This weekend I went to my 8th country, Panama! My group went with our program to renew our visas. The part we went to was Bocas del Toro; an island in Panama and we stayed at Swans Cay Hotel.
The first night we just hung out, went shopping, and went to a few bars. It was ladies night everywhere! Five of us (Jalissa, Liz, Nick, Michaela,and I) had lunch at this place called La Pirata, which was pretty yummy! I had chicken fingers, French fries, and a caipirinha!
The shops were typical small shops that had souvenirs etc.. They also have different types of nice jewelry.
We also hung out in the hotel pool which had no shallow end so it was either swim or drown. It was pretty refreshing!
Our first day was pretty short since it took forever to get there. Crossing the boarder went fine, we didn't have any trouble, it just took long for 14+ of us to get over. We had to then cross this sketchy bridge that didn't look too secure. Once we got over the boarder, it took us about an hour to get to the water taxi, then another 45 to get to Bocas!
The next day was great!! We had breakfast at the hotel and then started on our adventures! First we went to see the Dolphins. We got on a small tour boat and want to the middle of the ocean. We waited for dolphins to pop up and we ended up seeing a ton of fins and tails but the dolphins never popped up fully. We did see a dolphin couple that was mating quite a few times and I was able to snap some photos of their fins.
After that we went to go snorkeling! The first place we went to didn't have a great menu therefore we weren't too thrilled so the director told us we could try another place. (You had to buy food to go snorkeling there). So we went to the next place which had a much better menu. We ordered our food an hour before and went snorkeling. They took us in the middle of the ocean and stopped the boat. We put on our gear and went into the water. Some people didn't even use life jackets or any float device, I, however was not about to drown:) it was amazing to see the bottom of the ocean. The coral was beautiful and the fish were so pretty. It truly was a great sight. It did get tiring very easily though and for me it felt hard to breathe. It took me forever to get back to the boat with the life jacket on!
The next destination was Red Frog Beach! It was beautiful and the restaurant there had sangria!! I was so excited and the sangria was only $2.50 (by the way Panama uses dollars, even they do have some of their own coins) and it was delicious! Jalissa, Michaela, and I shared nachos w. salsa and French fries, it was so good. Then we went back to the water and the program director said he was going to propose to his girlfriend on the beach there but she couldn't come last minute because of work. He had it all planned out and was going to ask us to sing!! We were bummed that she couldn't come! She didn't even know what was in store for her:)
After the beach we went back to the hotel. Jalissa, Chelsea, and I went shopping and then we went with other people to dinner. We ended up at this "Italian" pizza place, it was ok. It started pouring after we left and none of us ended up going out. It seemed like the other students didn't go out either since they were in the hallways outside talking forever. It wasn't like a regular hotel hallway, it was sort of like a motel where there's doors and then the outside.
Now we are heading back home to Zapote. The ride is about 8 hours long. It was a nice weekend and I enjoyed doing new things, but tomorrow it's back to school, vacation is over! What I'm looking forward to this coming week is Spanish class being over!!:):)
P.s: I met a polish girl from another program and we spoke some polish for a bit:) of course my Spanish and English got mixed in.
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