Marina Carenero
Bocas del Toro, Panama
As Ole went back to Sovereign on January 3, and Emma Jo will be staying in Bocas del Toro for the next several months, we’ll just make a monthly page until we start cruising again.
It was impossible for Ole to get a flight out of Bocas to Panama City to catch his flight back to the ship, so we booked him a flight out of David, a city across the mountains from here. That meant we were up at dawn’s crack, and over the water via lancha to the town of Almirante about 30 minutes away. From the boat dock, it was a taxi ride to a wide spot in the road to wait for a bus to David, two hours away. The bus finally came – a small affair with stuff packed on top and people shoehorned in. Ole reported that for most of the way he had an indigenous girl of 15 sitting on his lap, so he couldn’t really say how the scenery was. Once he got to the bus station in David, he had to get a taxi to the airport in time for his flight to Panama City – and all this with limited Spanish.
After I waved goodbye, I retraced the cab ride back to the water taxi through Almirante. I learned a new word in Spanish – una porqueria – which pretty much describes Almirante. The setting is beautiful It’s up the head of a bay studded with islands and little homes on stilts. But the town is a dump, with floating trash, open sewers, and scrawny dogs and chickens everywhere. A good place to be leaving!
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