What a great way to celebrate Costa Breeze blog post #200 than to write about somewhere that is not Costa Rica! Lol…
Blog post 198 left off with two cliff-hangers… The first was professional real estate photographs without a reason that we told you about. Blog post 199 told you all about why we were having those photos done. If you haven’t read that post yet, I recommend you go back and give that one a read.
The second cliff-hanger was that we were going to leave on vacation. That’s what this blog post is all about!
Where will this vacation take us? Bocas del Toro. Where is that? Bocas is a group of islands (archipelago) in Panama, on the Caribbean side. You can read more about the area by following this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocas_del_Toro_Province
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| The Red circle is Uvita and the Yellow Circle is Bocas del Toro |
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| The Red line is the Costa Rica/Panama border |
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| A massive dam that we got to drive across and the reservoir that was also massive. |
Even though Costa Rica does not participate in Daylight Savings Time, Panama must, because once we crossed the border the time jumped ahead 1 hour and it was now 8am. We drove about 45 minutes further before we arrived in David, the first big town on the Panama side, where we stopped to grab some groceries to get us through our first night in Bocas. We decided to get them early in the trip because Val and Marshall had been here before and knew there was good shopping, and we weren’t sure what we’d find once we got further on in this drive. Plus, we figured that once we got all the way to where we’d be staying, we would be too tired to want to shop and deal with all of that.
With our food packed in coolers, we continued the drive over the mountains. After a few more hours in the truck we were getting hungry and around 12:30 we passed a small restaurant, but before we got too much further down the road, we decided to turn around and stop there to eat. From what we understood, the only thing on the menu for lunch was fish, so that’s what we all got. It wasn't the best fish we ever had, but it filled our bellies enough to make it the rest of the way. It turned out that we were only about 20 minutes outside of Almirante Panama, which is the town where we had to catch the water taxi to Bocas island. We finished with lunch around 1:30, jumped in the truck and arrived in town a short time later.
As soon as we drove into the main part of town, the hustle was on. Guys on bikes were trying to wave us down to get us to park in their parking lot and use their water taxi. There was one guy in particular who started following us as soon as we got near town and was pedaling so hard all the way through town because he apparently wanted our business that badly, but we just kept on driving because we already knew where we wanted to park. As we turned another corner, 2 more guys on bikes joined the chase and the first guy backed off. It was a sight to see for sure!
Once the truck was parked it was about a 5-minute walk back to the water taxi service and we had to wait for more people to arrive to fill the boat. By the time we left the mainland it was around 3pm and it was about a 30-40 minute boat ride to Bocas. It probably would have been faster, but the seas were pretty rough so the driver had to go slower. Once we arrived on the island, we were dropped off at a dock, and we had to try to find the place where we would catch the next water taxi that would bring us to the house. You see, the house that we’d be staying on was only accessible by boat!
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| The house is the Yellow circle and the drop off location was on the far side of Bocas town. It's hard to see in this picture, but all of that dark area is actually water, not land. |
Ramie, asked the person at the check-out if they sold e-sim phone plans and the guy, who spoke really good English, informed him that he did not have e-sim but had a regular sim card that Ramie could buy for $2 plus a data refill for $6 so Ramie bought both. He inserted the sim card into his phone, and voila, he had phone service! That's great news because he was the only one of the 4 of us that did.
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| We were staying in the Yellow house. |
When we got to the house, we checked it all out, claimed our bedrooms, and put our stuff away. We were all hungry so we made our dinner sat around for a bit, and went to bed about our normal time around 8pm. It had been a long day of travel, and we were all exhausted.
Monday 4/27- Val and Marshall were up early, even earlier than us, as they like to bird watch and I guess birds are most easily spotted at sunrise and sunset.
After we crawled out of bed, which wasn’t long after they got up, we made our coffee and enjoyed the pretty Caribbean water while we discussed the plan for the day. One of the challenges here is that the house runs completely on solar and has no "shore power". This means that they have a strict rule about what can and cannot be used at the house, and one thing that can NOT be used is a regular coffee pot. That meant that this would be a french-press coffee week. Yeah, it's slower and a little more work, but it's not like we really had a schedule to keep.
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| Beautiful morning |
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| Yes, that's us under the house... Val was watching us like we were in a fish tank! |
Around 11:30 we decided that we would call a boat taxi to take us to town. Our main goal for today was to get the majority of the groceries we would need for the rest of the trip, but we also wanted to see if we could find a restaurant with good seafood (other than fish) and Caribbean food. You see, those are just things we can not get in our area of Costa Rica.
We brought Marshall’s pull-behind cooler with us to keep our groceries cold and make them easier to transport, and once we were dropped off in town we started walking along the streets looking for anything that caught our interest. It turned out that there were so many restaurants along the water. After walking around for a little while and looking at some menus that were posted out in front of each restaurant, we found our first stop for a drink. They had a calamari appetizer on the menu and it turned out that this calamari was pretty amazing! After a drink and some calamari we decided to move on to the next place to see if we could find some Caribbean jerk food. Just a couple of doors down there was a restaurant with exactly this, and we got our taste of the Caribbean, and a couple more drinks.
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| An example of one of the restaurants, right on the water and some even had boat docks. |
With our bellies full, we decided it was time to move on to the next things. While we wouldn’t be looking for any more restaurants for today, we did want to check out some of the shops. Ramie and I found an old building that had a bunch of handmade art and decorations. We always try to buy authentic, handmade pieces from each place we visit when on vacation and avoid the mass-produced China garbage that most shops sell, so this was the place for us! As a matter of fact, the old guy running the place told us that if we found anything in his shop that said it was made in China we could have it for free! We laughed about this and admired all of the arts and crafts he had outside the building. He then welcomed us into his building where he was in the process of painting hand carved frogs. There were so many more pieces hanging on the walls, on shelves, and in cabinets, and along with all of the hand-made art made by him and his friends, there were also a ton of old antiques all around. He told us about some of the history of the building and how he wanted to turn it into a museum but ran out of money, so he started making art to sell to help him restore the building. We ended up buying a hand carved turtle to hang on the wall, and thanked him for his time and for telling us his story.
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| Unfortunately no photos of his shop, he had "No Pictures" signs posted. |
We are used to the heat, living on the coast in Costa Rica and all, but I will say that walking around town here felt particularly hot because there were so many buildings very close together that blocked a lot of the ocean breeze. Once in a while we’d stop in a shop that had AC to cool off a bit, even if we weren’t particularly interested in what they were selling, before moving on to the next interesting place.
We still had to get groceries to last us the rest of the week, but weren’t quite sure where we could go to get what we needed, so we found some shade and tried to find a grocery store on the map that may have what we need. There were a lot of stores that sell food, but many have a limited selection and are very small. Our goal was to find the best store possible that had the most variety, so we ended up stopping at about 3-4 different grocery stores, before we finally found one that had most of what we wanted, and we bought our food.
Thankfully, this store was only about a block and half away from the boat dock where we had to meet the taxi again for the ride back to the house. When we got back to the house around 3pm, we put away all of our groceries and hung out until it was time to make dinner. We chatted the evening away after dinner until it was time to hit the sack. It turns out that Val and Marshall are early to bed, early to rise like we are, so this worked out nicely!
Tuesday 4/28- We had no plans for today so we just hung out at the house all day. You see, those taxi rides to and from town aren’t cheap, and it costs $60-round trip. If we don’t have plans in town, we don’t want to spend the money to just go to town to grab lunch, or something like that. This really kind of put a kibosh on a lot of our plans. In the Airbnb ad it did state that one transfer per day was included but when Ramie inquired with the owner about this she told him no that's old info. Well, that was part of the reason we rented this house in particular. Pretty misleading, actually, and we weren't real happy about it!
Ramie and I are perfectly content hanging out at the house and playing in the water, though, and it seemed that Val and Marshall were ok with a relaxing day at home as well. The house had 2 kayaks for us to use, so Ramie and I grabbed them and started paddling in the direction of town, not that we’d ever make it there, but checked out the reef and mangroves along the way.
We also did plenty of snorkeling again today. We have our own masks and snorkels, so we could spend a lot of time face down in the water. Marshall tried to join us with the mask and snorkel that the house provided but it didn’t work well for him so he gave up. Val is not a fan of the water, but she did get in the floaty for a while and floated around while we snorkeled.
At some point during the day we talked about what to do for dinner tonight and decided that instead of cooking we’d head back to town for linner (a late lunch/dinner). As we were getting close to the time that we wanted to leave, Ramie messaged the water taxi guy that we used yesterday and he was not available, but he said he’d reach out to a couple of other drivers to see if he could find a ride for us. Unfortunately, they were all busy with tours, so we just decided to skip it and make dinner at home tonight. It’s a good thing we had food at the house!
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| Enjoying the sunset |
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| We always bring Taylor and Dylan's wedding koozie with us to snap pictures in all of the locations we visit. |
It was still too early for the fish/meat shop so the guys decided that a Bloody Mary was in order, along with some of that delicious calamari that none of us had stopped talking about since we had it that first day. We walked to that restaurant and had to wait a short time for them to open. Marshall was looking for a new hat so he went to a couple of souvenir stores nearby while Ramie and I waited for the place to open. We each ordered a plate of Calamari, 2 Bloody Mary's for the guys and a mojito for me. I’m telling you, this calamari was good! It's too bad that Val missed out today! By the time we finished our brunch it was close to 11am, so we walked back to the meat store and talked to the owner who hooked us up with some fish, shrimp, and chicken for the rest of our meals. We had to make one more stop at the grocery store on our way back to the boat dock to grab some big bottles of water. You can't drink the water here so you have to purchase jugs of water clean water, and we’ve been going through about 2 of these large bottles per day for drinking, coffee, cooking, brushing teeth, etc.
It was now after lunch time by the time our water taxi guy got us back to the house. We unloaded all of our stuff, put the food away, and made some lunch (because those plates of calamari were pretty small). Then it was time to go swimming and relax in the refreshing water. That is going to be the theme of the week!!
For dinner we grilled the fish that we bought today. I don't recall what type of fish it was, but it was flakey and kind of a pain to make on the grill because it didn't have the skin on it. We broke out the dominoes and some card games this evening before calling it a night.
Thursday 4/30- This week is going by quickly, but it's been nice and relaxing. Ramie and I put the kayaks in the water this morning and decided to head the opposite direction as last time towards what looked like some Tiki huts further down the coast… we weren’t sure if it was a restaurant or a house, or what it was, and were curious to find out. Once we arrived there we discovered that this mystery place was kind of an over-the-water mini resort and consisted of individual cabinas to stay in, but also had its own restaurant and bar. We couldn’t tell if it was open to the public or not, but we didn’t have any money with us so it didn’t really matter anyway. The wind was blowing pretty good today and we had to paddle into it to get there so we stayed close to the shore, but on the way back we had the wind on our backs so we could head in a straight line back to the house through the deep water. I think we were gone for a couple of hours, long enough that Ramie got a sunburn on his legs. He thought that he would be covered more by the kayak and didn't put on sunscreen, but that was not the case.
We ate some lunch and then jumped back into the water to do some more snorkeling, swimming, and relaxing for the late afternoon like we’ve done most of this week; Marshall and Val got on the floaties and drifted around. Val, wanted to try to capture a picture of us all swimming and we had some good laughs in the process. She had the camera set up on a timer and had to jump off the deck and swim to us before it went off. I don't know how many takes it took, but we eventually got some pics.
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| The successful pic! |
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| Nope, she didn't even make it into the frame for this one. |
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| Close, but not really! |
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| Enough water, I'm sure it was time for our afternoon cocktail. |
Friday 5/1- Today, our last full day here, we are actually doing our first touristy thing. I mean, we had talked about doing more touristy things, but the $60 round trip boat taxi ride to town to catch a tour adds to the overall cost to do things, so we were ok with just not doing much here and just spending our time relaxing.
Val, being a birder, had been reading up on an island called Bird Island that wasn’t too far away. Apparently this is one of the very few places that a particular bird nests, and if she wanted to see this bird, this would be her chance to do it. We’ve been trying to go there for the past couple of days in the evening before sunset to watch the birds return, but the weather has not been cooperating. This morning was our final chance to make this tour happen, but when we woke up it was raining with thunder and lightning in the distance and was not looking good for us. The plan we made with the boat driver was to get picked up at 6am in order to catch the birds as they left the island for the day. This morning with the weather the way it was the driver said we’d wait until 6:30 to see how it is. Thankfully the storms went away, but it was still dreary and windy.
Despite the weather, away we went. The boat ride wasn't bad while we were in the bay, but this island is out in the open ocean. We had to go through a small cut to get out of the bay and as we got closer to leaving the bay, the swell and waves were increasing quite a lot; it was a long, slow ride out to the island because of how rough it was. When we got to the island Val got to watch her birds, but because of the rough seas, it was hard to keep the boat in place.
Val also gets sea sick very easily so we only spent about a half hour out there. Sadly, it may not really have been worth it, but it made Val happy. In better conditions, he would have taken us all the way around the island, but it was far too rough on the windward side, so we had to go back the way we came from. Of course, the rain started up again as well, but thankfully it's warm.
On the way back we stopped at another tourist stopped called Starfish Beach which was named this, as you can probably guess, because it’s full of starfish. He slowly drove along the beach where we could see all of the starfish in the water and parked on the far end to let us walk along the beach and get better pictures of the starfish. It was pretty cool to see that many of them all in one place. Plus, we also got to see several stingrays swimming close by.
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| This cute little dog took a liking to Ramie so he had a friend that followed us the whole way. Leave it to Ramie to find a dog friend everywhere he goes! |
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| Couple of crabs |
We all did our own thing around the house: Marshall watched a couple of movies, Val took some naps and did some watercolor painting, Ramie read a book while lying in the hammock (can you believe that Ramie actually READ a BOOK!?) Well to his credit, the book he was reading was the history and folklore of the Bocas area. It talked about all the superstition, pirates, and inhabitants of the area. He found it very interesting. I spent some time reading as well. Yes, we all probably fell asleep at some point too... I mean, why not?!
We tried to eat up as much of the food as we could, but with all of those trips to the grocery store, we ended up over buying. We let Ronald the caretaker know that we would be leaving him quite a bit of food, and he seemed very happy about that. On and off throughout the day we also worked on gathering all of our belongings and packing up.
One other thing that we were told is that if the night is dark enough to go look for bioluminescence near the mangroves. Unfortunately all week it was almost a full moon and much too bright, but since it was overcast tonight it was dark enough that we might just be able to spot it, so Ramie went looking. Sure enough, it was out, so he came and got me to see it.. There was not a lot of it, though, because the peak was a couple weeks ago. Doing some research we found out that these are fire worms and they do this to reproduce. They call them fire worms for a reason and they have a pretty nasty sting if you touch them. It was also hard to photograph because of the long exposure time and they move and drift along in the water.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention during this whole blog is Boby, the dog who lives at this house. He greeted us the first day when we arrived at the house and has been around on-and-off ever since. He stays with the caretaker who lives in the mangroves behind the house, but Boby would come visit us every day, usually in the afternoon, to say hello and see if there was anything interesting going on.
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| Dirty muddy dog, but what a sweet dog! |
It was about a half hour boat ride back to the mainland, and when we arrived back at the same place that we started almost a week ago, the guys that helped us load our stuff onto the boat at the beginning were there waiting to help us unload as well. Marshall and Ramie went to get the truck from the storage lot while Val and I stayed with our belongings.
When the guys arrived with the truck, we loaded everything up and started our 3.5 hour drive back to David. We would be splitting our drive up over two days on the return trip because we wanted to do some shopping in David and at the border before heading back to Uvita. Val and Marshall had stayed in a cute boutique hotel here once before and the price was right, so that’s where we’d be staying tonight.
When we arrived at the hotel we got checked in Val & Marshall’s room was ready, ours wasn’t yet. We dropped off all of our stuff in their room and then went into town to do some shopping and get dinner. There is a store in David that is a lot like Home Depot plus had plenty of other home-related items, and has much more selection and better quality than any stores that we’ve found in Costa Rica. We really enjoyed walking around and looking at all of the things. Ramie bought a new pair of work boots, and we bought a few other small things, but we really didn't need much. Val and Marshall bought some new camping chairs, and a few other things as well. Once we were done there, we went to TGI Fridays for dinner. We were shocked to see a US chain restaurant, but this is Panama and there is a very heavy US influence here. After dinner we went back to the hotel where we each went to our rooms and relaxed for the rest of the evening. Ramie & I spent the evening watching the first 4 episodes of Fallout since a prior guest hadn’t logged out of their Amazon Prime account and Ramie has really been wanting to see the new season, bonus!
Sunday 5/3- We were up at about 5:30 this morning and got a message from Marshall at about 6:15 asking if we would ready to leave around 6:30. Sure, let’s do it!
They wanted to stop at the grocery store (more grocery shopping?!) to get some items that we can't get in Costa Rica or are way more expensive, so we spent probably a half hour or so doing a quick grocery run before heading back to the border. It was only about an hour later when we arrived there. Once at the border we wanted to stop at the liquor store because it's duty free here at the border and much cheaper, as you may recall from previous blogs about shopping in Panama.
With our liquor purchased, the next step would be to check out of Panama and back into Costa Rica, but the place to do this is about 3 miles inside of Costa Rica. When we arrived at the new immigration building, we first met with Panama immigration who stamped us out of Panama and then moved onto the Costa Rican immigration who stamped us back in. Since we took a Costa Rican vehicle out of Costa Rica, Val and Marshall had to check that back in as well. Once the paperwork for that was complete, the final step was for the vehicle to be searched for contraband. Unfortunately, one thing that is prohibited from crossing borders are agricultural products, so the leftover limes from Bocas and the pinto beans that Val bought special because she can’t get them in Costa Rica were confiscated. I would say that this whole process took about an hour. Then we were finally back on the Costa Rican road home, and got there a little bit after noon. After Val and Marshall dropped us off, we had to run back into town to get a few items to fill our fridge (More.Grocery.Shopping!!!) and then to pick up Skye, who was of course extremely happy to see us! Once home, as always, she was a sleepy pup for the rest of the day.
I have to say that even though we didn't do a lot of touristy types of activities, this was a very enjoyable and relaxing week away. After visiting Bocas, we certainly would like to visit there again someday, and now that we know how things work, we would do a few things differently. Another vacation and new location in the books!
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of April rainfall total was 7.10 inches
Pura Vida!
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