New York

Isla Bastimiento was amazing. It was nice because it was nowhere near as resorty as some of the other places that we've been. Most of the hostels were run by Europeans and the islanders themselves just went about their normal stuff. We stayed in a kind of ramshackle place on our first night there. It was an old wooden place that was on stilts over the waters edge. You could see the water through the cracks in the floor boards in our room. It also had a little pier with a thatched roofed bit at the end where we sat on hammocks and had a few ron y cocas that night.

Turned out that we couldn't stay there longer than a night though, cos there was a bunch of dickheads staying in a house nearby that played the same crap song over and over again all night, so we moved to another place, which was nice too. We spent our first day on the island trying to find Wizard beach, which was on the other side of the island. Unfortunately there was a sign that pointed in completely the wrong direction which firstly sent us up to the top of a hill to a graveyard, then we asked directions and ended up in the forest for an hour, before coming across one of the locals who we followed the rest of the way through the undergrowth.

Wizard beach was very nice. Typical tropical beach, palm tree lined with hardly anyone on it, crystal clear water, really sunny. Was great.

Next day we hired snorkels and headed to another beach, Red Frog beach. Was very nice too, although there wasn't that much to see under the water, and we had to take turns at going in because of thieves nicking bags, of which we would get first hand experience the very next day.

Next day we returned to Wizard beach to do a bit of snorkelling there, and luckily only packed enough money for the day, and sun tan cream. We both went in together 3 times and the snorkelling was absolutely incredible. There was a coral reef literally just off the beach. It went out quite far and was shallow right out from the beach to about 50 metres then there was a sheer drop to about 30/40 feet open water. The wall of coral at the edge was brilliant though. Saw so many weird colourful tropical fish, big and small. Was getting braver and more confident each time we went out and going further and further from shore. On our fourth foray, whilst we were in, somebody stole our bag....and our clothes. Don't imagine there is that much market for a sweaty hearts strip in Panama though, so good luck to him getting rid of that, and the half used sun screen. Whilst all of this was going on on the shore I was having my own little adventure in the water. We saw an octopus which was pretty exciting, because they're so shy, and were heading back to shore. I was swimming a bit off the edge of the coral in deep water and Jenny was over the coral in the shallows. I saw something swimming below me out the corner of my eye, and thought it was just a big fish, then realised that its head was too big for that, about the same width as my body. Then I traced it back and noticed the dorsal fin, and the pointy tail. It was a shark! It was also about 4/5 feet long and swimming in the same direction as me, diagonally below, only about 8-10 feet below. I have never swum as fast in my life, screaming shark through the snorkel. I had no fins on which made me panic even more, splashing about like a lunatic. I basically swam right over the top of Jenny, and had she not grabbed me I would probably have swum right out the water and up the beach, into the forest. Turns out it was probably a nurse shark, which apparently are pretty harmless, but at the time I couldn't get out of the water fast enough. Was quite cool at the same time though, and once I'd calmed down, wanted to go back to the edge of the coral to see if I could peek over the edge and see it. Jenny was the voice of reason though, and we called it a day at that. With all the excitement of that, the bag stealing didn't really bother me as much as it might have.

Spent 4 days on Bastimiento and then got a water taxi back to the mainland and headed south to a place called David. Not a lot to say about David other than we thought we'd stop there to break up the long journey to Panama City. It was a dump.

We then headed for Panama City where we spent a couple of days before flying out to Peru. Panama City was ok. Not quite as nice as I was expecting. The old colonial part was pretty-ish, although pretty delapidated.

We stayed in a rundown old hotel in a pretty grubby part of the city. The main street was quite interesting, really busy with people trying to sell all kinds of stuff. Not sweaty Hearts strips though. The main attraction to Panama City was the canal, which was good. We timed our arrival perfectly to see a massive cruise liner going through Miraflores lock, being lowered to sea level. The history of the canal is interesting and the boat passing through was interesting initially, then got a bit boring after a while. There were a lot of fat Americans on the boat doing a lot of whooping and waving. Equally, there were quite a few strange people on the shore cheering and waving back. If I was to go back, I think I would take some rotten fruit and eggs to throw, which would be more entertaining.

Having spent a couple of days in Panama City we said farewell to Panama and Central America, and got on a plane to Lima, where we are now.