Another Travel Disaster – My way to Miami

My time in Latin America is slowly coming to an end. My initial plan was to do some final tours around the islands of Bocas del Toro and then get a night bus from Bocas to Panama city on Friday and then a flight to Miami on Saturday. I was lucky and found a couch surfer host that invited my to party with his friends on Saturday. Sounds like a perfect plan.

However, I underestimated the capacity of the local services. All boat tours from all agencies were either booked out or canceled (due to low demand!). All night busses to Panama City (private and public) were full for Friday night and Saturday morning. My flight to Miami was Saturday night though and I couldn´t change it because neither the airline nor my travel agency was open during the weekend (I made dozens of phone calls). In the end I ended up flying from Bocas to Panama. Even that proved to be very tight with timing since the plane made an intermediate stop in some little town 30km!!!! next to Bocas del Toro. I had to switch airports in Panama city. Luckily some Austrian traveling introduced me to their crazy ass taxi driver friend. He got me to the Airport for just a fraction of the normal prize and his elaborate VIP-chauffeur stories made the 1h drive very short (true or not, I didn´t care).

thanks Will for your hospitality

very convenient, my accommodation was just next to the Bocas Airport (there are so few flights that the noise is really no issue)

my taxi drivers recommendation. That's were the airport staff gets their hot dogs. A good culinary preparation to the United States :D

It actually tasted fantastic

 

OK, I got to the airport so everything should be fine now. I had triple checked that the dates on my ticket were correct this time. Unfortunately that was not true for the ticket in THEIR SYSTEM. The agent at the check-in counter fiddled around his computer for about 20 minutes and then talked to his supervisor. Conclusion, my agency had changed the flight to the current date but Thai Airways (who manages my AroundTheWorld Ticket didn´t change the booking in their system. According to the airport staff, they would not be able or even allowed to assign my booking to the flight today. Their comment: I should call my travel agency. Another check-in counter gave me the same answer. That was 9PM in Panama, 3AM in Germany. I and I knew that my cousin (who booked the ticket) was on vacation god knows were.

I felt very guilty but since I didn´t know what to do I called my travel agent anyways. She was far from being amused due to my late night call. Her comment, she cant do anything about it until next week and I should make some trouble at the counter so they change my booking, which according to her shouldn't be any problem.

Well, back to the counter again. This time I picked the one that looked like the most professional. She looked at my booking, asked if I recently changed my dates (yeah, a week ago) and without making any other comment she started hacking her keyboard until she gave me my boarding pass. So it WAS DEFINITIVELY possible to correct the booking! Why does it need to be so complicated all the times?

Around The World Ticket? Never again!

So I got on the plane to Miami. What I had not taken into account when I changed my flight was the arrival time. I thought Panama Miami is very close. However, including all delays I arrived in Miami Airport at 3AM. Probably the most inconvenient time to meet my host Ian. Anyways I got an Uber to downtown (god bless Uber America, 3$ for an airport transfer, they charge 30$ in Panama.

My host told me to call him once I arrived at this apartment building. So I did. Only problem, he had fallen asleep. Combined efforts of me (WhatsApp call) and the receptionists (in-house phone) managed to wake him up. However, when I got up to the right floor and knocked on the door: nobody opened.

However, the door was open, so I ended up just entering the flat, found my host deep asleep in his bed and an unprepared couch. It felt like an intruder. When I started preparing my couch (I got a sleeping bag), he finally woke up to say hi. That made me feel a hell lot more comfortable :P

So this was my trip Bocas de Toro – Miami Downtown. I hope it goes a bit more smoothly from now on.

Back to Bocas

After my time in Bastimentos I got an offer to couch surf in Bocas Town. Ironically, that host was the manger of the hostel that I would have gone other ways anyways :D

I had another 2 lovely days in Bocas, mainly organizing my future travels, partying (my English friends went to exactly that hostel), and visiting some more beaches.

my new host Will, fixing his shorts

There is one thing Bocas that really bothered me. It is very hard to find good Bananas. I grew up thinking that Panama is a dream country mainly because they got bananas (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_wie_sch%C3%B6n_ist_Panama). However, most shops here sell only Platanos (bananas for cooking). They few real bananas they got are either really green (and not eatable, I tried) or over ripe and cracked open. Bananas were my main staple food in South America (cheap, available, healthy and nutritious) so I was very disappointed :P

Starfish Beach

Aqua Lounge – a British Night out

I didn´t have a proper crazy party night for a long long time (the drawback of low budget). However, Bocas the Toro is a party location, so I saw it as my cultural duty to immerse myself into the local habits And if you want to drink who would be better company than some English country lads my age escaping the bad weather at home (has anyone ever heard of Darby?).

Todays destination: the Aqua Lounge, Bocas del Toros most popular club (some daytime web pictures)

 

• @ my mum: you should stop reading here

The tour started easy with some beers at the hostel bar. around 10>00 we ordered a water taxi to get us to the Aqua Lounge, the most popular club on the Bocas islands. Located on a separate island, every visitor needs to take a water taxi to get there (probably good business). The club is something like a spring break party dream: cheap cocktails and beer, multiple pools and a massive amount of drug dealers easily recognizable in the party crowd. As usual, I stuck to my beer (and maybe some cigarettes) but the others went just crazy.

Some us us ended up in the pools (none had swimming gear). Some girls were just out of it and forced us into some dances with them that were rather softporn. I think I was asked about 20 times if I wanted to by cocaine, often to European prices (which must be a total rip off). Not that that would stop my greedy friends from buying several times. I don't recall all the details of the way back, but I know that there was so much confusion that we arrived in separate boats. Our water taxi stopped in the middle of the ocean. I was later told that they refused to bring us to land if we didn't buy cocaine from them. I think the drivers were just confused by my friends intentions. Anyways, I stayed out of it and money solves everything.

Back at our island we sat a little bit at the pier. I was done, but obviously some of the guys were still quite active. Also the guy with the room keys hasn't appeared yet! So they decided to head out into the little town in our village to get cigarettes. (It was 3AM, the town has about 1000 inhabitants, all Caribbean Creoles). Obviously everything was closed but we bumped into a group of young people and one of the guys said he knew how to get stuff. Being completely devoid of common sense security measures my friends followed. We ended up knocking on some windows until an old grumpy black lady opened, shouted at us something in Creole and sold us cigarettes. Our guide then invited us to join him for a beer in the local bar.

OMG, this bar was really local. We were the only white people. All ages were mixed and I think there was nobody who was not high on something (they had good music though). I felt like in a old school road movie.

the bar at daytime

I had some really crazy conversations and experiences that night, but when I finally ended up in my hammock, I was really glad that I survived that night unharmed and with quite some dollars left in my pocket.

 

PS: I actually had a room, but the brutal air-conditioning made me favor the hammock on the deck next to the sea :D

Bastimentos

It is rain season in Panama. I already noticed it in Boquete, where you had to finish all trips around 14:00 (when it starts to rain). Here in Bocas it is the other way around. It is raining every morning. But no matter how bad the weather seems, in the afternoon the sun comes out. Could be worse

My cousin recommended to visit the island of Bastimentos just 20min away by motor taxy. Indeed I found a very nice hostel directly at the water (Bubbas House). There is actually a small village on the island that exerts a very Caribbean flair. All inhabitants are Afro-American and dressed in this stereotypical Jamaica-reggae style. They make a big effort promoting their own stereotypes. Every guy I talked to here offered me some kind of drugs (usually marihuana or cocaine). Seems like an everybody's side business. However they are really nice and helpful people and I had a great time (just) having a some beers with them.

The big plan for today is walking to the famous Red Frog Beach on the other side of the island (the islands here are much bigger than in Guna Yala and covered by real jungle). I have read that there is a path leading through the jungle and then you could walk along the beaches until you arrive there. It made me wonder that nobody at the hostel had ever done it or could even give any information. They all used a water taxi to get there. You also have to pay 5$ entry tax for the beach itself. All they told me was leaving my valuables in the hostel, since there was some robbery going on near that path. If there had only been some German people around. I am sure they would have known all the details :D

I started walking in my flip flops, carrying only some water and dollars for the boat back with me. The entrance to the path was easy to find and led through some isolated houses in the middle of the jungle. When it went increasingly uphill, I soon realized how rarely it must have been used it was more a path for wild animals, half overgrown, too steep to walk upright and sometimes so muddy that you had only a chance walking barefoot (the thorny branches made every step even more delightful :P)

I didn´t take long after I reached the beach and started walking easts towards the Red Frog beach. There were absolutely no tourists here, According to my information I should be walking for about 1h. However, after 10min the beach ended and there were rock formations and trees in the water that you could not easily climb. After some search I found a little “path” leading into the jungle just next the end of the beach. Path is actually highly exaggerated. I should better call it “educated guessing of the way somebody else has taken before me”. The next 90 minutes were a mix of comfortable walking along the white beached and pathfinding though the forest. Sometimes you would sink into the mud knee deep. Since I had to walk barefoot I was quite scared to step or touch something that would leave me with a bleeding wounds (surely not the most healthy thing in a jungle). However, the amount of shoes and boots sticking in the mud around me assured me that I was on the right way. And indeed, after 90 min and unharmed I stepped out of the jungle and reached a beautiful beach, populated with quite some gringo tourists and many restaurants for refreshments.

I didn´t have my camera, so here some web pictures

Red Frog Beach

Here I made some new friends from the UK. They stayed at the same hostel so we could share a motor taxi. I bumped into these 4 guys again and again the next days and hopefully I get some pictures from them :P (who knows where Darby is).

lobster meal at the hostel