Our journey began at 9 pm on Wednesday. Our shuttle driver picked us up and took us to DIA without incident. Red-eye to D.C. went as well as could be expected, but I could have done without the fussy brat behind us. D.C. to Panama City was fairly turbulent (Waffles at 1 pm, anyone?) and we landed 40 minutes late. I had been stressed about Panama City traffic and our international airport to domestic airport transfer, but we made it to the Albrook airport with plenty of time. The AirPanama flight to Bocas del Toro, our final destination was 2 hours late. So at 8:15 pm on Thursday, we finally arrive in Bocas. Grab our bags through the window, which is what constitutes baggage claim here, and walked into town to grab a boat taxi to Isla Carenero, our home for the next few days. We checked into our place and were shown the ropes. Because it was so late, we needed to go back to Bocas via water taxi for dinner. Fish in our bellies, we headed home. A check of the email revealed one dog kennel report card, a gazillion Black Friday offers, and one local dive shop checking in because we failed to pop in as expected. I wrote a quick explanation about the flight delay and off to dreamland it was.
We woke up, showered, and headed downstairs for breakfast and coffee. When we were done, we packed a bag and headed back to Bocas via water taxi. (Just don’t call it a cab; our French hosts had no idea what we were talking about. Ok, taxi it is.) We walked the town of Bocas and arrived at the dive shop where we were promptly talked into an afternoon, two tank dive. Well, what else were we gonna do? Jes from the dive shop gave us some typical Panamanian restaurant recommendations for lunch and we walked the town to get our bearings.
Back to our lodgings to quickly charge up the GoPro and change into swimsuits, and you guessed it, water taxi right back to Bocas. Had lunch at Tom’s, where we had a fine meal for $13 overlooking the water. About this time, the grey skies began to rain. We walked to the dive shop to get our learnin’ on and got fairly damp in the process. We watched a video and filled out some forms and then we were ready to hop in the boat.
The first step was to suit up and get in the water. Then we practiced breathing and demonstrated to Hector our instructor what we had learned. Then he took us on two 40 minute dives, both of which had ship-wrecked boats on the bottom. We finished at the dive shop, arranged for tomorrow’s activities, and caught dinner on our island, before walking home.
