PANAMA!

I’m going to condense Panama into one post, just to give you an idea of some of the varying things you can do there. If my memory serves me correctly I did all this in about 2 weeks, although I only covered a very small area of the North of the country.
I started off in Bocas del Toro, a fabulous laid back beach resort, with rasta surf instructors chilling on bicycles. Most backpackers love it for its wild parties. I opted for some chill time on the beach. I might discuss in another post how sometimes being a solo traveler I don’t enjoy the party towns. You feel a kind of weird guilt that you SHOULD be having loads of fun, you SHOULD be getting wasted with all the other westerners, you SHOULD have loads of new carefree friends…I don’t generally like feeling like I SHOULD do anything. But anyway…
The highlight of my time in Bocas was a boat trip to the surrounding islands. There are a numbeof islands each with a different name specific to what you’ll find there. Red Frog Beach, Starfish Beach…and so on. In truth the island are all pretty similar, each a small haven of crystal water and dazzling white sand. The sea was like a bath, and shallow for miles. On Star Fish beach you could eat lobster for around $10. It was a little slice of paradise.

You can easily rent boats to go to the islands yourself, and taxi boat your way back, leaving you more time to relax on whichever beach you prefer, but a trip enables you to see a little bit of everything, and in the laid back Panama style, you don’t feel to rushed to do anything.

After Bocas I headed to Panama City. I didn’t rate the city too much, I stayed in the Old Town which was run down with not much to do. There was an interesting mix of old and new architecture, where the crumbling buildings were getting facelifts and turning into new sparkling boutique hotels. I took a lot of photos of the old next to the new, but other than a couple of days trolling around, there wasn’t much to excite me. Furthermore if you take one turn the wrong way you’re in a shanty town to rival all others I’d seen so far with the stench of dead rats wafting up your nostrils. Bad times.

I went to see the Panama Canal, and was glad that I could tick it off the traveler list. Done. Unless you’re a big fan of boats, or canals, or structural engineering, or something…it’s not too exciting. The museum upstairs is kinda cool, but yeah, it’s just a massive canal. It took years to build and loads of people died and it’s ‘an incredible feat of engineering’, but it just made me think how men with very small penises probably came up with the idea. It seemed a bit ridiculous to me. But what do I know.

To finish up my time in Panama, I went to the Lost and Found Lodge in the cloudforest near David. An eco setup, this chilled out place was a little oasis above the trees. They’d thought of everything, with mac and cheese and noodles available to buy and make, and fresh veggies from their garden, as well as cooked meals should you wish. They had board games, books and films, a labrynth and a treasure hunt through the forest to keep you entertained.

The staff were friendly and welcoming and the whole group got on so well. The sexually orientated board games and copious amounts of alcohol helped the bonding session move a little quicker than we might have expected!

In the day monkeys came to feed and hummingbirds were a regular sighting. I read my book and swayed over the trees in my hammock, a fabulously relaxing end to my time in Panama.

SURVIVAL TIP:
There’s no ATM in the cloud forest and Lost and Found work a Tab system so be careful with what you’re spending!