Semana Santa

In Central America, Semana Santa (aka Holy Week) is the equivalent to Spring Break in the US, except everyone gets a vacation, not just students. Everyone has the whole week off to be with friends, family, travel, and relax. My friends and I jumped on this extra vacation time by heading somewhere that would be impossible to get to over a weekend...Panama.

Now most of you are probably thinking...Panama...canal...and that's about it. Little did you know that Panama is home to what I now believe is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Just think Hawaii...but with fewer people and not as developed, and you'll have Bocas del Toro, the archipelago/national park/small town where we spent our week.

It's much easier to do the rest of this with photos:

First Stop: Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. The trip to Panama is pretty long, so we broke it up with a few beautiful days on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. This beach, Playa Cochles, is a national park, so it's beach/jungle wilderness beauty is still well preserved!

My Traveling Buddies! Sarah, Lizzie and Kaelyn! Our second day in Puerto Viejo we rented bikes and went exploring along the coast. The weather was perfect and we had so much fun!

The Panama Border Crossing: You get out of your bus and walk across this very rickety old bridge.  And if you fall into the river below...there's crocodiles, so be careful. On the other side, we waited in a long line for our passport stamps, it was fun to mark another country off the list!

Our Hostel/Hotel: Casa Max. I would HIGHLY recommend this place to anyone traveling to Bocas del Toro, it was cheap, clean, cute, and we had our own room, bathroom and balcony (with hammock!) You can see our room there in the top right, with the towels hanging off the side. 

This restaurant kind of sums up the feeling of Bocas, it's a bunch of tiny islands, and so many of them just have small restaurants or hotels on stilts painted pretty colors. We also went snorkeling with the fish right below the restaurant!

The Golden Grill: Cheap diner food, we went so often during the week that the waitstaff knew who we were...but really who can resist 85 cent ice cream?

Me at Red Frog Beach. On our first full day in Bocas, we went on an all-day island-hopping tour. Red Frog was a beautiful beach that is home to little red frogs! We didn't see any hopping around, but a small Panamanian child did show us one she had caught in a leaf...in exchange for a quarter and a cookie. 

Playa Bluff: a beautiful beach on the main island that is better for surfing than swimming (we learned this the hard way). As you can see, this place was DESERTED, we had this entire beautiful beach to ourselves!

Wizard Beach: this one is on Isla Bastamientos, which is a national park, which means that the jungle comes right up to the sand, and the ocean is pure, transparent blue water perfect for swimming! This beach was also deserted, leaving us to create our own "Pirates of the Caribbean" adventures :)

And that was our trip! We met some amazing people, had a great time relaxing on the beach, and got a much needed break from our school work (I do actually go to school here)...all in all, a success!