Coming out into arrivals we had the standard 'you wan taxi' thrown at us from all angles but we needed to sort some cash out first so we said 'no thanks' to all of them. After sorting out some dollars (Panama uses US Dollars as its currency) we headed out to get transport, at this point we were thinking we might try and get a bus into the city to save the money but when the taxi guys came over again and said 20 bucks we took them up. One of the original taxi guys from inside had come out by that point and on hearing the name of the hotel we were staying in started going off at us with 'that's a first class hotel...how come you can't afford 20 bucks for a taxi' and 'this is why the rich man stay rich and poor stay poor....'. Yeh? DO ONE! We had booked into a decent hotel for the two nights in Panama City because it was Neens birthday. Not a great first impression of the people of Panama!! Luckily we realised over the next week that many of them were all very nice people and this was just a bad start..
We had one full day in the city and knew a few things we wanted to see but rather than book a tour, which were pretty toppy, we decided to do it ourselves using taxi's. First stop was the Panama Canal and the Miraflores Locks which has a visitor centre. The taxi driver asked if we wanted him to stay and and we agreed an extra 5 bucks, in fact he came in with us and knew everything about the canal so we actualy had a guide as well. The locks are huge as you would imagine and there was a tanker going through from the pacific to the carribean side when we arrived. Apparently the French were the first to try and build the canal but had to give up eventually due to the difficulties and number of workers that died. Bizzarely the majority of workers that built the successful canal came from Barbados. Ships are built using the dimensions of the canal specifically and they are building a new set of locks that will be able to cater for bigger boats. We were both impressed by the canal, the shire size of it and process for crossing between the two oceans.. Sad I know!!
We decided to hold onto our taxi/guide for the rest of the day and he took us into the rain forest to a hotel with an amazing view, where we had a nice drink on the balcony to toast Neens for her birthday. We then carried onto a small national park, with a 1 dollar entrance fee to check out the jaguar, monkeys, tapir and crocs. That night we found a nice little restaurant for Neens birthday and just had a chilled out evening with some nice food and wine.
The following day we left for a small island in the north east of Panama called 'Bocas Del Toro'. We got on a bus around 8.30am and arrived in a place called 'Almirante' around 6pm, when we got off the bus we had the locals shouting at us about the last boat leaving at 6pm for Bocas so we piled into this van, with some annoying American guy moaning about being squashed in the front with another person.. We got down to the water side and went to get in the boat but it was full! So we ended up being left with the couple of Americans and had to arrange another boat but as you can imagine they wanted more cash as this was not a scheduled boat ride. Eventually we managed to drum up another few passengers and got across to the island and checked into our hostel.
Bocas was a great little place with a really chilled out feel to it, we spent a couple of days chilling out, taking in the relaxed atmosphere, having a few drinks and eating some lovely food - especially the fish tacos! We decided to check out the 'starfish' beach on one of the days, which mean't another bus ride out to the area. Once we arrived we walked for around 45mins to the starfish beach, which I think is the best beach we have ever been to. The water was cristal clear, with starfish everywhere.. We met a really nice local guy who made us rum coconut cocktails in the coconut, did some snorkelling and just took in the amazing scenery around us. Rather than head back on the bus we found a few people who were going back on a boat so to finish the afternoon off we took a beautiful boat journey back to the main town of Bocas to spend the evening.
The following day we had booked a transfer from Bocas to Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica, which was a boat ride and van to the boarder, then a walk across a bridge from Panama and into Costa Rica - very weird expecially as the bridge was a bit on the dodgy side! Then finally a taxi to our hotel in Puerto Viejo.
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