Pana-mania!

On the boat to Panama

Our Costa Rican experience was halted in week 2 as it was time for our last country of the trip, Panama. Crossing the border with no problems other than walking across a bridge with holes in it, we jumped on a boat and headed to the archipelago islands of Bocas del Toro. We checked into our hostel on the main island and were pleased to discover that there were rubber rings to float in the sea on and even more hammocks. Unfortunately, Sarah's first jump into the rubber ring resulted in a scratch on her arm from the valve (which she maintains to this day came from a howler monkey), but this didn't stop us spending time each day rolling off the decking into the water and swimming around. After a hard week of work at the turtles we were able to relax a lot more in Bocas. Our first day was spent sailing around the islands, snorkelling every so often and even dolphin spotting! We sailed through the mangroves looking down to spot fish and frogs and looking up to spot sloths. When we stopped for lunch we had to pinch ourselves because we just sailed up to a dock in the middle of nowhere, hopped off-board and had freshly caught fish in the gorgeous sunshine. Later we spent a few hours on Red Frog beach, possibly one of the most beautiful beaches we have been to all year. We had some fun in the water, until the arrival of a tiny wee stinging "thing". We have no idea what it was but it decided to target us and drove us back onto the warm sand to do some sunbathing.

Our hostel right on the water 

The group at Red Frog Beach

Our lunch stop after snorkelling 

Macaws 

The next day we tried our hand at ocean kayaking, which turned out to be a great success. Despite the opportunity for a sisterly fight in our double kayak, we worked as a team and even managed to struggle our way through some mangroves while others got stucl. Later we "gracefully" slid off our kayak to snorkel above the week. Unfortunately we couldn't see much more than the white porcelain toilet of the boat that had been purposely sunk to create a new reef. We did see some stunning reef fish though before Katie started to panic about the deep water and we clambered back into our kayak, using the current to help us paddle home.

Looking like pros! 

Bocas Del Toro

The rest of the week was spent visiting Starfish Beach (where we only saw one starfish) and sailing to the marine national park of Zapatillas. There are two uninhabited islands in the park and we jumped out out boat and paddled up to one of them to explore. All the beaches in Panama are white sand beaches but this one was special because you feel like Robinson Crusoe, or Jack Sparrow (depending on your generation). We started the half hour walk around the island before it started raining and we headed into the trees for some shelter.

Walking to Starfish Beach 

This sign amused us

Hiding from the rain under the trees!

One night Katie went fishing while Sarah got her priorities straight and went for cocktails. After catching two fish, one of Katie's companions caught a shark and she decided it was definitely time to go home.

Fishing using a water bottle with line wrapped around it