Panama City to Almirante: An overnight bus seamed like a great idea. At this point I was exhausted from long bus drives, terrified of looking out the windows and watching the wreckless driving on windy roads. Soon I was to find out that this wasn’t much better, in stead of seeing, I felt the sharp corners and the breaking each time the bus decided not to overtake a car. Awaken every 5 minutes or so, we arrived Almirante with minimal sleep just to wait an hour for a tiny bot to come and shuttle us over the one of the islands. But it was all worth is I was told. Bocas del Toro was the place to see when in Panama.
I traveled with Simon, a French Canadian. By dawn we arrived in Almirante. I was back in the rural tropics. What a noticeable difference arriving here after a few nights in the big, modern and busy Panama City. The bus drove through the poor town on dirt streets, sun just red enough to put a dim on the garbage floating around on the streets and the modest houses. When we arrived the small bus station, about 10 men stood right in front of the bus, yelling and shouting, ready to get their first business of the day. A 5 min cab ride dropped us off at the tiny but modern boat terminal and off we went to the islands.
Bocas del Toro is a set of islands on the North Caribbean coast of Panama. The reason why these islands are inhabited in the first place is because of the people’s search for bananas back in the day. When the coastal area was already rich in banana plantations, people expanded the search onto the islands thinking they would find more bananas and opportunities for new plantations. With no luck of finding any bananas, they found beautiful beaches instead and so the settlement begun. Now, the islands have a Caribbean flavor and are home to many Panamanian locals. It’s a unique little place, but unfortunately there is a lot of development just north of the town. Foreigners are starting to build big houses, big enough to look like hotels right next to indigenous families and locals and it’s only a matter of time when there will be as many local foreigners here as Panamanians and indigenous. I was fortunate enough to experience the local flavor of the area before it might become another gringolandia. Bocas becomes a party town during the high season, but during the low season you can really sense the chill out vibes of the islands with locals are who are some of the nicest locals I’ve met on my Central American journey.
The town of Bocas is located on the main island of Colon. It’s a small Caribbean town filled with old cruiser bikes, Bob Marley playing in most bars, and locals selling lottery ticket on 
every street corner. For about 1 dollar, a boat ride will take you from the shore of Bocas to various beaches around the area. There are no exotic beaches right in town, but a beautiful bike ride north out of town will take you to beautiful beaches like for example Playa Bluf. Playa Bluf is a big, gorgeous and intimidating beach. I was lucky to be there in low season and be one of the very few people on the entire beach. Together with Simon, we 
biked for about 30 min on a paved, then dirt, then sand road. When we got to the beach and got ready to soak up some sun, an indigenous family settled next to us and went spear fishing. We watched their daily routine of food hunting. The boy struggled catching fish in the shallow waters, while the dad rocked it in the deeps and soon returned with a handful of fish. I’ve been told that there are several beautiful beaches if you continue the bike ride around the island, but the sun and the humidity made it unbearable to do any other activity than lying in a hammock or on the sand.
For my second second day there, I booked a 20$ tour to go dolphin watching, snorkeling
and visit the Red Frog Beach. It was a great deal. Snorkeling around Bocas is some of the best I have ever done. As oppose to the Ecuadorian and Colombian waters where it’s not uncommon to see a random plastic bag floating and where the underwater landscape is quite gray, in Bocas I felt like I have just been transported to an underwater mecca of colors and shapes similar to the ones in Avatar, 
but underwater style. Never in my life have I seen such variety in stunning and fragile mysterious corals. Followed by a local lunch in a small eatery located on a deck overlooking the crystal blue water, we boated out to the Red Frog beach. Playa Red Frog is quite popular, located on Isla Bastimentos. It’s big and glorious with good surf and a platform build on top of cliffs just around the corner. I went out to the platform to watch the waves crash on the cliffs. The mist spayed all over me and cooled of my body. It was one of those moments that nothing else can replace. It was magical! I felt like staying there forever. But there was much more on my list of to do things in Panama and soon I was off to explore other parts of it. Bocas nonetheless, will stand out in mu memory.
Panama 