Welcome to Blue Ocean Studios
Around the World


ParadiseIsland Life - we tried a piece of it this morning - waking up at 9:30 am - grabbing breakfast - and back to sleep until 1 pm.  That's nice. :) We needed a relaxing day, because tomorrow's going to be a killer - with an early morning flight, followed by a late flight, and another flight the next morning.   Not looking forward to that, so we wanted to take advantage of our island stay as much as possible.

I do have a major complaint about Bocas - they love their music - they play it until 2-3 am in the morning, and you can hear music from anywhere on the island.  Funny - they're incredibly poor, but prioritize a huge speaker with tremendous bass over other essentials (ie, a real plumbing over the water pit underneath their house).   Strange and annoying, but it's their island.  So we fell asleep to the bass blasting island rumba - but still loved our sleep - as we heard the waves crashing right below our room.   Second complaint, (as a warning to future visitors of Isla Carenero), is that there are a lot of sand flies on the island - wear your Off or get bit (doesn't seem a problem on Isla Colon)!

One of the spider's we found along the beach path - scary!We grabbed a water taxi for $2 and headed back to the main Isla Colon.   I picked up a souvenir Panama Cerveza t-shirt and some water.  We looked into sending my DVD of pics back home, but that was going to be $40 FedEx, so we decided to wait until tomorrow - as Panama City should have cheaper options.

After our lunch, we headed back to Isla Carenero.  We walked along the beach for 1.5 hours, encountering a decent size Iguana, lots of crabs, and the occasional too large to believe spider.  It was a fun trail and when we got back, we decided to head back into the central town (if you can call it that :)) of Carenero.  The homes here are horrendous - many built on stilts over stagnant water and their sewer is that pile of water.   Despite the living conditions, we encountered a bunch of kids enjoying the afternoon sun.  Some of them saw my camera, and screamed, "Saca mi photo!" - they were very excited about having their photo taken!  We found a second group of kids that loved it also, and they were super excited that they could see their picture afterwards!   Living in poverty can be a scary ordeal - but if you're content with what you have - who cares?  Maybe Bill Gates believes the rest of us are living in poverty?  It seems to be all a relative thing.

One of the local houses in the town in CareneroAnyways, after philosophizing about theses kids' happy spirits, we went back and took a dive off of our hotel's doc (it's soooo hot and muggy here - the water was very refreshing)!  After enjoying the water for a bit, we cleaned up - and I went to the hotel owner to talk about the pics.   Jaimie found me and befriended the owner's pet parrot, Maco.   We chatted with Joanna, the owner, for awhile, and she was convinced about the quality of the pics - the only catch was to get them onto her Mac Powerbook!!!! Scary - not a big Mac fan, but of couse, we figured it out, and negoitated a free stay for the pics ($120).   We were excited about our 3rd hotel sale - that's three sales in three countries!  Go Blue Ocean Studios, LTD!

 

 

These kids screamed "Saca mi photo!" - they loved getting their picture taken!After our sale, we headed out for dinner to the Pickled Parrot.  There wasn't much of a menu for the restaurant, but as this was 1 of 3 restaurants on the island - we just decided to order what they had - for me a hamburger, and Jaimie a tomato melt (very western audience obviously).  After our waitress took our order, she came back and said there's no hamburger, no chicken. and no shrimp.  So there was pretty much nothing left on the menu except a veggie sandwich or the tomato melt!!  So Jaimie and I both had the tomatoe melts :).  Gotta love the islands! :).  

We watched half of the Denver/New England playoff game at the restaurant, and headed back to catch some sleep for our big travel day tomorrow!

 

Jumping off the dock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View Bocas Photo Gallery

Day 18 - Bocas del Toro < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 20 - Wrapping up Panama