Panama City and Bocas del Toro

Panama Canal

Michael and I just returned from a one week stay in Panama. The trip was a great mix of relaxing (in Bocas del Toro), being active and history (visiting the Canal and the biomuseo). We visited the Miraflores locks (pictured above) and saw a few ships passing through. The museum there was definitely lacking and I would recommend going to the off-site museum located in Casco Viejo–although we did not make it there. The Frank Gehry biomuseo, located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, on the Amador Causeway, was very well done and worth seeing for the architecture alone.

In Bocas del Toro, a group of nine of us shared a house (Bluff Beach) on Colon Island. The house, which was essentially located right on the beach, was complete with an awesome veranda, pool and fruit trees on the property. The house’s owner also owned a horse farm and a group of us went horseback riding in the jungle with two local guides. During the trek we stopped to swim at Playa La Piscina. The town was basically a beach/surfer town, housing a host of hostels and backpackers. The road leading to the beach house was not paved and the pick up truck taxi cabs had to ford sections of the ocean and tackle rough patches of rocks and beach along the journey. Bocas offers great vibes and there is something nice about the fact that it’s still not completely developed.

Minus a small bought of food poisoning, pretty bland food, the lack of infrastructure, and getting stuck in Panama City when we were supposed to fly out to Bocas the first night–it was a very awesome first experience in Central America.

Frank Gehry, Biomuseum