Tuesday and Wednesday in Panama

So by now I'm sure that everyone and their dog has heard about my swim in the sewer... yeah... I dont really want to talk about that... As for my driving, i blame the scooter, not myself.


We woke up Tuesday morning to some sunshine, so my dad called up some of the locals, and we got hooked up with a tourist site-seeing program. It first started with a ride over to Bocatoritos Bay where we got to see some dolphins playing.

After the dolphins, our guide took us over to a restaurant at Crawl Cay where we would order our food two whole hours before we were scheduled to eat. The restaurant sat on a great view of the water, and we could see lots of different fish, so my dad had this great idea to jump in and try and catch one. Equipped with snorkel gear and his speargun, he managed to shoot a big sucker, pulling it back to the dock. However, his victory was short-lived as an American woman tourist pointed at him and started yelling at him. After the staff was drawn out, it turns out Dad had killed a fish that was "protected" by the restaurant... Nicely done dad =] Anyway, we fed the fish to a local barracuda that inhabited the lagoon. It was cool to watch it eat. Dad took a few underwater pictures of the mangroves that ring all the islands in the region.


After that fishy excitement, we realized that we still had a good amount of time to spend, so we took a water taxi over to a small island called Cayo Zapatilla. Here there were great beaches, these small prehistoric-looking iquanas right out of Jurassic Park, and lots of coconuts. In this picture I tried to snag a couple and I managed to get one, and let me tell you, its a lot harder than it looks.

This is a picture of my Dad and I swimming in the ocean on a spit where waves from two different sides were hitting us. Anyways, after we had this adventure on the island, we headed back to the restaurant to eat the food we had ordered. Mom and me had grilled chicken, and Dad ate curried conch, both with ensalada and rice and potatoes. Conch is very rubbery. I'd rather just have the shell.

After we ate, we hitched a ride back to our place where we slept and relaxed. We visited Old Bank on Bastimentos and the boat drove us thru some cool mangrove islets on the south side of Bastimentos and thru Solarte Pass.

The following morning was very rainy so we were stuck inside for most of the day. However we did explore the western and northern side of our island of Caranero on 3 kayaks, where we found some really expensive houses to buy =].