Playa Las Lajas, Panama

A few clammy bus rides (and most of the day later) and Jason, Pip and I found ourselves on the opposite coast of Panama to Bocas del Toro, at a beach called Playa Las Lajas. We chose our destination en-route and it was decided upon by the lack of bus services to anywhere else that evening. BUT it also seemed like a fun idea to go to another beach and if it was anything like Bocas it would be a place to party, swim, surf, beach it up, jungle it up and meet more interesting people.

It was nothing like Bocas.

Our 1 room, 1 bed

We found ourselves stranded by a bus in the dark night at a poor excuse for a bus shelter just outside a long road with a mildly exciting and promising sign reading 'WELCOME TO PLAYA LAS LAJAS' which we considered walking down before being warned it would take about 30mins to DRIVE down let alone amble with our backpacks around 10pm at night, not knowing where exactly we were going. So we took a taxi and requested that it take us to the nearest, cheap hostel. It wasn't near but at US$10 a night for a cabin for ALL THREE OF US it was irresistibly cheap! The ominous route there however was confusing. We were at the beach, apparently the most beautiful in the Chiriqui province of Panama and yet we saw nothing and noone. Just darkness, the odd tree, the muddy road and occasionally a deserted looking shack. It was VERY strange. And then we arrived at the cabins/hostel and an unreasonably pissed off hostel manager/owner "greeted" us and reluctantly showed us to our home for the next couple of days... a dingy, dark, damp cabin with only ONE double bed in the middle. It rained heavily that evening and so we cooked our own dinner, drank lots of red wine and then drunkenly attempted to make a fire with wet wood... for about an hour and were shamefully unsuccessful. The night ended with a drunken nightwalk/ nightstagger up the beach with one torchlight for visibility and no clue as to where we were going as we had never seen the beach in daylight. Plankton, crabs and shells seen only in the dim glow of our light made for an exciting walk.

The next day we walked up the 14km stretch of beach and discovered that it really is quite beautiful. The pacific ocean greeted us with warm, navy waves that gently folded into the black sand shore, very different from the East coast. As we walked along though, we discovered that Playa Las Lajas really is a ghostbeach. Dead! Noone in sight and lots of huts, restaurants, hostels etc just abandoned on the side of the beach. It didn't make sense to us and seemed like something out of a horror movie almost. However as we continued walking we discovered a small pub hut with about 5 (German) customers all watching the World Cup (Netherlands V Uruguay). It didn't make sense but the football and booze did. So Dutch Pip, Jason and I spent the afternoon getting drunk watching the World cup and rowdily supporting Netherlands to the other customers' disgust... and also taking swimming breaks in the ocean. Outstanding day!

That evening we made friends with and got more drunk with some handsome and lovely Argentinians who had landed at our cabins. Card games (Chancho va!), bottles of wine, torrential rain, boiled hot dogs later and a very merry Jason, Pip and me ended up switching cabins to another DRIER one... where we proceeded to roll about laughing and filming and joking for the rest of the night! ...Only to wake up to the psycho hostel owner getting really freaking angry at us for switching cabins, flicking us off and spitting "SOLO MAL USTEDES!" at us in the morning. Lovely.

We swiftly moved on from this middle-of-nowhere, beautiful hell and on to San Jose for all 3 of our flights back to our respective homes...

Bocas Del Toro, Panama

Whizzing through San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, where I left my dear friend and travel companion Julio, I made the decision to venture in to Panama. This was as much of an economic decision as it was an explorative decision. Or so I thought...

Boat ride to Bocas

On my 12hour or so bus journey from San Jose to the archipelago of Bocas del Toro in Panama I met a delightful young man named Jason from Ohio with whom I spent my remaining time travelling. We arrived in beautiful Bocas, on the Caribbean coast and once again I was extremely happy to be greeted by the turqoise tranquility of this ocean. However we were first greeted with the main island of Bocas del Toro, Isla Colon. This is a fun, predominantly expat-run, hedonistic party island. Not quite the oasis of calm for end-of-travels reflection as I had expected! Bocas town on Isla Colon is also quite ugly...

Nevertheless, never one to shy from an opportunity to party, I was able to have something of a rager here on this island with Jason and a bunch of other people I met there. A seriously wild night out involving dancing and drinking like a maniac and behaviour akin to a lad-on-tour, 2 days later I knew I had to move on. Isla Colon was a really fun place and its attraction for tourists is very evident. But after my intensely Latin American and Spanish-speaking journey so far, it did not seem right to suddenly feel like I was a Brit-in-Thailand, raping the island. It was just too debauched and coked-up. I consider Isla Colon as a part of the umbrella genre of travelling of Posh Backpacking. Despite Panama being one of the cheaper countries of Central America, everything in Bocas was expensive - the hostels were on average $10 a night! However did come with air-con(!) A far cry from my sweaty crotch cabin in a jungle days. Luxury backpacking at its finest.

Whilst there, instead of indulging ourselves in the expensive island tours offered, Jason and I decided to do things old school and spent our time on Isla Colon walking and exploring. One of my favourite days involved us walking about 30km all day to the small beaches on the island; Playa Bluff and Playa Paunch etc... A sudden, heavy and unrelenting rainstorm meant an unwilling trip to a cafe for prolonged consumption of ice-cream with kahlua... and tequila shots.

Once we rinsed Isla Colon of all the fun we could handle, we decided to see another side to the archipelago. And so, on we went to another isolated, quiet, deserted but absolutely stunning island of Bocas named Isla Bastimentos. THIS was how I expected Bocas del Toro to be! White, pristine, empty beaches... Rolling calm waters, ABSOLUTELY empty, jungle surrounds... it was really our own desert island. And for the first time in a long time I felt as though I was somewhere where really, VERY few people have been before. We stayed in a new and very chilled hostel called Bocas Bound and it was situated about a 5mins jungle walk away from the famous Red Frog Beach and the COMPLETELY EMPTY (and therefore by default, a nudist beach for me(!) Playa Tortuga.) This was paradise, reinforced by the presence of my lovely companions. We all spent the next couple of days seriously chilling out on the beach and in the tranquility of the jungle together... Except for the Fourth of July when the American amongst us (dear Jason!) decided we MUST celebrate Independence Day by "bbq-ing meat, drinking lots of booze and blowing shit up." Well apart from the last one, we accomplished the other two... particularly the second and I enjoyed my first ever Fourth of July celebration immensely!

The next day, with our heads bowed down low in mild shame for previous night's antics, we all left the island... Belgian Helen to Costa Rica, Dutch Rian and Slovenian Ursa to Panama city and Jason, Pip and myself to... we had no idea..........