Costa Rica & Bocas Del Toro, Panama
- ionaweir
- Jul 6, 2025
- 10 min read
Updated: Aug 17, 2025
I started my journey to Costa Rica with a very bendy shuttle from Lake Atitlan, and then a night spent at Guatemala City Airport. Love. I arrived around 7pm, and my flight didn’t leave until 6am the following morning so I found myself a nice bench with some room to stretch out, until this random woman came and sat right next to me. Literally no spacial awareness - she was getting her feet out and all. I was also slightly concerned as my flight to San Jose wasn't on any of the departure boards in the airport, but I’d had no notification of a cancellation and since it was the night there was no one I could ask. Luckily all was fine and apparently they just don’t put all the flights on the board? Not the smartest move for an airport to make in my opinion but whatever. I made it to San Jose in one piece, as did my luggage, and got a taxi to the bus station, as it’s another four hour journey from San Jose to Limon. My taxi driver was very chatty but I found the accent so much harder to understand - Guatemalan Spanish is a dream for when you’re learning - I swear it gave me such a false sense of confidence in my Spanish speaking abilities as I understood so much. Anyway, I got the public bus to Puerto Viejo, a beach town on the Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica, very near the border of Panama, which was my main reason for going there as I had another work exchange in Bocas del Toro a week later and figured since I had some free time in between I just might as well spend a week on Costa Rican Caribbean beaches. It’s a hard life. By the time I arrived at my hostel and did a food shop it was around 6pm, and I realised I hadn’t slept for two days so was very delusional and had a deep deep sleep in my nice curtained and air conned dorm bed. Very needed.
I don’t really have much to say about my time in Puerto Viejo as I basically did the same thing everyday. Had a lie in, did some yoga, and then went to the beach before chilling on the hammocks at the hostel and then going to bed and doing the same all over again. Delightful. I explored a few different beaches but my favourite one was Playa Cocles, which was around an hour and a half walk from my hostel (or much quicker if you rented a bike which most people did there), and had way calmer waves so was much more swimmable, which was needed as it was so hot ! It also kinda gave deserted island vibes which was fun. I managed to top up my tan (and burn again oops) and read a lot which was very nice.
I spent around 8 days in Puerto Viejo before heading to Bocas del Toro in Panama. Bocas is a collection of Caribbean islands near the Costa Rica/Panama border, hence my reason for going to Costa Rica first as it’s actually closer than going from Panama City. Unfortunately I woke up deaf in one ear and in a lot of pain the same day I was leaving which wasn’t ideal. I was pretty sure it was an ear infection but also couldn’t help but half convince myself some random bug had crawled into my ear while I was sleeping… Anyway I got to the border pretty easily and just had to pay around $15 to cross which was fine, although it got a bit more tricky on the Panamanian side. The journey from the border to Almirante (where the ferry to Bocas leaves from) should only take an hour but Panama is currently experiencing lots of protests against recent actions by the President, and as a result the country is full of roadblocks, meaning the journey took around 4 hours and we had to keep on changing buses and walking in the pouring rain. I got to the ferry in the end though and all was fine - just needed one more taxi once arriving at Isla Colon in Bocas as my work exchange is basically in the jungle and not walking distance. When I arrived I was treated to a private room AND a double bed ! The volunteers have their own little house in the hotel grounds with a kitchen and everything. Amazing. Unfortunately my private room turned out to be not so private and I was also sharing with a GIANT grasshopper. Never seen anything like it. Its body was huge and then its bug antennae things were like twice the size of its body it was crazy. Nothing some bug killer and a shoe can’t fix though.
(I’ve actually started to feel very very guilty about my killing of bugs. Especially the big ones. My decade long vegetarianism is catching up with me. They look like they’re in a lot of pain and also did not need to die it’s completely immoral. However I cannot cope with bugs near me. Especially the big ones. So I’m in a dilemma.)
From around April onwards begins the low season for tourists in Bocas (and the rest of Central America) so the hotel was pretty quiet. Daniela (the other volunteer) and I were mostly painting rooms and bathrooms for the first week, which initially I thought would be good fun, however I was quite wrong. Bocas has a certain type of humidity which just makes any type of movement so exhausting, so I was shattered after the first week, even though we were only doing four hours of work a day ! Like constant sweat. I also think because of my ear infection and subsequent antibiotics I was extra delusional during this time. Like I only half knew what was going on most of the time and I quite struggled with conversations in English let alone Spanish. Luckily after that we had a few more guests so were able to help out in the kitchen which is always my favourite (and occasionally results in a free breakfast). It’s also fun in the kitchen because there’s a local wild toucan called Rio who loves to say hello. She’s more friendly with people than normal for the species as she lost an eye when she was young and I think was rehabilitated or something so gets quite close to people. Rulo, one of the managers, made me hold her on my first day which was concerning as she does shit everywhere but fortunately managed to avoid me.
Bocas is somewhat known for having good nightlife, which I did slightly partake in but it’s not really my vibe currently. LOVING the 9pm bedtimes I must say. However, one night we went to another island for some drinks which was fun, especially when I realised that the majority of people there were just older american men with mid life crises and ponytails. Quite hilarious. The “expat” community in Bocas is very large and almost entirely from the States. Very loud voices everywhere. None of which speak spanish which is ironic since they live in Panama. They seem to keep themselves quite separate from the native community. It’s really quite weird, especially when you realise that it’s all the people from the US that own all the bars and hotels and stuff. There is a very very big divide and I think it’s even more evident when you meet people who have lived on the island for years and years and genuinely don’t speak a word of Spanish yet expect everyone else to speak English to them. We met an absolute caricature of a man one night (who surprisingly was from South Africa and not the States) and he was disgusting. Daniela and I went to meet Rulo at a bar and George (this gross man) was there and immediately said we were too pretty to work for Rulo, invited us on solo trips on his boat and was trying to touch our legs the whole night. This man is old, fat and ugly, but unfortunately very wealthy and wouldn’t shut up about it. Kept on talking about the hotel he owned in the Bahamas and all his boats and properties, whilst getting way too close for comfort. I’ve only ever seen men like him on tv before but turns out they’re real. The same night the plane which flies in from Panama City managed to crash land into Bocas which was scary, luckily no one was seriously injured but the wings and tail broke off the plane which is super freaky. Everyone in the bar seemed to know someone who was on the flight ! Bad vibes all round. There was one very fun thing which came out of that night however, which was Rulo inviting us to go on a turtle hunt with him the following morning at 3am, as it's nesting season on the island. I really didn’t want to as the next day was my one day off and I was desperate for a lie in buttt I knew i’d regret saying no. Daniela and I got a very expensive taxi back to Tesoro, slept for a few hours, then had to walk 30 minutes at 2am to find Rulo somewhere on a beach. Turns out he was very asleep but we eventually got him up. We were walking along the beach for at least another hour, spotting lots of turtle tracks but no actual turtles, when we were taking a break and thinking about giving up and heading back, and then realised there was a leather back turtle laying eggs right next to us ! Almost stepped on her we were so close. It was so so cool. She was there for around an hour before we watched her go back into the sea and then walked back to the hotel during sunrise. It felt very special.
Aside from that I didn’t really do anything crazy exciting in Bocas. It was a very nice day to day thing. I’d work in the morning, then go to the beach or a walk in the afternoon and do yoga and chill. Some days it was super rainy so I can’t lie I did get a vpn to watch bbc iplayer which was so worth it. I also changed my daily hot girl walk to a “monkey hunt walk”. By this point I’d seen fun frogs, sloths, toucans, turtles, but no monkeys, so this was my goal. Genuinely all the guests at the hotel kept on saying they’d seen monkeys but me who had been there for weeks still had not seen a single one, despite my multiple excursions. Then there was one day where it had been really rainy and I really couldn’t be bothered but then I thought about my daily 10,000 step goal so I walked up the beach for ages to get them in. Tesoro is by playa Bluff in Bocas, which is beautiful and really gives Pirates of the Caribbean vibes. But to walk along is one long road up the way, then walk back down the same way. So I was getting a bit bored as I’d done it most days. Then I had a realisation of omg how lucky am I to get bored of this insane scenery. Where I’ve stayed in Central America is just insane nature. I’ve never been so impressed by trees and plants before. Like I spend all my time in the same spaces and yet each time I notice something new and so exciting which is very nice. But anyway wasn’t expecting big things from this walk, was purely just trying to get the steps in, then on my way back very close to the hostel I saw something move in the tree. It was a monkey ! Then another monkey. Then another. Then another. A tree full of howler monkeys ! Yay! I stood and watched them for a while. I was the only one there and I was so close to them it was crazy. Then I made eye contact with the closest one with a baby who stared at me for a while and then I kinda figured I should probably back away. Don’t want an angry mother monkey throwing shit at me (or worse) for looking at her baby. Anyway felt very lucky for that as I never saw another monkey after that excursion.
I think by this point I was the only volunteer at Tesoro Escondio. Daniela left about 2 weeks before I did so I had the whole space to myself ! There were a couple more volunteers who were supposed to come but they cancelled. It was actually quite nice just chilling and since there really wasn’t much work it was quite a relaxing time. I had planned to travel through Panama a bit and then fly to Cartagena to do another work exchange but unfortunately the protests in Panama were making land travel very difficult and long so I decided to skip travelling mainland Panama and get a flight direct to Panama City (the same flight that crashed), where I made even more (very exciting) last minute plans !
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