Vacay in Bocas

Hello,

Well we cannot believe we have been here for just about 90 days and that we are already half way through November!  This means that we have had to renew our visa, which is why we were in the beautiful Bocas del Toro in Panama for about three days.  Most people who are doing what we are doing are annoyed every time their visa is up and they have to leave for 72 hours.  We see it, however, as a vacation that we have no choice BUT to take.  I mean, doesn't that sound pretty awesome?

So, to get to Panama from where we live is actually pretty easy.  You take a 1 1/2 hour bus ride to the border, walk across a rickety old bridge (which is actually pretty scary), and then check in at customs in Panama.  From there we took a shuttle to a water taxi (also pretty scary because of the large amount of people on a tiny looking boat) to Bocas del Toro.  Bocas del Toro is an archipelago of a number of islands.  We stayed on the main island, Isla Colon, in the main town, Bocas town.

So as we mentioned earlier, Bocas is beautiful! We thought the water here was clear, but wow, the water is as clear as glass in Bocas.  The town also has a number of old colonial looking houses, and all waterfront houses and businesses sit on stilts over the water.  We decided that, since we will have to make this trip again, that this time we'd have a little bit more of relaxed trip, and not travel to a new island every night.  So we slept in Tuesday morning, slowly got up and had breakfast, and then watched the parade that was taking place for Bocas Founding Day (somehow we happen to be in the right places at the right time to watch parades).  Afterwards we rented bikes, and rode the 8 kilometers to Playa Bluff, a beautiful beach with golden sand and blue-green water.  When we returned, we expected that the parade would have died down, but the parade ended up going on all 24 hours of the day!

Foundation Day Parade in Bocas del Toro

Headed to Playa Bluff

Great swimming and beautiful clear water

The next morning we woke up fairly early to make it to our tour for the day.  Our tour was a great deal, $20 dollars per person to watch dolphins, snorkel (equipment included), go to a beach, and then go snorkeling one more time (if we wanted to).  Unfortunately we only saw one dolphin, but we did get it to play in our boat wake, which was a really fun experience.  After snorkeling and lunch we visited Red Frog Beach which is an absolutely gorgeous beach.  We spent most of the 2 1/2 hours we had there in the water.  We had a relaxing evening and prepared for our return trip to our little home in Puerto Viejo.

Delfines

Lunch at the isolated Coral Cay

Coral Cay is located in the middle of the sea , all by itself.

Red Frog Beach was large and spectacular

So here we are, back in Puerto Viejo, a little bit sunburned, and covered in chitra bites (nastly little buggers).  Even though Bocas was beautiful, it feels good to be home :)  And we have good news... Ju got a new job!  It is in town at a nice restaurant and she will actually be waitressing!  No more cleaning poop for Ju!  The job is awesome and Ju's coworkers are a bunch of characters (in a good way) which is always fun.  The pay is about normal but the tips have been really good so far, and we expect them to get better since we are coming up on high season.

In other news, Ju's mom, Ty's mom, and Koji have already booked flights down to visit us, and we are so excited to host them and show them around our little slice of paradise :)  Again, we would love love love to have anybody who can come and visit us.  We know November has totally crept up on us and imagine it probably has on you guys as well, but anyone who wants to come visit should start to think about it.  Not only so we have time to prepare and make sure nobody is overlapping, but also because once high season is here it will be much harder to find a place to stay.  

We hope to hear from you guys soon, we love and miss you!  Happy Thanksgiving everybody, we wish we could be there.  We know that we have so much to be thankful for this year.

Pura Vida,

Ty and Ju