Tranquillo… The most common descriptive word used here on Bocas Island. There was quite a party next door last night, but otherwise, the place is gorgeous and peaceful, the easy life. The partiers were at the youth hostel next door; a big group of surfer dudes, that are loud, but easy on the eyes, haha. Apparently, the surfing is amazing here, not far down the coast are some killer waves, we can see them from our balcony. From our dock (car port), we got a good look at a Lion Fish, not native to Panama and they are killing a lot of fish. It’s now common for them to be hunted with reward; population control. There were also a few crabs and a little school of fish, once in a while. A lot of corral and mussels cling to the pillars that our hotel was built on.
Today, we pushed off in our boat at 9 am, after a wonderful breakfast. I’m really going to miss the fruit and fish here in Panama. Our 1st stop today is a village named, Salt Creek. It’s another Indian village that hosts tourist, to a very limited extent. They let us come in and walk through their rain forest and they sell their handmade items, much more primitive then the other villages we visited. Our intentions in this village were to see more birds.
We also got to see a caiman, a couple of poisonous frogs (and I didn’t die from them, maybe next trip, haha), a 3 toed sloth, a 2 toed sloth and a couple of night monkeys. As well as the birds, I got some fabulous pictures of some of them, but I can’t remember their names. I enjoyed shooting some butterflies too, so colorful and graceful. One big, beautiful butterfly doesn’t land often, so I never got a shot of it. This was the hottest, buggiest place we had been to; very dense forest. It was a pretty quick trip, but some had a really difficult time with the heat.Through the mangroves, we went to a neat little restaurant built on the water, specializing in lobster. I had the mixed fish, with coconut rice and an orange crush. The water was so clear next to the dock that we could see Starfish, Needlefish, Sea Urchin, some Parrot Fish and watched sardines jumping, fabulous.
We also got the chance to change into our bathing suits for our snorkeling excursion. We were going to 2 different corral reefs, in 2 different locations. The corral here looks over snorkeled and our stupid guide, Ricardo, was standing on it, I was not amused by this display of disrespect, nor was Skot. He also didn’t know the names of the fish, just hollered a lot, “Lady, come see the pretty fish”, ugg. The driver of the boat was a native Panamanian, Livingston, and you could tell he has seen his share of tourist and difficulties. He was not amused by Ricardo either, nor by the other boats of snorkelers that were bringing lobsters to the surface in excitement calling it lunch; he'd yell out to the other driver to mak them throw it back. Such ridiculousness. It was interesting and fun to snorkel, but a little sad to see the poor conditions and the lack of really large fish, that should be normal for this area. One last stop was a pretty private beach. It was a five minute walk, through the woods, that looked like everything was planted instead of natural and most of the “park” was under construction. We weren’t exactly sure why we stopped here, some of the group found some nice views of birds, but otherwise, it was just a bit weird. The funniest thing was while Skot and Suzy were taking a walk on the beach alone, they came across a couple, the woman was nude and the guy was taking pictures, Skot felt very awkward, Ricardo however, he thought it was great and felt it necessary to borrow some ones binoculars, to get a better view, yikes, that’s professional. But I don’t think professionalism is part of Ricardo’s vocabulary. The rest of the group could see the seen from where we perched ourselves with beers and kinda just laughed at the whole thing. We didn’t stay at this location very long at all, we were all ready to shower and rest.
Once back at the hotel, cleaned up and ready to eat, Skot, Suzy, Georgia, Jan, Gary and I, went to dinner at the Pirate. A filleted Tuna was my pick tonight, along with coconut rice and beans, oh a horrible margarita. We had a great time chatting about the whole trip so far and playing, “who sings this”, to the 80’s music, I loved that of course. We also stopped for some ice cream too, delicious.
Stayed up late, trying to upload some pictures, updating info on the blog and such, went to bed at about 11:30, what an eventful day.
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