A Brief Run Down:
Ok folks, for those wondering YES the the Bocas Islands are kinda rainy.
If you are a traveler who may only have a week or 10 day vacation, you might be disappointed if you get rain for parts of everyday or a series of days on your vacation. We were fortunate enough to get partial sunny days and some extended sun while we were there. The beauty of this tropical area of Panama makes up for it tho. Our opinion is it isn't the kind of place you would go to find an expansive sandy beach and plop your ass for a week expecting sun. (If you want that hold off for our Aruba post) Bocas is more for the adventure traveler who isn't so into easy access beaches and luxury.
We spent our time on 3 of the 8 islands that make up Bocas del Toro. Cristóbal, Bastimentos and Bocas Town. (The main "town" is Bocas Town where most of the backpackers hang)
Bocas islands (with the exception of Bocas Town) are jungly, rustic, kinda generally harsh and still really trying to figure out how to do tourism well. With the exception of Bocas Town, we found the outer islands more adventure travel which made the experience super fun.
The archipelago of Bocas del Toro has a real Caribbean vibe. It was built by the United Fruit Company (yup Chiquita) There are still a lot of descendants from Jamaica and the western Caribbean who worked in the banana trade back in the day and still live there today. The music, food and awesome painted houses and buildings still resinate the Jamaican feel. The islands aren't banana plantations any longer, so conservationist and expats are working hard to get the islands back to nature by planting native trees and saving the reef which is still abundant and quite beautiful.
Taking photos of the flowers that were everywhere in this lush country was one of my favorite things to capture. The birds were our second favorite part of Panama but we aren't really "birdies"so photographing them was not on the table. Maybe that will be something we take up in our 60's?
Comments