Bocas

Bocas Del Toro is the kind of place any person will straight out love or hate. Or hate to love for that matter. It projects a rather appealing slow way of life, great nightlife, and the right kind of company that found me stuck there for two weeks.... a good week and a half longer than I'd planned. The only bad thing about this slice of Caribbean paradise is that access to the beach is never as easy as just walking out your front door. A $10 taxi to one beach and $8 boats to the others meant one thing for me: I saw Bocas' glistening coastline only four times in the two weeks I was there. Partly due to the face it rained almost ever day! What else we managed to do to pass the time beats me.

Ness Eddie and I arrived on Bocas and straight away chose Mondo Taitu for our temporary home. It's acclaimed 'wacky tree house vibe' didn't quite live up to the standards we expected, but we moved into what we appropriately named ''The Apartment,'' as that's exactly what it was.. A cute little mini house as an extension to Mondo meant that we had three rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen all to ourselves. Felt like home all over again... Us three girls had a room to ourselves, quite a nice change from the standard budget 13 people dorm rooms. There were about 15 of us all up in the apartment, so initiation of the new family in here could only lead to the obvious: name-tags with nicknames for those of us with alcohol induced bad memories, and a good old game of Kings to break the ice. Work's like a charm every time.

Class of the Apartment

Mondo was quite an interesting place for a party. Famous for it's weekly dress up's and never ending list of parties and activities, we soon caught the Bocas' Plague of insomnia, and found ourselves turning nocturnal. A sleep-in until 4pm in the afternoon became a regular part of our lives... I actually found myself on more than one occasion going to bed at sunrise and not seeing the sun again that day.

The staff at Mondo was probably one of its best parts. We made good friends with a Sarah and her boyfriend Joe who lived in the room next to us. Besides from the fact that we could often hear them in the room next to us late at night throwing the hot-dog down a wide hallway, they were a big part of the Apartment's family. So naturally, when we found out she was moving to the other side of the hostel and a new amigo Nacho was moving in, we decided his initiation would be taken to a new level..

A welcome note I left on Nacho's floor

It's amazing what you can achieve with a little bit of Peanut Butter and Honey. We found out the hard way that Nacho was actually the brother of the Mondo's owner. That didn't stop him from cleaning up the mess we made however.

Yum

We'd found out in the earlier days of Joe and Sarah's sex life that our styrophone roof could be removed and we could see into their bedroom next door, and sometimes throw condoms and the like at them while in the act. After one particularly large night out at Aqua Louge - a ridiculously loose bar accross the river that goes off for Wednesday's ladies night- Ness and I returned home, and brought some pots and pans into our room as preparation for a morning of vomiting that potentially laid ahead of us.

Smoking a big spliff seemed to put us back in the right mindframe and the pots and pans were put to a good home on our heads as a disguise, along with some black shirts to cover our faces, we went into the roof full ninja style, ready to mess with Nacho one more time. A quite 'ello through the roof successfully scared the shit out of him, and we managed to successfully creep him out. ''What are you watching?'' we asked in a creepy old ladies voice, referring to whatever he was looking at on his laptop, most likely some sort of gang rape porn. He looked around the room trying to work out where the hell our voices are coming from... ''Wanna know what we are watching?'' - a three minute pause trying to contain the laughter from our oh so stoned selves - ''You''. He got us back the best way possible: made all the staff cut us off from the bar the following night. Pretty sure that poo story is now famous around Bocas however, easily worth a night of thirst.

Epic disguise

After a week at Mondo we decided it was time to move onwards and upwards to Heike, a lovely hostel with a perfect deck area on top. My introduction to this lovely hostel was ah, quite different than most others I would have to say. After another big night out at Aqua Lounge (we had nothing else to amuse ourselves with, it rained every fecking day) I climbed up to my top bunk, striped off to my undies, and prepared myself for another 3pm sleepin. Half way through the night I was rather strangely awoken by someone's hands massaging my back.. As nice of a gesture as it may sound, quite a weird way to be awoken. As soon as I realised what was going on... well you can imagine how I reacted.. The Belgium guy from the bottom bunk seemed to think it was a good idea to give me a drunken massage at 5 in the morning.'GET OUT OF MY BED, GET OUT OF MY BED, GET OUT OF MY BED,' I screamed several times. Refusing to get out, he tried to convince me, 'but this is my bed.' So I drunkenly crawled down to the bottom bunk, and for some reason later that morning he thought it would be a good idea to join me down there. He was trying to explain that he was only being nice, trying to give me a massage. I wonder how many girls he's pulled with that technique before!!

After the masseuse left us, two English lads, Luke and James were our new room mates, and happened to be people Ness had previously met in Nicaragua. Luke and James are easily some of my favourite and the most funniest people I've met this trip. The Aussie boys from Utilia had also caught up with us by this stage, so a rather large night out amongst the many, many, large nights out we had was once again in order. With the Aussie boys typically having their eyes on the pussy prize, James included, Luke and I were the last men standing. Being tight ass travelers, a good game of minesweeper was in order. I'd distract a person while Luke would swiftly and professionally steal their drink. An 40-year old German man called Julian, who we'd met a few times before and absolutely hated, copped it the worst. Swapping his delicious Rum punch for an even better cup of sea water was one of the funniest things I've experienced for a long time.

On arrival back to the hostel at about 5am, Luke and I were in dire need of a spliff to put us to sleep, and were on a mission to find James who had the papers. After literally knocking on every single dorm room with the hope of finding him in bed with his new lady friend, we managed to turn the whole hostel against us. I'd do the knocking, and Luke the talking - queue posh English accent - ''Hello, sorry to wake you up, but we are looking for our friend James, he's a diabetic and he hasn't taken his medicine today, we desperately need to find him.'' After successfully turning the whole hostel into life long enemies, James suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs and threw us a the room key, and disappeared again. The key was far from what we wanted, so we secretly followed him downstairs in search of the papers, and of course to have a little perve.

Very gentleman like, James had actually taken his missus on a raunchy date to no where but the showers. Luke and I snuck into the cubical next door, and with a little boost up I had a full view of them role playing crouching tiger hidden penis. After catching my breath from trying to hide my laughter, I managed to call out ''Give it a lil lick'' - a personal joke, something James once said to his ex girlfriend.. what a charmer!

We did manage to get the oh-so important papers, watched the sunrise and prepared to leave for Panama City for some more crazy adventures.... xx