Bocas del Toro

 Woke up Sunday morning, December 12th, and decided that this was the best the weather was going to be, so we put up the sails for the 25 miles over to Bocas Town.  The wind died again, so we motorsailed most of the 5 hour trip.  There were some pretty big swells coming into the channel and the sun was doing its disappearing act again, so we pulled around the reef and anchored off of Bastimentos Town.  Lots of taxi boats going back and forth, but quiet at night.  Once again, the winds and rain arrived and we were stuck on the boat for another 2 days.  Tuesday morning we picked up anchor and headed the 4 miles over to Bocas Town, anchoring just outside of Bocas Marina in lots of coral.    

Finally put the dinghy in the water and headed into town to check in with the Port Captain. Walked around Bocas Town -- what a wonderful, funky little town with hostels, hotels, restaurants, grocery stores and bakeries everywhere.  Had lunch out and picked up some fresh produce before heading back to the boat.  The anchor chain was pretty noisy, rubbing on the coral on the bottom, so Dennis decided we should try another spot.  The biggest problem was that, once again, there was no sun, which made it difficult to see the reefs and shallow spots.  Well, 3 times later (remember, we have a manual windlass) we ended up in the same spot with a very tired Dennis.


Time to change anchorages again since we finally have a bit of sun.  Motored the 5 miles to anchor outside of Red Frog Marina.  Finally, good holding and quiet.  Lots of mangroves, but the bugs haven't been too bad.  We did find a new product to use which works better than any of the OFF that we've used. It's called Bay Rum, and in Panama you can buy it in either liquid or gel.  We have both, but I prefer the gel.  Put the liquid in a spray bottle and that works great too.  You smell like cloves, but it's certainly better than eau de OFF.  It's the best stuff I've ever used, since I'm the one who gets bitten all the time. 



Red Frog Beach



Allayne at the Red Frog Bar

We took the dinghy into the marina, saw George and Pixie on Silver Sea, who gave us all the local info.  Walked over the hill to beautiful Red Frog Beach where there's some fantastic body surfing and a restaurant bar at the end of the beach. I like it here!  Plus, you can pay the marina $35 a month, pick up their wifi, drop off garbage, get water and use their showers.  Those showers are really nice to use after an afternoon of body surfing with sand everywhere! If you don't want to take the dinghy the 5 miles back to Bocas Town you can catch one of the boat taxis over for $4 each, one way, walk around, do some shopping, a nice lunch, and then back to the boat.  We'll hang around here until the weather clears and then head over to some of the remote anchorages for snorkelling. For right now, at least we have the beach! 


Lynn and Randy body sufing