"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” Julian of Norwich wrote. I am certain that the saint had more important things in mind than our problems with airport transportation and a malfunctioning trackpad, but somehow all of these problems managed to resolve themselves this morning and in Bocas del Toro all is well today. The sun even came out!
So we did what people usually do in Bocas - we found a boat tour and headed off towards the more remote parts of Isla Colon. Our boat stopped in a couple places and picked up passengers until there were ten of us in the boat. Half of the passengers were Panamanians, who brought along an astonishing amount of beer, four of us were Americans, and we had one lone Swede.
We cruised along along the riotously colorful Bocas town docks.
As the boat bounced over the waves, we learned a little more about our fellow passengers. And they also passed the time taking pictures of each other. Here Megan is taking pictures of Amy and Jolie from New York.
We couldn’t resist taking a few photographs, too.
Our first stop was Playa Estrella, or Starfish Beach. John found a hammock and made himself comfortable right away.
Some of the children on the beach found the starfish that give the beach its name.
I do hope, however, that the kids heeded the warnings all over the beach to avoid unnecessarily disturbing the starfish which are diminishing in number in the area.
After a couple hours at Playa Estrella, we all piled into the boat again and headed toward Boca de Drago. We were only supposed to spend a scant half hour here before continuing on to another island, but our boatman explained that the sea was too rough to do this because we would have to go out into open ocean to get to that island. So we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon here. But we still found things to do. The young passengers were delighted to photograph each other and themselves. Here are the Panamanian passengers.
And Richard from Sweden took his turn, too.
John and I were content to photograph instead of being photographed. And we found something a little more languid to do while we waited to eat our lunch at a small restaurant down the beach.
We had salads there since green salads are not a typical part of the Panamanian diet and we are missing our vegetables. As we did so we chatted with Nick, a young Italian university graduate who is spending a few months here in Panama working for one of his compatriots here.
On our way home we passed by some of the last bits of an older Bocas as we saw several groups of local people paddling by us in dugout canoes. I know what hard work it can be to paddle a boat like that, but I thought of how wonderful it must also have been when the sea was free from the deafening sound of outboard motors and the stench of their exhaust.
Concluding a wonderfully lazy day, we had a fantastic meal at El Ultimo Refugio. It is a small restaurant with an eclectic menu and maybe the only fresh vegetables on Bocas. John had the most amazing seared tuna and I had some pork loin with a blue cheese sauce.
We had some entertainment there, too. Some drunk, but obviously wealthy, Australian was having a dinner with a German couple at the next table. He started on his political opinions, which seemed pretty strongly libertarian, until the German guy could stand it no longer. He took his lighter and tried to set the guy’s leg hair on fire! Oddly enough, the Aussie took it all in good humor.
And let me finish the day by giving big thank you to Suzie Masters at Mongol Global Tours for sorting out all the problems we had yesterday. You’re the best!
