A visit to Bocas

Bocas del Toro is one of the areas of Panamá that people were always talking about, but which we had not visited yet. Bocas is situated on the northwestern coast of Panama, near the border with Costa Rica. We knew many tourists and expats went there and that Bocas has a wet season and a wetter season. Reason enough for us to decide not to live there without even seeing it.

Friends of ours in Mozambique had brought us in contact with Karen and John Wagner, friends of theirs who were in Panamá for three months, working voluntarily at the Smithsonian Research Institute in Bocas del Toro. So we decided to go and visit them.

The weather was beautiful and clear when we left. We had beautiful views of the Pacific plains and later the Caribbean plains while we crossed the mountains that divide the two. At some stage we passed a sign announcing that we crossed the continental divide at 1100 m above sea level. We stopped frequently to admire the sights and photograph some of the orchids that were growing along the road like weeds. The forests were very dense and looked pretty much untouched. The trees were covered in bromeliads, mosses, lianas etc. Since we crossed late in the morning, we saw relatively few birds.

We have selected a few photos and put them in this yahoo album:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/loesroos/album?.dir=/afd1re2&.src=ph&.tok=phCnUKGBUpL5OBUs

The Caribbean side is quite different from the Pacific side. There are many more American Indians living here. In Bocas del Toro, Ngobe Bugle are the dominant Amerindian people. And on this side the women have not adopted the shapeless dresses that the missionaries forced on their nieces at the Pacific side and dress much more fashionably and elegantly. Along the Caribbean coast most people live in houses built on stilts. The tides are negligible, but a lot of the land is marshy and floods every time it rains. And it rains almost every day, so building on stilts makes a lot of sense. Building on stilts also allows you to keep your distance from all sorts of riff raff creeping around on and in the mucky soil. Unfortunately, perhaps because of living on stilts, people appear to be completely oblivious to garbage and waste on the ground and they dump household and human waste straight into the sea.

The province Bocas del Toro seems to consists mostly of small islands along the coast and the provincial capital, Bocas, is situated on one of them, Isla de Colon. Almost all islands are surrounded by mangrove forests that merge into humid rain forests. There is a lot of marine traffic between the different islands and the mainland. Vessels range from dugout canoes to ocean-going container ships. We were transported from the mainland to Bocas with a water taxi. These are about 6m long, fit 18 passengers and are equipped with a 200 hp outboard. When the sea is calm enough, the ride takes only 20 minutes. Karen was waiting for us at the dock and we spend the nights at their place because it was high season and all hotels were full.

The next day Bocas proved its reputation as rainy destination: it rained on and off during the whole day. We had planned to visit Swan Key, a small island where tropicbirds and other seabirds breed, but decided to change to plan B, which was wander around town and visit some of the tourist outfits to see if we could make some links. Bocas is not that big, but full of hotels, hostels, restaurants and other tourist traps, so we had plenty of time to make contacts. Best place was Spanish by the Sea, a language school run by a Dutch lady. She told us that their pupils often were looking for other things to do and for places to practice their Spanish. Well, we can easily offer that.

People rise rather late and so did we. Mostly because it will be raining anyway, so what is the point of getting out of bed? After a bit of work in an internet café we took advantage of a dry spell to hire a canoe and paddle to a butterfly garden. One of the owners, Luis, guided us around. His presentation was frequently interrupted by Vuzi, the tame but very opinionated aracari (small species of Toucan). He (Luis) and his partner have been preparing to breed and export butterflies, mostly Heliconias and other colourful tropical species. There seems to be a huge market and he suggested we do the same as a side activity. We might just do that. We are both biologists and we can probably breed different species quite easily. And a butterfly garden is also a nice attraction for tourists.

In the afternoon we visited the Smithsonian where John works as a volunteer to help improve the educational and public relations activities of the Smithsonian. An area where there is a lot of room for improvement. John and Karen had also invited quite a large group of children from the neighbourhood. The visit was very interesting, but unfortunately there were no scientists to show and explain their work. John is still working on that, so by the time you get there, things have probably improved even more.

After the visit we took a boat to Isla Bastimentos. This is somewhat more remote and not quite as commercial and touristy as Bocas. And the restaurant Pelicanos serves a very good pizza. We managed to get back to the lodge where we stayed just before it started raining yet again.

The next morning it was dry while we walked to Tio Tom, who would take the Wagner family and us on a walk in the National park. While we were having breakfast and Just after the Wagners arrived, it started raining again. We took advantage of a dry spell to set of to the national park in a rather unstable dugout canoe. By the time we arrived, it was drizzling again, but it did not start raining properly until we were in the forest and got some protection from the trees above us.

The main aim was to see the red frog. This frog is endemic to Bocas and populations on different islands have different colour patterns, ranging from yellow to brick red and with or without stripes or spots. The frog is quite common in the national park; we saw dozens during a two hour walk through the rain forest. However, the frog is considered endangered, because its habitat is under pressure from a rapid economic development driven by tourism. More and more forest is cut down for tourism development, to extract building material and to grow food for tourists and Panamenians. Red Frog Beach is the name of a huge tourist development elsewhere on the island, but the locals call it Dead Frog Beach and that name, although less attractive, is much closer to the truth.


At the end of our walk we had the effects of tourism development rubbed in rather severely. The walk was supposed to end in an area of primary rainforest with several caves. Instead it ended in a clear cut and the cave entrance was blocked by one of the giant trees that were cut down very recently. Our guide was even more upset than we were and lost his enthusiasm. We walked back to the boat rather depressed. When we got in the boat, it started raining even harder and we got truly soaked on the way back.

Yes, Bocas is beautiful, but only if you like to see lots of drenched tourists.