Day 124 - Saturday 3rd July

After a sleepless night of terrible films on the bus we arrived at dawn at the port town of Almirante and were hustled onto a speed boat that took us out to the islands of Bocas del Toro. It's generally a party town and after the football we ended up having a night out a water taxi away at a bar called 'AquaLounge', complete with 3m diving board into the river...needless to say not one drunken reveller made a clean entry and it got messy quickly. There is also 'Aquaman', a local who swims out and steals any bags or valuables left near the waters edge and if spotted gets pelted by rocks...

Day 125 - Sunday 4th July

After a very rough morning, Kieran and I grabbed a water taxi out to Isla Bastimentos is search of some pristine deserted beaches. Our friendly driver headed us up the wrong trail where we promptly got stranded knee deep in mud and with the problem of getting our flip flops out. After backtracking and finding the clearly marked path we ended up at Wizzard Beach with literally only the two of us there. Beautiful, rugged and with a wickedly strong tide it was perfectly remote. Trekking along to the next beach Red Frog we came across some ferns whose leaves contracted at the touch Avatar-esque. We got stuck in some more bog and go laughed at by locals but the boat ride home treated us to a great lighting show to finish off the day...

Day 126 - Monday 5th July

After posting another package home we got an early boat out of Bocas with the hope of swiftly making the Costa Rican border. Unfortunately the large banana plantation company that owns the whole area had implemented shifts on Sundays and consequently the workers were striking. Our minibus driver took us round several roadblocks on detours through fields until we were faced with a picket line of angry workers with machetes. Given that our driver had been cussing and swearing about the locals with lines such as 'we should poison the water and kill all the indigenous', while producing a baseball bat, he wasn't really the best person to act as an intermediary. After about an hour we were glaringly let through on foot and left with the long walk to the border. These protests would escalate into riots and friends following behind us ended up having to travel across country to different borders!! Eventually we made it to the Coastal town of Puerto Viejo and checked into a reasonable place that later turned out to be the local stoner haunt and got weird quickly (the owner talking to her plants, whispers of government conspiracies etc). After checking out the town we chilled in Mango Bar with a crab that wondered in off the beach and listened to some local acoustic music...