December 24th, 2012 to January 1st, 2013

I haven’t written anything yet about Bocas del Toro, Panama. Unfortunately, it is the rainy, buggy season here, and that has coloured our impression of the place.

When we first arrived, we checked into the Bocas marina for a few days over Christmas. A nice friendly place, with laundry and water and showers and electricity. A couple of the drawbacks were:

1. A very shallow entrance that we could only enter or exit at high tide… nerve racking on the first attempt.

Entering at high tide with ~5 inches under the keel.

2. Bugs. The mangrove-y area was smarming with “no-seeums”. We spent much of the time with the windows closed and the AC on. Not inherently bad – it was good to have AC on and to dry out the boat, but we got too many bites when we ventured out.

We did enjoy shore power to charge up our batteries and also Tony used the power to cook a lovely leg of lamb in our sous-vide. For Christmas eve dinner we enjoyed foie gras (from a can, bought in St. Barths), sous-vide lamb, roast potatoes, and English Christmas pudding (Waitrose brand) with all the trimmings.

Christmas eve dinner, prepared sous-vide and finished on the BBQ.

On Christmas Day in the afternoon, we joined the local cruisers for a delicious buffet meal at the marina restaurant.

Ready for Christmas dinner at the marina: practising with the timer.

Ready for Christmas dinner at the marina: success with the timer.

Bocas Town, the main town of Bocas del Toro archipelago, is very popular with young backpackers. There are lots of hostels and cheap day trips. It has a fun vibe and some restaurants and reasonable grocery facilities.

One evening, Pete, Gayle and I signed up for a lesson on wine at the Spanish school. An young Argentinean woman from Mendoza, trained as a sommelier, gave us a little lecture about wine making – all in Spanish – and then we tasted two wines. It was a fun test of our Spanish. And since it was just the three of us, we could ask questions as she went along.

That same night, we spotted the elusive “airplane guy”. We’d read about him in the guide book. He makes model planes from scrap paper, food packaging and tin cans and incorporates intricate operational parts. He is rarely seen during the day. However, at night, he tests his craft by attaching a piece of string before dragging it along the centre of the road at speed to check moving parts. This is what we saw.

Gayle got a photo of the airplane guy.

We found a good, new restaurant in town. I wrote a Trip Advisor review.

New Years’ Eve found us anchored off a town called “Old Bank”. The place had a very Caribbean feel – its population is West Indian and English and an English-based patois are spoken most widely. We found a restaurant serving simple dinners but went back to the boat to see in the New Year. We could see at least half a dozen firework displays from our anchorage – at various distances and islands away. Tony blasted loud reggae from our boat back at the bar in town also playing loud music.