Reunited And It Feels So Good

Okay, where was I.  I think the last time I wrote, I was up to Bocas del Toro waiting to see if my English friend was going to show up.  She did.  (I have no photos for the next few days except for a few I took from my hotel room balcony and some pictures of beer, so that’s what you get.)

I got up around eight in the morning, grabbed some coffee and worked on my blogs for a little while.  I was debating taking a water taxi into town and then there was a knock on my door.  She made it.  She had a harrowing experience getting from Panama City to Bocas de Toro.  I could go into detail here, but she could write her own blog if she wanted to do so.  Anyway, she finally got there and she was soaking wet since it had started raining while she was on the water taxi to Bastimentos.  I greeted her with some jerk chicken that was left over from the night before and I think all of her ills were cured.  Well, many of them, anyway.

Some other folks stopped by our room to say hello to my English friend.  A small group of us went back to Roots for lunch and some $1 Panamanian beers.  I really wasn’t in shape for conversation, but somehow, I managed.  After lunch, we went back to the room and chillaxed until we went into town to schedule some dives (not for me) for the next day and hung around for dinner and a few drinks.  We also got some provisions that we brought back to Bastimentos.  The rest of the night was spent drinking and stuff with us and a few other friends.  Actually, the night ended up ending kind of early.

The next day, I took a water taxi into Bocas del Toro to meet up with the people diving.  We went out to lunch and then a few of us went to a local bar with a pool table for some more $1 beers.  Before too long, it was down to me and my English friend sitting there for a few hours continuing to drink.  Ah . . . just like old times.  Afterwards, we walked around Bocas looking for anybody we might know.  We didn’t find anyone, so we grabbed some wine and hopped a water taxi to Bastimentos.  As soon as we got to our hotel, another boat pulled up beside us.  Everybody else was heading into town for dinner, so we just jumped from one boat into another and went back into town.

After dinner, we went back to the pool bar that we were at earlier.  My English friend, who still had the bottle of wine that she had bought earlier, stole a corkscrew and we ended up splitting her bottle of wine outside, talking with a few others who would occasionally come out to join us.  Our Quebecois friend made friends with the Quebecois owner of the bar and he gave us a round of shots at the end of the night.  If you’ve been following the blog at all, you could probably see what’s coming next.  God knows I saw it coming.  As soon as my English friend took the shot, I could see her mouth beginning to water.  I practically carried her to the balcony so she could throw up in a bush instead of on our fellow travelers.

 

Soon thereafter, after my English friend tried to get some jerk chicken from a homeless guy who refused to accept a kiss from her, we hopped a water taxi and returned to the hotel.  We had a nightcap and that was the end of the night.  In the morning, I was taking off for Boquete and my English friend was staying behind, so I had to say goodbye all over again.  It was good to be reunited for a few days during the last leg of the trip but it was over and it was time to move on to the final week of the trip.  We’ll continue on that note in the next entry.

Hellacious Border Crossing into Panama

After Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, it was time to leave Costa Rica behind for good and cross into Panama.  This turned out to be one of the longest, most painful border crossings I’ve ever endured.

The infamous Bridge of Death.

The bus ride to the border wasn’t so bad.  It was only like an hour-and-a-half long and we got there still thinking that we might get to our destination in Panama in time for a normal-hour lunch.  We got our stamps out of Costa Rica pretty quickly and all was going well.  Then we loaded up for our trip into Panama.  This required crossing the Bridge of Death.  The Bridge of Death is a long bridge crossing a river from Costa Rica into Panama.  It is held up by steel beams and held together by horizontal, rickety boards that don’t feel like they are able to support a human being’s weight.  In between the boards are gaps in which you can see down to the river.  There are vertical boards as well for large trucks to use when they cross.  I crossed with all my stuff, probably around fifty pounds of it, on my back or in my arms and I had to concentrate with all of my might on each step to make sure that I wouldn’t fall into the river.  The whole trek probably only took three or four minutes but it seemed like an hour.

Once across the bridge, the ordeal was just beginning.  We ended up standing in line for over ninety minutes in the hot, midday Panamanian sun while the folks at the border tried to figure out what to do with a group of eleven tourists trying to come into Panama.  In retrospect, we probably would have gotten through much quicker had we just gone through immigration individually, but instead we sweated through the process until, finally, we were allowed into the country.

After the border crossing, things got much easier.  Ostensibly, we were heading to Bocas del Toro, an island on the Caribbean coast of Panama.  We drove about ninety minutes to the closest part of the mainland to the island but when we arrived, we learned that we instead were staying on a different island – Bastimentos.  Don’t get me wrong, Bastimentos is a charming little island, but there’s not really much to do there.  We checked in to the hotel and, after a while, my new Australian friend and I walked around looking for something to do or eat.  We did come across this bar/restaurant at the end of a pier that looked reasonable.  We went there for lunch and some $1 beers (Balboa) and it was a good enough time.  But there really wasn’t much else to do or see.  There was a beach that I later heard was beautiful close by but I thought I’d have time for that later.  I didn’t.  After lunch, I headed back to the hotel.  I had a double room to myself, for now, because my English friend was going to make an appearance and I had an extra bed for her to crash in.

Shortly after dark, we took a water taxi to the island of Bocas del Toro.  It isn’t a huge island, but it still was considerably more bustling than Bastimentos.  We had dinner there, I finally had ceviche and it was delicious, and then we stopped off for supplies before returning to Bastimentos.  (I wish I had a picture of the ceviche but it was too dark in the restaurant for my iPhone to take a photo.)

That night was jerk chicken night on my balcony along with a bottle of Argentine malbec wine.  I still hadn’t heard from my English friend, but that wasn’t too surprising.  I was hoping that she was getting into town late and that I would meet up with her the next morning.  Was I right?  We’ll find out in the next post.