On a bit of a lark, we decided to come down to Panama for the end of this little Costa Rica adventure. Upon arrival, Megan, Liz and I all had the "why didn't we just come here" moment. We are on an island in the Bocas del Toro archipelago that has no roads and wonderful hang out cabanas built out over the ocean. You can walk over the island and go to the beach through the forest, with streaming trails of leaf cutter ants all along the path. The ants are carrying the leaves to their nest where they will cultivate fungus on them, which they eat. Pretty awesome.
There is surfing, diving, sea turtles, whatever you want, and it is crazy cheap. Everything is in dollars (Panama uses dollars, gallons and feet), and the people here speak a weird Bislama-style creole of english and who knows what. Actually, I feel a lot like I am in the peace corps right now and I frequently wonder if Naked Ben would recognize this place as being a little piece of Vanuatu.
My one, ok, fine, two complaints are that I got bitten by something nasty and now my leg is swollen and that a previously friendly crackhead tried to break into our room last night. The guy had actually been the one who brought us to the island and we figured he was just a tout. However, there was really not a commission paid and the dude kept hanging around us. He isn't scary, or at least wasn't until he came to our room at 1 am with his crackhead friend and tried to get money from us. Fortunately, the bars on the window are good and our door was locked, but the girls were shaken up so I became very firm with the guy and sent him away while preparing to use more force should it have come to it (which I doubted). In the morning, the Argentinian who runs the place, Manu, went to tell the police to be on the lookout for him, but I think there is not really any danger.
That said, Panama is sweet. I hope it is not just a matter of time until it gets overrun with tourists such as myself.
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