Central America at Last

With the lost city found and the northern part of Colombia visited it was a choice between heading south to Bogota or north to Panama City, both capital cities of their respective countries and both offering a very different appeal. Since a capital it would have to be I decided to continue my journey northwards, taking a flight into Central America to Panama city and a visit to the world famous canal.

Arriving in Panama city it was quite different and I immediately felt I had left South America behind as the drive into the city from the airport took us along a giant 8 lane highway, past skyscrapers and a Vegas style array of neon lights, a far cry from the capital cities I had visited in South America. Once we arrived at our hostel however the character of the city completely changed as I was staying in the old city. With a fish market on one side and a series of what seemed questionable discos on the other side the area didn't appear to be that amazing but still somehow managed to carry with it a romantic old neighbourhood style reminiscent of Havana in Cuba.

During the day the city took on more of a classical old town feel with architecture set back in the 1950's yet still remaining elegant in the modern day, even if half our neighbourhood seemed to be abandoned for one reason or another - from what the locals say mostly due to the rent to live in the old town. The buildings might give the city a face but it is the people who give the city its personality with all the locals being very friendly without being in a rush, its clear to see that you have left South America behind and found yourself in the Caribbean.

The next day we headed out to take a look at the world famous canal, surely one of the most remarkable engineering feats of the 20th century. A simple yet effective engineering feat that saves every boat about 2 weeks, by not having to navigate around the base of South America. The first thing you notice about the canal is the sheer size of the boats using it, one particular ship will stick in my mind forever as it seemed to have several hundred giant containers on it. Back at Murrin these containers seemed huge and would hold 20t of nickel comfortably….and this ship had hundreds of them! The canal itself is a bit of a strange tourist site as you spend about 15 minutes trying to work out what is actually happening, then once you do the mystery disappears and it’s just a couple of boats (albeit giant ones) coming in one side and out the other. The canal is in fact rather simple in its operation with gates closing the canal in at both sides and then the boat slowly being lowered by moving water from the high side to the low side until the boat can float comfortably through. Then its simply a case of returning the water back to the high side and therefore lowering the low side down to water level and the boat sailing off - simple but brilliant!

The next day it was time to make another tough decision between the world famous islands of san blas and the Caribbean coast of Bocas del Toro. The fact that Bocas was north and close to Costa Rica gave that the advantage and that night I was on a bus headed for the Caribbean coast. Bocas is a strange old town mostly for the fact that whilst it’s on an island there are no real beaches there and you either have to take a bus to the other side of the island or a water taxi to another island to actually go to the beach - very strange. Still Bocas is a nice enough town and arriving first thing in the morning and waiting for a bed saw us go on a tour to check out the popular dolphin bay, snorkel along the reef and finally take in one of the nicer beaches on one of the other islands.

Dolphin bay was a popular spot with more than a few boats hovering around the area waiting for the majestic creatures to come out and play and true to form the dolphins didn't disappoint with as many as three swimming and playing together to entertain the crowd. The dolphins here are slightly shier and don't come as close to the boat but it was still a nice start to the day. Next we headed off to the shallow reef to do some snorkeling and skin diving that was really quite pretty with lots of fire coral on display and I was also lucky enough to swim amongst a school of incredibly coloured fish, they seemed to have the entire rainbow spectrum. Next it was off to red frog beach, so named because of the odd coloured creatures that inhabit the jungle on the way to the beach. This was quite a nice beach with white sand and blue water but little to nothing in the way of waves. Still we started off a spirited game of beach soccer and managed to beat the locals that was no mean effort, after that a nice long swim saw us ready to head back to our hostels and a fresh shower - the water here is incredibly salty.

That night I met a dive instructor and after a few beers he asked me why I didn't have my ticket yet given the places I could have done it - I had no real reason why so when he gave me a good price I started the next morning. First off it was a discovery dive to see if you enjoy it and want to continue, we started off with some basically skills to survive underwater and then took off along the reef seeing some incredible fish including the lionfish and the ugly toadfish! The first dive took me a bit of time to get used to but after that it was great fun and the second dive was a really great experience and I didn't really want to get out of the water afterwards. The course took in five dives in total including some great reef diving and a wreck dive which was really quite cool despite being nothing more than a transport ferry ship. Amongst the dives I saw some amazing things including lobsters, a really bizarre looking flamingo tongue snail, a deadly scorpion fish, a green moray, lots of upside down jellyfish, sea stars, crabs, squid shooting ink and the most spectacular the very rare flying ganard fish. It really is incredible being under the water especially here where the water temperature is about 28 degrees and the visibility is always upwards of 10 metres. The feeling of almost weightlessness is awesome as well as once you get to the point of neutral buoyancy you can float up and down simply by breathing - a really cool feeling.

After finishing my course it was time to have a night out in Bocas, a lot of people raved about the nightlife here but I found it underwhelming and wasn't really excited by it but we had to have a celebration drink. With my dive course done it was time to head further north crossing the border to Costa Rica and heading further into Central America.