Bocas del Toro-Living the Island Life

February 25-27, 2016

After Santa Fe, I hauled all the way up to Bocas del Toro, the island archipelago off the north coast. That meant 11 hours of travel on 3 buses and a boat starting at 5:30 am. I made it before dark though, and found myself a cheap hostel.

The next day I got up early and went diving. I learned in Colombia, that post is here if you missed it. It got posted 6 months late...

The dive boat, spacious and comfy

There was some cool stuff at our two dive sites next to the neighboring island across the bay.

Selfie I was there I promise!

All the gear staged and ready

Diving went well, though the day was uncharacteristically cold and rainy, so everyone was shivering up on deck during our interval between dives. I had two shorty wetsuits on for the second dive.

That evening I was reading in bed with blaring music outside. I have perfected my ability to ignore music, but when I realized it was live I hopped my butt out of bed.

I found traditional music and dancing, in celebration of the arts and crafts festival that was happening that weekend.

It made me think of some sort of bird mating dance, with stamping little steps and big dresses.

I went diving again the next morning, and this time rented a GoPro. (I also had a full wetsuit) Cue underwater photo montage.

You'll notice they're all green, this is due partly to plankton in the water, but also because the red spectrum of light doesn't penetrate far underwater, so everything you see gets blue shifted.

Dive boat as seen from the water.

First photo obviously has to be a selfie

Little fuzzy blue sea stars wrapped all over the coral

Fish school

Blue coral

Butterfly fish, they're my favorites

Giant sponge

This coral is blue on yellow. Imagination time

Artsy bubbles going to the surface

Sea urchins tucked in under the coral

Damsel fish, half and half colored. There were smaller black and white ones that were shy, and these highly territorial brown and black ones. I saw them chasing other fish, and one attacked me, darting at my face.

Yellow squirrel fish school

Lion fish, beautiful and poisonous. Also good eats I hear.

Lionfish selfie! Its kinda small in the back since I didn't want my face too close to it...

Upside down is normal underwater

Best photo I got of the wildly colored parrotfish. They're kinda camera shy.

The sun came out stronger, so better coloring for the little seastars and blue coral.

Another butterfly fish

My first stingray! You can see his angular shape under the sand.

Little tiny fish school

Then I looked up and there was a wreck looming out of the murk!

We swam under it

I just kinda like how this photo came out. I'm swimming under the wreck.

Another big yellow fish school

This is what a fish attacking you looks like. He's a sergeant major, which google just told me is a type of damsel fish, which could account for the aggression.

One last wreck selfie

I took some video too.

So much fun, and I know what my vacations are going to tend towards now.

My last night in town I treated myself to dinner, and had magnificant shrimp pineapple curry that was just the right spice level. It probably wouldn't have registered on a normal person's spice meter, but mine was calibrated wrong.

And it had the cutest little doodad on the straw!

The island of Colon, where Bocas Town is is cute. All wooden houses with balconies. Lots of happy hours and drink specials. And everywhere is colorful. Signs are painted on surfboards.

They had a pretty good central park for being such a small town

Sweet Love Bocas. This graffiti was in a bunch of places around town, I think it might have also been on some shirts.  I thought it was a pretty accurate representation of the feel of Bocas Town.