2/9/2012–Bocas del Toro

Update on the protests:  After 7 days of protests, road closures, and small scale riots, the Ngäbe Bugle Indians and the government have a tentative agreement (at least to talk) and things are slowly returning to normal.  The only real impact we had here were shortages of fruits and veggies, diesel and gas, eggs, meat, etc.  We just heard over the ‘net that the beer ferry was the first to arrive on the island (priorities :-).  All is well here, Tom spent the last few days fixing our anchor light so one more critical item off the list, hopefully we’ll be ready to leave “soon” (but not for a few weeks at least).

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom

2/6/2012–Bocas del Toro

We’re still hanging out in Red Frog marina in Bocas del Toro, Panama. We really haven’t been doing much; a few boat chores, visits to the beach, walks around the jungle, trips into town, etc. A very lazy time for us :-)

Ginger mainly lays around, shredding any newspapers we bring home:

About a mile from the marina through the jungle is the Punta Lava beach bar, I like sitting on the second story where there is a nice breeze and view.

Views from the top. In the second picture, Tom is walking out with the boggie board (on the right):

Most of this section of Isla Bastimentos is a nature preserve and along the paths and dirt roads is beautifully maintained.

If you look very carefully in the jungle you can find the tiny poison dart red frog this area is famous for:

There was a sloth that took five days to make it from a tree on one side of the path to the other. Every day several of us would go to check out his (her?) progress. It averaged about 15 feet per day. I happened to see it just after it crossed the path:

On a more somber note, I’m not sure if news of Panama gets out to the rest of the world, but the indigenous Indians about a week ago started blocking major roads and borders to protest mining and hydroelectric projects on their lands (which is most of Panama). We were reading this morning that the riot police have forcibly cleared some of the roads with tear gas and bird shot, there was at least one death, and that protesters have burned down a large police station and taken over several towns. The local news is reporting flare-ups across the country and many people fear that this could turn into a full blown revolution.

Out in our archipelago, we’re remote enough that hopefully we wont be too affected, but we have been hearing about food and gas shortages throughout the country. We’ll try to get into town today and check out how affected little Bocas town is.

Don’t worry about us though. We have enough diesel and provisions that if it does start to look too dicey (or they run out of beer in town :-), we can leave and continue on our journey.

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom