BOCAS EXPEDITION...

Great pic of Collin Whitsett (STRI intern)

Well, this is my first blog post and I want to write about last weekend. The three CollinLab interns went to Bocas del Toro, the main reason was to visit Bocas Station, where our Principal Investigator, Rachel Collin, is the Director. Of course, it was our first trip together (without counting field trips at the lab) and we were really excited.

We took the overnight bus to get there, and it takes 10 hours to arrive at Almirante. For me, the trip was really good because I was sleeping the whole time, but I don’t think that it was the same for all the other people.  

After the bus, we had to take a taxi to go to the dock and get a boat to the main island, Colon…Yeah, just getting to Bocas is an adventure.

The first thing we did was visit the Bocas Station, where a nice woman who works there, Vicky, was waiting for us. She showed us all the station, and it was really interesting.  The diving facilities were impressive, and there are many innovative environmental technologies exclusive to this station, particularly ones for climate change research.

The three interns at Bocas Station

Bocas station dock

After our tour, we went down to the beach for a while. The beach (Paki Point) is really quite amazing, and we could finally rest at the lounge there.

On Saturday, despite the rainy weather, we visited Coral Cay, and we went to an area for snorkeling. The boat tied up to a buoy and we snorkeled off the boat. The water wasn’t very clear but I saw a lot of small fish that were very colorful and some species of corals. After this, the boat driver took us to Red Frog Beach. We got off at a dock from which we had to walk about 10 minutes to the beach. It was a great beach -- probably the most beautiful beach I had ever been too -- but I didn´t see any frogs! I spent most of the time in the water, which was very warm and wavy.

Panoramic of Red Frog Beach

We came back to the city on Sunday at noon. The overnight bus was full, so we had to take a bus to David (where my life flashed before my eyes – it is a very crazy ride!) and another one from there to Panama City. Despite the somewhat frightening and hectic, transport I really recommend this trip to everybody!

SEE YOU BOCAS!