Bocas Del Toro, Panama's Caribbean

The islands of Bocas have a very Caribbean feel and culture, this is mainly due to the large Jamaican population who where all brought over to work the plantations. For me this was great! Getting some Caribbean food that was as good as my dads! There are a number of island that you can stay on here. We chose the first stay on Bastimentos island, the main town is really just a tiny village and in low season was very quite. We did the short 20minute walk/hike through the forest to the nearest beach Wizards beach to find it practically deserted. Just 4 other people on a massive beautifully natural beach.  

At this point we thought the nicest beach was Red Frog beach which is famous for the tiny little red frogs which populate the island. So we reluctantly left wizards beach after a quick dip and relaxing, to walk through the forest to Red Frog. One of the other couples on the beach were also doing the walk and we ended up going with them. Somehow all four of us missed the sign for the path and we ended up in the rock pools, half climbing trying to get to the next beach! After we could go no further we realised our mistake and backtracked finding the right path. Probably a good thing as we wouldn't have seen any of the Red frogs, although they moved to fast for us to take a photo. To reward our efforts we went straight to the bar to get some beers and finish the rum we had brought to the beach. All in all it was a good afternoon with our new German friends, we all got a little tipsy had a good swim then made our way to the docks to get a boat back to town. We met back up with them for dinner in a rustic Caribbean restaurant and had a few more beers to end the night. They told us about a kayaking tour that a chap from our hostel does so we arranged to do this the next day. While arranging this popped up another German couple we had been with in Lost and Found hostel, they had arrived in our hostel that day and also wanted to join our tour tomorrow. The tour was very cheap by Panama standards at $15 for four hours (our guide lost track of time and this needed up being 5-5:30 yay). The snorkelling was actually much better than I thought it would be. Lots of different reef fish, lobsters, star fish, a sting ray or two and then a section of sea that uncharacteristically was filled with jelly fish! This was when we were in our kayaks and they looked like they would be pretty painful should someone fall in.  

The part of the island we had kayaked to was full of mangroves, we headed up a stream to be fully within the mangrove and then past them to the forest. Being inside of the mangroves was pretty but we were all on the look out for caimans, lucky or unluckily we didn't actually see any. 

The kayaking back to town was hard and we were all exhausted from swimming for roughly 2 hours without life jackets and kayaking. Valentina and Lukas (Germans from lost and found - most of the people we have met are German 😂) recommended the hostel they stayed at on Bocas main island so the next day we headed there. Now Bocas main town is very touristy and developed but because of this it was also the one of the best hostels we had stayed at! We almost stayed a extra night just for the hostel! No atmosphere at all but super clean, huge private room for the same price as dorm beds elsewhere and wifi that worked! Bocas main beach is Star fish beach and there were quite a lot of them in the water but we do prefer the quieter beaches and this was just full of little bars and restaurants. We honestly felt like we had seen enough so decided we would leave the next day for Costa Rica!