Panama already???

This morning we arrived in Panama, our last country.  Puerto Viejo was a nice little town, although very touristy.  We spent most of our stay just hanging out at our hotel.  The guys who ran the bar and restaurant were from Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas so we felt very at home.  Finn, the chef, cooked the most amazing food every night.  The guy was so talented and being from out part of the world, he cooked the way that we like to eat.  Puerto Viejo seems to be a place that people stay for a long time thanks to the lovely beaches and virtual freedom to do whatever you want.  We met some really interesting expats who all wanted to know if we felt like Puerto Viejo was somewhere we could live.  Although it is a nice town and if some great opportunity presented itself, we certainly wouldnt say no but I think that we are still pretty smitten with Roatan.  I think that Puerto Viejo is just a bit more of a party than we really like.

The nice thing about Puerto Viejo is that it is located really close to the Panamanian border and we had a very easy morning.  We caught a bus in town and in about an hour we were at the border.  The crossing was easy.  At the border,we teamed up with 2 British girls, 2 German guys and a German girl and shared a taxi right to the boat that would take us to Bocas del Toro.  As usual, the boat ride was lovely and will always remain our favorite form of transportation although Rob grumbled a bit when they asked us all to wear life jackets.

Now we are here in Bocas del Toro which is a group of islands right off the coast of Panama.  We are in the main town which is also called Bocas del Toro and have checked into our 2nd choice of hotel and are happily enjoying some TV and air conditioning.  Its been almost 2 weeks since I have had decent internet access and we are still without it.  Hopefully tomorrow we will move into our first choice of hotel which for the same price has everything that we have here along with wifi and a communal kitchen.

As we were walking down the street here, I glanced into one of the bigger hostels and saw our friend that we have been running into since Nicaragua.  We ate lunch together and got the low down on the area since he has already been here for a few days.  It was nice to see a familiar face and we will head to his hostel later for some interesting entertainment.  The hostel offers a 100 beer challange and if you can drink 100 beers during your stay, you get a free dinner or something.  Well apparently there are some Irish guys who are taking the challange in 4 days and this is day 3.  It should be an entertaining happy hour since they will have 1 hour to make the most of the 50 cent beer special.