Semana Santa

After some consideration, I’ve realized that almost all good books have some sort of suspenseful chapter. I guess my chapter has been our Semana Santa trip. Because the student teachers don’t get visas to come to Costa Rica, at some point during our first three months we have to flee the country for 72 hours. We decided to do our fleeing to Bocas del Toro in Panama, followed by a several day trip to Puerto Viejo, back in Costa Rica. Of course, two days before we’re scheduled to leave, we’re still trying to find places to stay and ways to get there. Luckily, this story has a happy ending, and as often happens in these types of adventure stories, everything turned out well. I will admit though, that when we left at six in the morning on our first day, I did still have my doubts.

This trip turned out to be exactly what I needed. Talk about an island paradise; Bocas del Toro was gorgeous! Bocas del Toro is actually several islands located on the Caribbean side of Panama. Our hostel wasn’t on the main island, so we had to take two water taxis to get there. This picture shows the main town on our island. We, however, were around the other side of the island in what was scarily referred to as “el projecto.” When we heard this, we were afraid we’d booked ourselves some place in the ghetto. It was worth the trek though; our hostel turned out to be in the middle of the jungle, about five minutes from the beach. This beach was more idyllic than I thought could exist in real life. The sand was white and so soft that you would sink in up to your ankles as you walked. The water was slightly cool (however, by “cool,” I don’t mean like back home where you can stay in the water without a wetsuit on for about five minutes before hypothermia sets in. In this context, “cool” just means compared to other beaches we’ve been to. The water was still probably about 70 degrees) and a beautiful clear blue.

However, let’s go back a little. This is a picture of our border crossing into Panama. The border itself consists of a hut on each side of the river where they stamp your passport, and this bridge. Although this picture does convey quite a bit of the actual experience, it might also help you to picture this bridge if you think of the Pismo pier, with several boards missing every few feet, and many of the boards not nailed down all the way. Add about 20 pounds for the bags we were carrying with us and you have a pretty decent idea of what our experience was like. Minus, of course, the multiple hours spent in the hot sun waiting to get our stamps, only to find out we needed to be in another line first and come back to the one we were in.

This picture is much happier and was taken on the day that we went snorkeling. We had the beach almost entirely to ourselves and got to spend the day snorkeling and looking at cool fish. The coral wasn’t as colorful as I was hoping, but because the water was really shallow, we got to see the fish pretty up close and personal. It was a trek and a half to get there though. I kept waiting to hear the Indiana Jones theme song play, but apparently the sound effects crew had taken the day off. We hiked along the beach, through the ocean, over dead trees, through shoe-eating mud, and in a jungle of ensnaring vines. Although consistently the over-packer, I was nevertheless disappointed that I had neglected to bring my machete on this little jaunt.

All in all, this was a pretty fantastic week. I don’t know when, but Bocas is definitely somewhere I want to come back to sometime in the future. Anybody have any plans for next year’s spring break? :)