Packing for Bocas Town

As a fill in for our lost time in Boquete; although zero tears were shed, Playa Tortuga has been fabulous! We have enjoyed lounging by the pool after morning exploring walks along the water and tasting the neighboring restaurants and of  course Skully's BINGO nights and live music on Sundays. We were sad, but excited to head into Bocas Town for the remainder of our time in Panama. The Gran Bahia Hotel is the oldest building on the island and the once home to the Chiquita banana family business, where the original bank vault still resides that was used for the company payroll. Wonderful and friendly staff greeted us as we moved in. The view from the second floor balcony was pretty cool.

We walked around that first afternoon and found a great table on the water for dinner at La Buga.

Sha had the Portobello mushroom burger and I had tuna, shrimp and octopus tacos.

The menu here was so large it took us 15 minutes to decide what to have to eat. Four or five different kitchens to choose from; tacos, burgers, sushi, Italian and more, cool!

On the way home we were checking out other places that we might want to hit in the coming days, when we noticed the bar across the street from our hotel didn't open until 10 PM, and closed at 3 AM. Well before closing time we knew we had a problem...

​I hadn't noticed that on the night stand on either side of our bed were a package of ear plugs...Sha had preemptively put hers on before going to sleep. I had a little more difficulty trying to put them in in the dark during the middle of the night. Yes we could hear the music across the street. We could feel it as well...even our windows felt the bass beats as the music blared. Needless to say we didn't sleep until after 3 AM. Dark room, music finally silenced, time for some needed shuteye. That lasted until about 4 AM when the roosters next door started crowing. Not just a crow here and maybe another crow there...this blasted rooster crowed every 5 to 10 seconds (Sha counted the seconds between them) for over an hour! The sound was so piercing through our walls, that it seemed as if the damn thing was in our room. OMG! Finally it stopped! NOW time for some sleep?? Sure thing until the semi trucks started pulling up along the side street where our room was located to wait for the ferry; with its dock right up the street from the hotel. Here's a taste of the truck activity in front of our hotel after we were able to peel ourselves out of bed. 

Seeing as how we had just got here, we decided to give it another night before we made any judgements...maybe we could try a better insertion method for the earplugs. We shrugged off our sleepless night and enjoyed walking around exploring Bocas Town.

After some cribbage on our balcony, we enjoyed another wonderful dinner on the water and came home to try to sleep better than we did the night before.

Well that was a dumb idea! I didn't hear the music AS much as the previous night because I was so tired I didn't move and displace my earplugs for a good chunk of the night...Sha didn't fare nearly as well. My luck ran out when the rooster started up again; and the trucks were impossible to miss. There was NO WAY we were going to survive 3 weeks here. We had to call Wendy and our travel team to move us...and their quick action had the manager of the hotel come and see us after breakfast to move us across the hall to a room on the "quiet side" of the hotel. Alright, let's move our stuff across the hall (we were getting pretty good at packing up our worldly goods into two suitcases fairly quickly). Some more wonderful, but tired exploring of Bocas Town was had by all--guess I mean just us two.

You may recall our rental car; a.k.a. the clown car that we drove around Panama for two months and you may have wondered how the little guy fared after BB drove it down roads that were only meant for 4X4's...well, now you know the rest of the story.

We hit the balcony for some cribbage during the afternoon...BB has been on a roll, and then went back into town for some street tacos that were fantastic! There we met some young travelers while we ate; one from the Netherlands, who had been traveling South America prior to Panama, one from Germany with only a few days left before she had to return home, and one from the U.S. who was on her 55th country working abroad remotely. Oh to be young again...PASS, ha!

Daily barge cruising by.

The FERRY!

Before and during an afternoon rain shower looking across the water to Isla Carenero; about 800 kilometers away from Bocas Town.

Back at the good ole Gran Bahia, I wasn't sure if the quiet side wasn't more noisy than our other room. Every conversation and every step down the hall was audible and seemed amplified in the new room. The child in the room next to us seemed like she was talking at the bottom of our bed...3rd night with poor and interrupted sleep...3 strikes.

During our stay at Playa Tortuga we got to know the general manager (or maybe the new owner-we weren't sure). This proved to be a fortunate point as we ended up organizing a refund at the Gran Bahia and then negotiating a good deal to return to the Tortuga for the remainder of our time in Panama. So after 3 nights in Bocas Town, we return to the outskirts (4 KM) to Playa Tortuga.

Oh, I almost forgot that I promised an update on our next adventure after we return to EP for the last part of February. If you recall the beach house in Coronado Bay that Sha and I really liked...well that will be our "home" for the next 6 months starting in early March if we can get the rental contract worked out in the next couple of days.

Well, gotta go and take care of my best girl because she has come down with a nasty sore throat. Hoping a little pampering and some relaxing by the pool will be what she needs. BTW, that cribbage roll I was on disappeared completely when we were leaving Bocas Town; I've lost 11 games in a row!

Saw the weather back home for everyone...damn; stay warm!

​Pura Vida!