Leaving Bocas del Toro….🤔

Apart from the not wanting to leave Bocas, we also had the problem of how we were going to leave Bocas due to the continued protests in Panama. We toyed with several ideas, one being a flight out (but this was expensive and had subsequently crashed), or a return journey back to Costa Rica to fly out of San Jose to somewhere as Panama City was probably best avoided. We were still wanting to ‘complete’ our journey from Mexico City to Panama City so these options were disappointing, but thankfully we got wind that the locals had scuppered a plan and were helping tourists ‘escape’ with a string of ferries, cars, buses and taxis either side of the blockades. Tourists are of course very important in this part of the world, and we found all of the ‘escape assistants’ very helpful once again, and we were informed that Panama City was running well and safe to visit. 


We decided to go-for-it but on a good day, this is a 12 hour journey, so how long would our journey take today from Bocas to Panama City….lets just say it was a very long day 🥵 BUT, we made-it.

The journey…a fantastic boat ride around the islands and mangrove forests and we arrived on the mainland in Grande Chiquiri, where we got on our first bus, for a few minutes anyway! The bus took us about 5 miles up the road until we met our first road-block. At this point we had to collect our backpacks, carry them past the blockade, usually a few hundred metres up the road, until we reached the next method of transport, either a bus, taxi, car or banana / pick-up truck! This happened about 8 times in about 4 hours 😂…but it got us out of our ‘sticky’ situation, and on the road to Panama City for our onward, very long journey, thankfully on a very fancy bus ðŸ¥³. Once again boys, you are AMAZING at handling this all incredibly. 



Comments

  1. Diana PoundMay 24, 2025 at 3:21 AM

    What an adventure; it gets better and better. And more 'exciting'. Thanks for keeping us informed. Dare we ask if you are getting close to the flight home. (Have now had chickens for 2 weeks; no eggs yet!)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Baggots on Tour 2025

Image
Final preparations just taking place for our big trip. The house is looking, er like our usual house! Lots of work for us tomorrow, and the next day and probably even the morning of the 2nd January. Oh geez we really do have so much stuff 😖. I’m sure an awful lot of stuff we are packing up will go straight in the bin on our return 😂. So how are we feeling: sad to be saying goodbye for now to everyone that we love to be with ❤️, and also excited / apprehensive about what is to come. We don’t quite know what to expect or even where we are going, but we are very much looking forward to the adventure that lays ahead….  What an absolute miracle that this technophobe has worked out how to set this up 😂 
Read more

Antigua and Volcan Acetenango

Image
The dreaded night bus from Flores to Antigua and I must admit, it was worse than normal. So what’s the worst thing that could happen on a long bus journey (apart from it crashing)? travel sickness, and poor Tristan was, but thankfully after a frantic search for a barf bag, he very daintily caught it all in a zip-loc plastic bag 🤢. The roads were incredibly windy and we were at the top of the bus which seemed to rock like a boat, so we braced for a 10hr fun fair ride! We arrive in Antigua at about 6am and spend the day mooching around the town which is surrounded, and I mean surrounded, by volcanoes one of which is very active. The town resembles the Mexican mountain town of San Cristóbal with beautiful low level colonial buildings and quirky restaurants and bars. The town is beautiful to walk around however there is an almost unbearable level of pollution from traffic fumes making you nervous to take your next breath. The famous ‘Chicken buses’ are partly to do with this as despite be...
Read more

El Remate and Tikal

Image
We’ve changed our plans quite a bit on this journey, and making a trip to Tikal was definitely not in our plans. We heard from so many other travellers that Tikal was not to be missed, so we decided to take the long journey up to Flores to see what we were missing.  We stayed in a beautiful place called El Remate, right on the edge of Lake Itza and the jungle and again, we were treated to the sounds of howler monkeys from our hotel (Apparently, the howler monkey noise  was used for the brachiosaurus noise in Jurassic Park, a very eery sound!). The lake was beautifully clear, and fine to swim in despite the many crocodiles! I can’t say we felt comfortable swimming but bearing in mind the locals collected their water and washed in the lake everyday, we felt it safe for a quick toe dip but I swear I saw a croc! El Remate was one of the nicest places we have stayed, with a tranquil and community feel about it and we’re all feeling very at ease in Guatemala so far. The people ...
Read more