Boom – myself, my housemate, Lou, and another friend of ours, Dave, managed to land ourselves seats on the last direct flight to and from Panama City with Cayman Airways for the July long weekend.
It was a late afternoon flight on the Thursday to Panama City where we were to spend the first night. Out for some food and then a chilled night ready for a super early start to catch a short one-hour internal flight to Bocas del Toro (translates to “Mouths of the Bull”).
Once we arrived to the airport of Bocas del Toro we walked down through the town of Isla Colon and to the meeting point to jump on a small shuttle boat ride for roughly 15 minutes to get to the island of Bastimentos where we were to spend our next few nights.
The accommodation that we had found online was amazing!!! We were staying in a safari tent at Palmar Beach Lodge on Red Frog Beach. This involved a 10 minute walk from the boat dock through the jungle to get to the other side of Bastimentos – such a good start already!
This eco-lodge was absolutely incredible and one of my favourite places to stay yet – in a tepee in the jungle on the beach – pure bliss..!
There were numerous activities that were on our to do list and we started off with zip lining through the jungle starting at Red Frog Beach resort – this was pretty cool and spotting the sloths along the way – one of my favourite animals..
Our next activity involved a self-tour quad biking back on Isla Colon with Flying Pirate’s. We shared two quad bikes between the three of us and just took in turns to drive – this was the best fun EVER!!
We had pretty much the whole property (1,400 acres of it) to ourselves to explore and drive straight through the biggest mud puddles and lush rainforest – epic! There were all different trails to take and I think we went on them all visiting places such as La Piscina, Blue Lagoon and numerous beaches which were much needed stop off points to rinse ourselves of the caked-on mud.
A drink stop off on the way back before our free beer back at Flying Pirates to end the trip – I think we were all sore from laughing so much..!
A much needed chilled night at the eco-lodge was needed after a massive day. They had amazing food and we hung out playing a few games of cards before escaping to our tent in the jungle.
A cruisy start to the day with a delicious brekky to start us off for our cave tour which involved a short boat trip through the mangroves and a walk to the cave. Cool and chilled lil boat trip.
We then spent the afternoon hanging around the lodge walking up the beach for an awesome view over Red Frog beach from the point. Lots of exploring and spotting of the actual ‘red frog’ also – such small bright red frogs (obviously!)..
The following day, Lou wanted to spend some chilled time on the beach so Dave and myself decided to go a jungle hike. It took us a few hours but we climbed through forest, along the beach, slipping through lots of mud puddles and spotting numerous red frogs! We walked along Wizard Beach and clambered up trees till we eventually we came out at the town of Bastimentos for a refreshing drink and wait for a water taxi back to Red Frog beach – now that was my kind of hike.
For our final night we went across to Isla Colon for a yummy dinner and met up with a few people from the lodge who showed us around to the cool bars. Plenty of drinks were had and we even jumped on a water taxi to Agua Bar and Lounge which was an outdoor bar with decking over the water and space to jump in the water in the middle (which many drunken people did)..
Water taxi back to our lodge ready for an early morning flight back to Panama City where we were to spend the day.
I don’t normally do these but we jumped on the ‘Hop On, Hop Off’ bus to get us around the city in the day including stops to Casco Viejo (the Old Town) and Miraflores to check out the Panama Canal.
After a long day and an incredible weekend away it was to the airport for our flight back to our island paradise..
