Sarah and I did not sleep well last night. At all. Though our cabin overlooking the ocean has a great view, it is not fully enclosed - which means that the very loud ocean waves don’t really lull you to sleep but keep you awake when they crash on the rocks by the shore. Also, because it isn’t closed off from the elements, the humidity in the cabin is unbearable. Sleeping with the sheet over my body felt like laying under a large Wet-Nap. The dampness (and more importantly, the accompanying mold that grows in structures that are continuously damp) really agitated my often mild asthma too.
Anyway, when we “woke up” in the morning (really it was just when we stopped trying to sleep), we both decided that we couldn’t stay here another night. We told our host at breakfast and she was very understanding - she didn’t even make us pay for the nights we cancelled at the last minute.
Before taking off, we explored the grounds a little more. There are spiders all over the place so you have to watch where you’re walking to make sure you don’t run right into one of their webs!
Apparently these are Banana Spiders? Either way, they are a little freaky.
Yep, we're in the jungle - this huge grasshopper gave Sarah quite a surprise when she was putting on her sandals.
Despite our residual anger from it's decibel level last night, the beach still looked pretty nice!
Ready to get to slightly dryer air, we didn’t wait too long to take a taxi into town. Because of all the rain over night, the “road” to town was pretty muddy and we were a little unnerved to see a van helping to pull another taxi out of the mud. Keep in mind that all the taxis here are pick-up trucks…so if one of them gets stuck you know it’s pretty bad.
Rainy ride into town. This also helps give some perspective on the "road" quality - we were essentially driving on the beach.
Fortunately, we did not get stuck too.
We were able to get a room at the Gran Hotel Bahia which is right in the middle of town and has a more typical hotel set-up. Certainly it’s less charming than a cabin overlooking the Caribbean, but it is much more functional (and luckily the AC has already helped my breathing).
After we got settled into the room, we set out to explore Bocas Town a bit. It’s not very big so we were able to see it all in only a few hours, but given the heat and humidity, that was enough to require us to head home for a shower before doing anything else. Once we were cleaned up we went to grab a Balboa, one of the three main Panamanian beers, at a bar across from our hotel. Then it was off to dinner at Taco Surf, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a surf shop and taco restaurant in one. It was good, but not compared to some of the great Mexican food we’re used to back home.
Great sunset on our walk home.
Hopefully the weather cooperates with us over the next few days so we can do the tours we’ve been planning: a snorkeling trip, an ATV exploration of Isla Colon and a boat trip to the beach on Isla Bastimentos.