Act 21 | Panama

The first thing I did in Panama was find a really easy way to quadruple the cost of the shuttle from the airport to my hostel, let me step you through the three stage process: i) leave one of your bags in the minivan when disembarking at the hostel (preferably the bag with all the money you've just withdrawn, one of your cameras, your laptop and your passport); ii) jump in a private taxi & pay a little extra in order to beat the shuttle back to the airport (so as to scare the driver of the first shuttle and collect your bag before the next run); iii) finally, catch another shuttle back to the hostel again … simple!

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I self-diagnosed myself with travellers fatigue upon arrival in Panama (the symptoms of which are struggling to muster the motivation needed to open a travel guide and find a way of making the present day enjoyable); I thereafter became a parasite on other travellers with more zeal (& plans) than I.

Adrian, Maja & Stephanie were the three travellers who I first leeched onto in my sullen state, we went to the lookout in the city's botanic garden.

We failed to make it out of the RAINforest before the showers that fall every afternoon in Panama City began to pour down upon us.

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You can’t be Panama and not see the canal.

However, you can expect the 'action' to be fast flowing (literally) and thereby be rather underwhelmed by whole long drawn out scene.

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Turns out there was just enough time before catching the night bus to make an ill advised journey to the causeway for civeche (tasty raw fish) and sangria – the perfect way to farewell a rather forgetable city.

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Industrial strike action over the issue of fresh water caused delays in the early morning boat taxi service to Bocas del Toro.

The hostel I was staying in was dead quiet; As such, I booked a day long tour of the neighbouring islands as much to see if I could meet some new people as to see the sights themselves.

This white sand beach was considered to be good enough to put a cover charge on the shoreline.

The tour was a great success in that I made friends with a bunch of Israeli tourists who loved to harvest the local coconuts ...

... which the boys used for sustenance …

… and the girls used to lighten the colour of their hair …

... regardless of the usage the result was always the same: the coconut's produced big smiles all round.

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The following morning was spent fishing with two of the Israeli guys, one who had the good sense to bring his mother on tour with him (brilliant idea - why didn' I think of that?), the other who was travelling with his wife on a belated honeymoon.

I so nearly caught my first real fish (with no more than a hand line and a coloured lure made from a yellow drinking straw); I actually pulled the red tuna into the boat and was holding it up for a photo when it squirmed out of my hands and back into the ocean. (Knowing that we caught more fish than we could eat and that the stories of the ones that got away are often more interesting (and more easily exaggerated) than the stories of the first catch, I wasn’t overly upset with the result (unlike the captain of the boat)).

Because our surrogate mum loved to cook and the boys had caught fresh fish (well, the Israeli boys to be specific) two days running, we all pitched in to prepare two of the most memorable meals I will have this year.

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Tropical rain storms are heavy man, and necessitate creative ways of getting home without getting drenched.