Panama

As Julian’s ripped passport was no issue to get into and leaving Costa Rica (despite the delays we had leaving Nicaragua), we expected no troubles when entering Panama. However, the border agent said straight away that we were not allowed into Panama – prompting us to instantly look up embassy numbers. After half an hour of waiting and nobody talking to us, a supervisor presented us with completed paperwork confirming that we were denied entry into Panama 😱 After some very difficult and slow conversation in broken Spanish, we managed to convince him to double-check with his supervisor and in the end were allowed in. Maybe time to get a new passport, Julian…

Luckily we didn’t have much further to travel that day – only about an hour to David – so we took it easy, rested a bit and made friends with the hostel “pet” before a long travel day the next day to the Bocas del Toro.

The 4-hour bus ride went via some very interesting roads over a mountain pass and took us all the way from the Pacific side to Almirante on the Atlantic side.

From there, we had to catch a boat to the main town of Bocas and then another one to Isla Solarte, where we spent 2 nights in one of the nicest hostels of the trip enjoying amazing family dinners, sunsets, the pool and the slide straight into the ocean.

We were sad to say goodbye to such a beautiful and relaxed place, but also very excited for the next stop: a waterfront bungalow on the more isolated Isla Cristóbal. We were greeted by the lovely Argentinian couple who were taking care of the place and also cooking delicious meals for the guests. For 5 days we got to relax and enjoy the beauty of the area with all its wildlife. We saw a sloth with its baby whilst walking around the jungle on the huge property, we were surrounded by dolphins whilst kayaking in the bay and saw rays, octopuses, dozens of starfish and incredible corals right in front of our little hut. The most impressive thing however was the bioluminescent plankton which the bay was full of. Each night we jumped in the water and were surrounded by millions of lit up plankton, disturbed by our presence and movements, making it a completely surreal experience.

A short video with some impressions from Bocas del Toro can be found here:

From Bocas del Toro we took an overnight bus to Panamá City. Annoyingly, the bus arrived at 4am and we were at the hostel at 5am already. Obviously, our room wasn’t ready for us yet so we had to sleep on the couch and in the hammock in the common areas for a few hours before heading out for breakfast. Panama City was distinctively more modern than any other place we had seen on the trip so we decided to just walk around the city for a day to explore. Another day, we went to the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal just outside the city. Whilst it was very interesting to see the whole process, we were surprised how long it actually took for a single ship to pass through the locks.