Our crossing over the border to Panama from Costa Rica was very painless and quick and in no time at all we were on the scenic boat ride out through the mangroves to Bocas del Toro - a group of mangrove-covered and white-sand beach lined islands on the Caribbean side of Panama.
Much to our amazement we had to traipse around a number of places to find somewhere to stay the night - despite being low season, it appears that the bad weather on the Pacific Coast pushed all the tourists over to the Caribbean side.
Our second day on the Island was not quite the relaxed day that we had planned. On trying to buy our flights out of Panama all our credit cards were rejected so we found ourselves spending most of the day finding a phone that worked, which we eventually did in the Local Fire Station! Then we spent much of the rest of the day calling collect to the banks to figure out what was going on. Turns out that the brilliant Bank of America had canceled our credit card several weeks prior for no obvious reason, and failed to tell us! Got it all sorted in the end, but most of the day wasted...
We had been recommended a snorkeling day trip with Captain Marcel - a bit more expensive than the other other tours, but turned out to be absolutely worth it. We spent the day on a lovely catamaran sail boat and visited a couple of really great snorkeling sights - we saw some of the most interesting coral that we have seen anywhere yet - quite different - brain corrals, long tube-like corrals, shiny round shells. The weather was absolutely perfect, the food was yummy and we met some interesting ex-pats living in Costa Rica.
