San Blas to Cartagena

I don´t think you could find a place more deserving of the title Caribbean Paradise than the San Blas Islands. We began our adventure by spending 4 days on Isla Narajana staying in sand floor, bamboo walled and palm roof huts 20 feet from the ocean. Our friendly Kuna hosts cooked us 3 meals a day of the freshest catches including lobster, conch, and bonita fish (tuna). There was a beautiful reef just off the white sand beach where we snorkelled every day. The most exciting moment was approaching a sting ray with a 4 foot wing span. There were also beautiful corals and tons of species of colorful fish. The San Blas Islands are a collection of 400 tiny islands following the Eastern Caribbean shoreline of Panama. Only 41 islands are inhabited. While the  archipelago is part of Panama, the indigenous Kuna people have gained political independence. They reserve only 4 or 5 islands for tourist infrastructure and closely protect their land from outsiders. One of our Kuna hosts gave us a tour of one of the heavily populated village islands. The children all run around naked and the women wear beautiful colorful dresses and beaded strings wrapped up their arms and legs. The bamboo huts they live in are centered around a basketball court, a school, and a meeting hall. The Kunas are the 2nd shortest population in the world. Because of the normality of cousins marrying there this population is noted for it´s unusually high numbers of albinos. They speak an indigenous language as well as Spanish. We celebrated Jordan's 21st birthday in paradise! We joined a sailboat tour to another island and along the way followed a pod of dolphins. After an afternoon tropical rainstorm, we enjoyed a fish dinner then Molly managed to surprise him with a birthday cake which was baked in probably the only oven in a village on another island.

Happy 21st birthday Jordan!!

Jordan shelling coconuts

On the 21st we took a boat to the Isla El Porvenir to meet the sailboat Nepanthe!

On one of these boats we sailed to Colombia

Our ¨crew¨ consisted of two women from Holland, a woman from Germany and a guy from Canada as well as Captain Luke from Australia, his girlfriend Sarah from Canada and their 4 month old kitten Gordii. The average age was around 28. The Nepenthe is a 40 year old 41 foot wooden sailboat with plenty of comfortable space for all 8 of us. The first day we sailed 1.5 hours to Isla Perro to snorkel on a shallow ship wreck then spend the afternoon on the beach. That night we slept on the boat anchored between a few islands. At 4am Luke and Sarah started up the motor (for lack of wind) and sailed/motored 4 hours East to the Cocobandero islands. We spend the next day and a half anchored there and taking the dingy to explore the various uninhabited surrounding islands. The second night we had a bbq on an island then camped on the beach! While it was a clear night in the islands, we watched lightening and heard thunder in the distance over the hills of the mainland.

Some of the islands are so tiny they only have a few palm trees Fishing off the boat Camping on an uninhabited island Another epic sunset! Gordii the sailor cat

Sunset was beautiful as we sailed away from the San Bas Islands the evening of the 3rd day. This began our 2 day sail in the open ocean heading NE toward Colombia! We were VERY lucky to have clear skies and mostly smooth seas. We all managed to avoid sea sickness and actually slept pretty well 2 nights on the rocking boat.

The morning of the first full day of sailing Luke who was keeping watch woke everyone up for a beautiful pink and purple sunrise. We had the unbelievable luck of being joined by a pod of dolphins as we sailed East into the rising sun!! There were 8 dolphins swimming, jumping, and playing in the wake of the bow. The water was glassy smooth and so perfectly clear that we could see their bodies and faces as they swam. They stayed for about 15 minutes then split off back into the sea. This was the absolute highlight of the trip!!

Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, luckily was not the story our voyage.

Because of some favorable winds and currents we arrived in Cartagena much earlier than expected on Friday after 39 hours of sailing. We were relieved and a little dizzy getting used to land again! Our passports cleared customs and we are now ready to explore Colombia!

Out of contact!

After another long bus ride (during which the AC broke) we are once again in Panama City and have reserved our place on a sailboat on the 21st!

Tomorrow morning we are headed to the San Blas Islands, a collection of 400 island run autonomously by the indigenous Kuna Yalas. For $25/day we´re staying in a cabin on the beach on an island with three meals and a tour to other islands included. SWEET. Then on the 21st we will get picked up by a sailboat and sail throughout the islands and then to Cartagena, Colombia! So we´ll be completely out of reach until June 26th.

Hours on buses: 22.5

Boquete

After spending an extra day in Bocas del Toro because of beautiful sunshine and a Spanish school BBQ, we took off Saturday morning for the mainland. The 4 hour bus ride wound through steep hills toward David, Panama's second largest city, where we met another 1.5 hour bus to Boquete. The funny thing about the Panamanian public system is not only does it use out of comission US school busses, they also operate like school busses picking up and dropping off people at 20 foot intervals. Altough you'll only pay $1.50, a 20km trip will take close to an hour and the bus will be 20 minutes late, but you learn to be flexible. Finally arriving, the beautiful mountain town set in a valley between green jungly hills greeted us with an absolute downpour. Luckily the hostal recommended by our Spanish professor from here was just a block away from the bus stop. Between cheap rooms, hot showers, a kitchen, a comfy living room, a hammock porch, and tons of useful info about the area, Mamallena lives up to everything a backpacker hostal should. 

Yesterday we rented scooters with some new Isralie and German friends. Three guys driving and three girls riding on back, we rode up and around the hills of Boquete to get some spectacular views of the region.

The rolling hills covered are covered in thick trees overgrown by green vines and dotted with colorful tropical flowers.

The open spaces are used as farms, often onion farms and we could smell the sweet onions as we rode by. 

Looking closer at the vegetation you start to notice that the hills are full of coffee plants, some in fenced farms and some in the open forest. Boquete is the main coffee growing region of the country. Riding through the countyside we got a better idea of how the locas live and work than we could see in town.

As it pours and thunders outside, we are thinking we made the right choice not to hike up Volcan Baru to camp tonight. It is supposed to be a spectacular view at sunrise of both the Pacific and Caribbean oceans, but the rainy season is not the time to be treking in Boquete. Instead we spent the day hiking to a hotsprings, and got seriously caught in a turrential tropical downpour. Luckily when the falling rain is a luke warm shower, it's not a bad experience. We happily arrived and slipped into the 42c steaming pools surrounded by natural rock and trees.

Tomorrow we are heading back to Panama City to reserve a place on a boat to Colombia!

Hours on busses so far: 15.5, Days traveling: 14

Clases de Español

En lunes empezamos clases de Español en una escuela que se llama Spanish by the Sea. Cada día de esta semana tenemos clases a las ocho por la mañana hasta las doce. Molly esta en un grupo avanzado y Jordan esta en un grupo intermedio. Nos dos estamos aprendiendo mucho. Nos gustan mucho los profesores, ellos son muy divertíos y ayudante.  Es un modo bueno para refrescar y recordar la gramática que hemos aprendido en el pasado. En miércoles asistimos una clase de cocinar con uno de los profesores de la escuela. El nos enseñó cocinar pollo caribeño, arroz de coco y patacones. ¡Nos gusta mucho la comida aquí, especialmente los frutas del mar!

TRANSLATION...

This Monday we began Spanish classes at a school called Spanish by the Sea. Every day this week we have class from 8 to noon. Molly is in the advanced group and Jordan is in the intermediate group, however both of our groups are only two people! We are learning a lot. We both really like our professors and the other students. They are very fun and helpful. This is a good way to refresh and remember the grammar that we have learned in the past. On Wednesday we attended a cooking class taught by one of the professors. He taught us to cook Caribbean chicken, coconut rice, and fried plantains. We really like the food here, especially all the great seafood!

Outside of class we have filled our time kayaking to surrounding islands, exploring beaches covered in starfish, drinking batidos (fresh fruit shakes), snorkeling, and riding bicycles along the coastline. Sometimes it rains in paradise, but we´re still managing to catch some rays.

 Two of the hundreds of starfish on Starfish Beach

Hospital Point on Isla Soltero

View of Bocas Town

Tomorrow after class we will leave the laid back bike-riding beachtafarian atmosphere and head to Boquete a mountain town a few hours inland.

¡Hasta luego!

Bocas

From Panama City we took a 10 hour overnight bus to the Bocas del Toro region. Very tired we arrived at a port city at 630 am and got a water taxi to Bocas Town on Isla Colon. We were lucky the first two days to have beautiful sunny weather, then last night a booming thunderstorm moved in and it has been raining all day (hence we are updating the blog). The first day we rented bikes and rode along the coastline to a gorgeous beach with barely any people. We hung up hammocks and swam in the super warm Caribbean ocean until I saw a jellyfish the size of my face. Yesterday we took a water taxi to Isla Bastamientos, a true Caribbean island with no cars and pumping reggae music in the small town. We hiked across the island and emerged from the jungle on a grand yellow sand beach where we watched some locas surfing. For lunch we managed to monkey open a coconut using a rock and a sharp piece of dead coral. Tasty. On the way back we saw a few Montazuma Oropendula birds whose call sounds like rewinding a tape. Super cool. 

Unfortuantely after these pictures Molly's waterproof camera suddenly became unwaterproof in the ocean :`(

Panama Viejo

These ruins are all that is left of the origional Spanish Colonial Panama City before it was ransacked by Henry Morgan and his up-to-no-good-gang of pirates.
Taking a walk along the causeway at the mouth of the canal which connects three little islands. Not a bad view of modern Panama City.

Panama, Panama

We are here! We found a great hostel in Casco Viejo, the old city which has narrow cobble stone streets and painted stone colonial architecture. This portion on the city was largely forgotten as the modern downtown developed, but has recently undergone a revival. Therefore there is a huge mix of decrepid buildings and new hip cafes and apartments.

After recovering from sleepless redeye flights next to overly talkative and oddly smelling seat mates, we ventured into the sweaty city. Today we visited the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. This final set of locks before entry into the Pacific Ocean, lowers ships from the inland lake level to sea level, about a 57 foot and 52 million gallon difference. Upon the viewing deck we watched two "Panamax" ships travel through the two sets of locks. These ships are built to travel through the canal with one foot to spare on each side!

In the afternoon we explored downtown Panama City, a very modernized city of high rises immediatly surrounded by decaying shack house neighborhoods. The streets are dirty and the air is muggy. We are not sure why the AARP rated this city as one of the best places to retire. It is, however, beautifully placed on a peninsula jetting into the Pacific. 

A view of downtown Panama through an old building in Casco Viejo

We got our bus tickets to Bocas del Toro for tomorrow and cant wait to be on a beach! Now only a 10 hour bus ride stands between us and beautiful Caribbean Isla Colon.