Beautiful Bocas

Bocas del Toro is made up from bays, mountains, rivers and sea and is populated with a huge variety of flora and fauna.  Located on the northern or Caribbean part of Panama it is a perfect tropical setting.

BALMY BOCAS
We get lots and lots of glorious sunny  days with an average temperature between 80-82°.  The sea is almost swimming pool warm and refreshing all year.  It is always comfortable on and in the water!  We often have a nice breeze in the afternoon and evening blowing gently across the dock and veranda of La Casa Blanca.  The guide book Lonely Planet will tell you the average rainfall and temperatures in Bocas.  This is a good starting point but remember the weather can be variable here.  One December can be very wet and the next, like the one we had in 2005 completely dry.  These islands are rain forest tropics.  It rains more at night than in the day.  

The heavens can open up and deliver an incredible amount of rain.  Sometimes with very dramatic thunder and lightning and even water spouts over the sea.  This can be very exciting and it's all part of the tropical experience.  The next day could follow sunny and calm.  Remember though the rain is mostly short lived and always followed by sunshine which soon dries everything through and causes everything and everyone to brighten up and sparkle.  Simply choose what you are going to do to suit the weather or ask your caretaker, Augustine and he will look at the sky and say "Yes lets go" or maybe "Wait half and hour and it will be dry!"  Often the sea is earily calm and glassy after a good downpour but sometimes there can be dramatic swells and winds --- more tropical excitement.  Just look at that sunset - courtesy of Captain Ron.

BOATING IN BOCAS
Leave your car at home. You can easily walk everywhere you want to go when in town. The only roads are on Isla Colon where every other car seems to be a taxi.  Prices are very reasonable.  There is also an inexpensive bus that runs from Bocas Town to Bocas del Drago at the top end of Isla Colon.   This is Bocas where most travel is on the water.  Commercial water taxi and local cayuco are easily called to pick you up from anywhere.  Getting back and forth from La Casa Blanca is simple.  Take a water taxi or Augustine's cayuco to Bocas for dinner and back.  It's quick, simple and efficient.                                                                                                       Cayuco.  Courtesy of Captain Ron. 

BUYING IN BOCAS
Virtually any food you fancy is available here but maybe not in the familiar variety from home.  Fresh fish, chicken, pork and beef and all other staples including things like soya can be purchased.  Food is less expensive here than in Europe and the USA.  One of the best supermarkets is The Super Gourmet at the bottom of Main Street next to the Hotel Bahia.  Bocas boasts many small boutiques and shops.  Local arts and crafts can be purchased from Indigenous Street Sellers and at numerous shops.  There is a good chemist or pharmacy at the bottom of Main Street and all the usual (European or USA) drugs are available. 

BOCAS BOYS
The people of Panama are wonderful, friendly, good spirited, and hardworking.  They are more relaxed than most Gringos and this may mean you having to adjust to Bocas Time!  This is a tropical mix of Spanish "Manana" and Afro-Caribbean, laid back, "Later Mon".  They take time to enjoy their lives in paradise.  There is a very comfortable mix of Spanish, Caribbean and Indigeneous who graciously accept us into their communities.  Here are a group of Isla Solarte School Children on their way to school.  They are looking up with curious expressions at the "Gringo Scientist" conducting Sloth Research in a tree above their path!  There has been and continues to be a comfortable coming together of peoples.  The Bocas Breeze is the monthly English and Spanish paper, available in hard copy or online at TheBocasBreeze.com.  It is a good read to see what is going on.

BACK IN BOCAS TIME
Columbus was here in 1502 he stopped to carryout repairs whilst searching for a way through to the Pacific.  The main town of Bocas Del Toro was a banana boomtown a century ago.  This is what brought the Afro Caribbean peoples from Jamaica and is why English is the common spoken language here.  The Banana Boom days ended for Bocas in the 1920s (see the old train engine retired from hauling them) but some of the stately colonial buildings and parks from that time still remain.  Part of a landscape that seems stuck in time.  Visitors compare Bocas to the Florida Keys of 50 years ago.

If you have an interest in the history of Panama and Bocas, visit the History of Bocas Del Toro or when you visit seek out Tito who runs the Hotel Bahia (the old United Fruit Company Offices) at the bottom of Main Street.  He has a good knowledge and is happy to share it. 

Bocas Del Toro is beautiful and very exciting!

BEYOND BOCAS
Guide books and promoters tout the islands as "the Galapagos of the Caribbean".  " Hundreds of species of fish, parrots, toucans, monkeys and sloths live on the islands, which include a 20-year-old national marine park to protect endangered manatees and sea turtles". USA Today  Last year Bryson Voirin, renowed scientist from University of Ulm, Germany,  ARTS LAB: Barro Colorado Island, Panama, Smithsonian and Florida made La Casa Blanca his research base for several weeks whilst his party continued their annual study of the Sloth population.  See his photograph of a Green Sloth in the mangroves below.  Some Island species have evolved exclusively on their own island after starting out from the same species before these islands were formed from drowned mainland.  On Bastimento in the National Park you will see the curious and locally famous "Red Frog" a species of poisonous tree frog.  Different coloured sub-species exist on other islands!

For more information:
- Bocas del Toro Ecotourism
- Bocas Smithsonian Research Station
- Bocas del Toro, Panama