then I was deeeefinitely going to do it. We left the main island around 8 pm and rode in another evil speedboat an hour to another smaller island. There, we met a biologist who seemed slightly less than thrilled to have us there. It was the first time she and the tour agency had teamed up and there were unclear expectations on both sides. Everyone on the tour showed up expected to sip piña colatas while the turtles danced in front of the beach chairs. The biologist had work to do and planned for us to follow her around without interfering. Neither party won. Especially because of the work I’d done in Barra Honda, I really hit it off with the biologist and talked with her more than anybody else in the group, including the staff. I appreciated hunting for turtles with a researcher instead of a tour guide; she wasn’t looking for turtles to amuse us, she was looking for them because she wanted to find them for her own reasons. That makes for a lot more motivation and determination on her part.
The biologist made rounds on the island every hour, keeping a furious pace to make it all the way around each hour as she looked for turtles. The first round, about 2/3 of us (out of 14) kept up with her to the end. The others got bogged down in the deep soft sand and were battered by the constant waves at high tide and arrived back at the starting point, exhausted. The second time around, only three of us decided to go with her. As we splashed our way along the coast without light for fear of scaring the turtles, Ana stopped dead in her tracks and started backing up even before I crashed into her (I was blindly following in the dark through deep sand- cut me some slack.) She quickly hushed us and explained the procedure for turtle tackling. The turtle didn’t lay any eggs but started back towards the sea. On Ana’s cue, we jumped the turtle and stopped it before it could get back to the water. When I say “turtle,” I’m not talking about garden variety little squirmers. This turtle was big enough to ride and probably about 3-4 feet from head to tail. Ana straddled it and checked it for a tag while we all oohed and ahhed and got in the way. When we were done scaring the poor turtle, we let her go and she quickly waddled her way back into the sea while we all watched in stunned silence.
Everybody who didn’t make the second round was quite jealous, of course, that we got to see a turtle. But still only about 7 others (plus me, following one stride behind Ana) decided to go for the third time around. By the time we hit round 4, I was the only one who still wanted to go and since we only had one boat, I lost. A little after midnight, we headed back for the island where we were all staying, significantly more exhausted (and with sorer calves) than when we started. After about 35 minutes on the boat, a really loud argument broke out among the tour company staff. I was tired and passed it off as everyone being tired and irritable. I didn’t bother to listen and figure out what the argument was about but 3 minutes later, the silent motor indicated that the problem was a complete lack of fuel on the boat. So, at one am, tired, wet, and a little cold, we’re floating in a small boat somewhere in an archipelago off the coast of Panamá with no fuel in our boat. Perfect. Luckily, they had the sense to drop anchor and somehow managed to call a friend. This friend was kind enough to come get us, but also had almost no fuel in his boat. He left the staff on the boat and took the rest of us back to a nearby island in hopes of getting fuel to get the first boat back safe as well. Lesson: boat gas stations on small islands have no real reason to be open at 1:30 in the morning. The friend finally dropped us off on the main island and I have no idea what happened to the first boat and the staff. Hopefully they survived… I got to bed around 2:30, just in time to wake up at 4:45 for my next bus: Panamá City!