Enough sitting around

On Friday morning, I caught the bus from Puerto Viejo to Sixaola, which is on the Panamanian border. After fighting off the “helpful” children, and then visiting Costa Rica customs, I walked across a rickety bridge spanning a large river. There are wet, wooden planks to walk on, with large gaps, so slipping is inadvisable.

On the other side, I passed through the Panamanian bureaucracy, then caught a taxi to Changuinola, where I boarded a speedboat for the trip through an old banana plantation canal, then out to Isla Bocas Del Toro. Once there, I caught a water taxi over to Isla Bastimento.

As it turned out, almost all of the decent accomodations were full, so I stayed in an indecent one. It was a wooden building on a pier, with about nine rooms. My door locked using what looked like a suitcase padlock, and the ceiling was open so that one could, theoretically, climb over the wall. I wasn’t to keen on leaving my luggage alone there for too long.

There were five Canadian girls staying there as well, and they kept me up until 2:00am with their peals of laughter. Apparently they´d found a ganja source upon their arrival.

At about 11:00pm, the wind came up along with torrential rains. The whole pier was shaking like there was a long earthquake and there was a clunking and rattling of chains that sounded like a freighter hitting the building. However, it died down an hour later.
I had planned to explore Bastimento, but since I was very uneasy about the security of my cubicle, I decided to return to Boca town first thing in the morning, where I had breakfast. Now, I am deciding whether to stay here until Tuesday, or fly to Panama City today or tomorrow. There are a number of interesting sights in Panama City, so I may just go there.