Today (6 August), I awoke early to catch the 5:30am bus from Puerto Viejo. I met my friend and fellow researcher Arietta at the bus stop and we rode until the cruce (crossing) where we disembarked the bus and waited to flag down another bus that should pass by around 7am. This part of the trip was a little stressful since that bus isn’t necessarily guaranteed to stop, but we managed to catch it and continued on down the Caribbean coast for about 5 hours until we reached the border crossing town of Sixaola.
There weren’t many people passing through the border when we arrived and we went through with no problem. After that, we took a half-hour taxi to Changuinola to catch our boat to the island. The boat ride is my favorite portion of the trip from Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica to Bocas del Toro, Panama. There are a lot of interesting wetland birds (egrets, jacanas) and (allegedly) manatees hanging out in the canals. If you have ever been on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland -- that is similar to the canal trip...but with fewer evil hippos wiggling their ears!
Once we arrived on Isla Colón (the main island of the Bocas del Toro island group), we checked into our hotel (Hotel Dos Palmas) and went out to wander the town in search of food. We settled on a quick bite to eat at a diner where I had a pretty decent cheeseburger and banana milkshake. It was fairly late in the afternoon by this time so Arietta and I went back to the hotel to nap and watch TV. Tomorrow would be our first full day in Bocas and we planned to visit Boca del Drago -- a beautiful beach on the back of Isla Colón.
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