We've Landed, Bocas del Toro

Hey yall,
We are in Bocas del Toro now. We left Boquete this morning at 8, caught a school bus to David (1hour), another small bus (with a dog in a bag on top of the bus) going through Amiente (4 hours, with bathroom/snack stop), taxi, water taxi, and bam! We're here. I'll get to Boca after Boquete.

I think we all found Boquete to be a nice place. There are a lot of ecotourism opportunities there. The town is quaint and snuggled at the base of a 3,500 meter dormant volcano. Supposedly, you can hike it in 6 hours to the base to peak and see both oceans from the top. We considered it, but the round trip is 12 hours and the rains have not been nice to the trails this year. Not to mention that in the rainy season, if you are not on the Caribbean side of CR or Panama, it rains every day (usually in the late afternoon) and it rains fucking hard. Almost all the adventure tours are available here as well as a trail where, when the season is right (spring), you can see a very rare bird called the Queztal. We decided to do a hike, which was not that much fun, mainly cause the trail disappeared and we needed machetes and waterproof hiking boots to continue into the cloud forest. Well, that and the main trail is a dairy road between pastures and the milking station. Meaning that after a herd of cows went by the whole super rocky ass road had cow shit all over the place. That night, the operator of the hostel kept feeding us shots of rum. Rum is dirt cheap here. Top shelf is 8-10 bucks a liter, and they have samples, the size of what you pay for at a bar, for free in the market. One thing led to another and we didn't get up in time to do zip-lining. We got a cab to drop us off near some hot springs about 13km out of the city. The hotsprings were pretty nice, esp. because you had to walk through the jungle for 15 min to get there. We ran into some people from the hostel, which was good, because it started pouring and we didn't have a ride set up for getting back. Well, at least not to the little town where we'd get a bus back. Oh, and our entire path to the springs was literally a river. We called it an early night instead of checking out the Halloween festivities because we were still hungover, and did the zip-line the next day. This was my first time and while it was fun, it didn't blow me away and I probably wouldn't  go out of my way to do it again. Doing the zip-line meant missing our bus out to Bocas though, so we stayed one last night and tried to avoid getting fed shots by the manager, which turned out to be unsuccessful for some. I managed to sneak away with 3 shots before calling it a night.

Now we are in Bocas del Toro after a long day of travelling. It is similar to Caya Caulker in Belize except that is bigger, it is a little more strict, a little cheaper, and I haven't been offered drugs by everyone. We just ate at a Mexican restaurant called Gringos, which was pretty tasty. We needed a break from the pretty bland food, which constitutes most of what Panamanian places serve up - the traditional plate is a piece of meat and rice and beans (same goes for CR). We also booked something to do for tomorrow for 15 bucks and I might dive while I'm here because it is way cheap.
Oh, one thing to note if you are planning on coming to Panama and Bocas in particular. November 3-6 or something along those lines is some big national holiday. All the rooms that could be booked in advance were completely taken weeks ago. Hostels are the only choice right now and even they seem to be more packed than we've seen the whole time.

Thats all I have for now.
D