Our bus ride to Bocas Del Toro was a 10 hour tour through the night that was scheduled to land us in Almirante at 6am where we would catch a 6:30am ferry to Bocas Del Toro. Unfortunately, we got there a bit early, all piling off the bus in the middle of nowhere at the very dark hour of 5am.

We stood in front of a closed store, while the locals grabbed taxis to somewhere. A taxi driver asked us if we wanted to go to the dock.

“Yes,” we said. “But isn’t it too early? Will anyone be there? Is it dangerous?”

He looked thoughtfully at his watch and told us that yes, perhaps it was a bit early. He then told us to wait for him at the gas station next door while he dropped some other folks off. By the time he came back, he said, it would be ok.

We walked over to the gas station and felt slightly safer under the glow of the sign and with the one night attendant wandering around.

A taxi with two men in it slowed down and asked us if we needed a ride to the dock. No, we said, we were waiting for someone else. This seemed to annoy them, and the passenger got out as the driver took off. He waited at the end of the driveway. Beth commented, “The hell I’m getting in a taxi with two men at this hour of the night.”

Another taxi came, and this time, the other guy intercepted him, had some long, heated discussion with him, and then the taxi took off. This worried us, since we sensed some sort of turf issue was in progress, but we just waited for our guy.

When he returned, our new sketchy friend intercepted him and again started a long, enthusiastic discussion. When they finished, our guy waved us over. We piled our stuff in the back and started to get in the car when we noticed that our new friend was getting in the front seat. I pulled the driver aside and asked who this was. He assured me that it was a friend of his and it was “no problema”.

Beth and I were still a bit freaked out. We didn’t like that it was early, dark, and deserted and definitely didn’t like this creepy guy who seemed intent on getting a ride with us. But we felt trapped, and thought that we should just get to the dock.

A few moments after we got going, we pulled down a dirt road. Now it was really dark, and there were no signs of human life. In the headlights, we could see a man walking slowly, but determinedly toward the car. My heart started racing, and Beth pulled out her pocket knife, flicking open the longest blade.

Beth: At this point, I was sure we were in trouble.  And if they just wanted to rob us, they’d probably have grabbed our stuff long ago and push us out of the car.  Here, in the middle of nowhere, I figured they had other plans.  So just in case we couldn’t just run, I wanted to be prepared…

Lauren: The man kept going, walking right passed the window, and not long after we stopped, and the two guys got out. I jumped out as fast as I could.

“Are we here?” I asked enthusiastically with a big, innocent smile.

“Si,” he said.

We looked around, and we saw a small flicker of light. We grabbed our bags, paid the man, and booked it to the light. There was the dock. A small wooden hut with a small deck, and two boats were waiting. A few people were already there, staring off into the water. We threw down our bags and breathed a huge sigh of relief that we were around people again.

At 6:15 the captain came out and everyone trounced over one another to pile into the boat. The men pushed women aside and almost fell into the water trying to get a seat. Beth and I pushed our bags on and ended up sitting on opposite sides of the boat. There was room for everyone, so neither of us could figure out what all the hysteria was about.

We made it to Bocas in 20 minutes and started wandering around the island to find a hotel. Our friend Kassie was due to arrive at the airport in an hour, so we wanted to have something secured. We found a hotel in the center of town after trekking around for 40 minutes. Everything was either not open yet or fully booked.

In our search, we met a local tour guide named Carlos who claimed that he worked at our hotel (later, it became clear that he worked out in front of the hotel, gathering tourists for boat rides). He said he’d be happy to grab Kassie at the airport for us and bring her back. We of course, assumed he had a taxi.

About 20 minutes later, Kassie comes walking down the road with Carlos carrying her bags. Apparently they walked from the airport strip… that turned out to be four blocks away.

After catching up and settling in, we walked down and had breakfast overlooking the water at a cute restaurant on a dock. We then decided to head out to one of the famed beaches on another island.

And then we met Miguel. Well, we aren’t really sure what his name was, but Kassie named him Miguel so that we could use some sort of name in the streams of curses we had for him later on in the day. Here’s what happened…

Miguel came up to us and said he had a boat. Great, we need a boat. He asked where we would like to go. Playa Largo, we said. (We’d been given these suggestions by some of Ruth’s friends back in Lima, who had given us names of beaches and prices we should pay.)

“Six dollars each person,” he told us.

We said that was more than we were looking to spend. He offered an alternative, which was to take a ride over to town on the other island instead and just walk to the beach from there. The walk was only 15 minutes, he claimed, and it would only cost us $2 to take the boat.

So we set off. I left my cameras behind, in an unusual moment for me, because it looked like it was going to rain and we weren’t going to be gone very long. Oh, silly me.

We got to town and started off, looking for the path to the other beach. Some locals pointed us in the right direction and we started climbing up some stairs. At the top, we found a creepy graveyard, with above ground tombs made of tile succumbing to the wear and tear of the tropical climate. We pushed through to the other side where we found a thick tropical forest, and a small muddy path heading down the side of a large hill into a wet haven of malarial bliss.

I began the descent, carefully stepping on wet logs to keep from sinking ankle deep into the mud, and batting away huge ferns and leaves that blocked the path. We were half way down the hill, trying to decide if this was the right way, when a pot-bellied local man appeared at the top of the hill. He motioned for us to come back.

We followed him through the graveyard and down the steps and he pointed to a fork in the road. Apparently, we had taken a wrong turn.

Off we went again, walking along a more clearly defined but just-as-muddy path through the jungle. We reached the top of one hill. Nothing. We walked further, and got to the top of another hill. Nothing. This went on and on for quite a while, and we began to think that maybe we had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

We walked along a ridge for some time, and finally started to descend. We took this as a good sign. The road got more slippery, and we had many near falls. We tried walking in the weeds and high grass on the side of the road to avoid the mud, which was a good strategy for the parts where that was possible.

Kassie went down first, sliding down on of the hills. Beth wasn’t long after, and now we were really covered in mud.

“Screw Miguel,” Kassie said.

“I’m going to have a few choice words for Miguel when we get back,” I said.

“I’m going to kill Miguel,” one of us said.

“Do you think Miguel has kids?”

“If he doesn’t, he missed his chance,” I stated.

As we cursed Miguel, his family, and his offspring, we began to notice an interesting phenomenon… abandoned sandals on our path. More and more began to appear and we started to wonder why someone would just leave behind a sandal. It must be more difficult to walk barefoot, we mused. Beth was kind enough to offer a hypothesis…

“Because they were running too fast and in too much of a hurry to go back for it.”

Great. So, not only were we on a path to nowhere, we were walking into some horror from which harried backpackers had fled. Beth then picked up the broken-off arm of a doll just to top things off.

After descending down a dangerous rope tie that led Kassie to her second mud filled slide (in part because Beth let go of the rope), we made it to the beach. We walked passed a lonely bar with someone sleeping in a hammock, and finally stumbled onto the beach. There was no one there. It was completely deserted. And the waves were huge, so we suspected no boats would be coming.

We were feeling a bit isolated, and had thought we’d be joining the beach-going crew where we’d have access to food (as Miguel had told us). Plus, we were nervous about how we were going to get back. We certainly didn’t want to traverse Green Mile again. As we were contemplating our options we began to notice some men down the beach peering out at us. They would watch, duck into the jungle, and then reapear again - looking in our direction.

I decided to go ask the bar what our options were. Were their boats coming, do other people come here, how can we get back, etc. I walked back to the bar and saw one of the cutest puppies I’ve ever seen. He came bounding toward me, big ears flopping and big paws pounding the sand.

As he drew closer I saw that he had an enormous open sore that covered most of his back, and the entire top of his head was missing its skin. There were flies buzzing around, and dirt and sand crusted around the edges of his wounds.

In utter horror, I looked up at the Sleepy Panamanian in the hammock and quickly blurted out my questions. The dog, seemingly unaware of his ghastly appearance was nipping around at my ankles and I continued to dodge him as casually as possible. The Sleepy Panamanian answered my questions, with an amused gleam in his eye.

I returned and dipped my diseased ankles into the ocean before reporting my findings; a) there were no boats coming; b) people would walk here, the same way we had come; c) the only way back would be to take the Green Mile.

However, I did learn that we were not, in fact, on Playa Larga, but on Wizard Beach (screw Miguel!), and that there were other beaches to the right. We took another look at the looming men from the jungle, and decided to make a run for it. We couldn’t relax with the men hovering anyway, and we had ‘nothing to lose.’

We began walking down the beach and I asked a passerby what I had already confirmed with the Sleepy Panamanian, that we could take the beach all the way to the next beach that we didn’t need to head back into the jungle.

“Si, si,” he assured us. “You can walk on la playa.”

Well, we got to the end of la playa. We found rocks and an impassable fortress of uprooted trees and a pile of abandoned sandles. We looked to the right, and there was an inviting muddle path up the hills of the jungle.

We decided we couldn’t face Wizard Beach and the Green Mile, so we trudged up the hill. We had another slippery 15 minute walk, but soon surfaced on another beach. We looked around. Empty.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, getting exasperated. On one hand, we were potentially getting closer to some sign of life if we continued beach hopping. Somewhere, there had to be people, and more importantly, boats back to Bocas. On the other hand, we were getting further and further away from the Green Mile, if that was our only hope out.

We decided to walk down the beach, and there we saw another human. I ran up to her and asked if she spoke English.

“Ya,” she said with a British accent.

“Oh, thank God,” I started. I explained our situation, and she told us that there was a big group of people further down the beach and a little hangout place with a bar. She said she could take us there and we started walking.

On the way she told me some great stories. Like how she met two surfers who had also taken the wrong path through the graveyard and had ended up hopelessly lost in the jungle for hours. And how Wizard Beach is known for being really dangerous, and just the day before she was there and had witnessed men running out of the jungle, grabbing a travel buddy’s expensive camera, and darting back into the maze of trees. Or the fun factoid that there were crocodiles - and some other horrible jungle monster that my mind has blocked out - in the middle of the island where we had just passed.

Our new friend, Sam, showed us the bar, and we sat down on some of the cute rope swings to relax. Beth and I decided to take a dip and went swimming in the Pacific Ocean, playing in the waves and counting our blessings.

Then we started to itch. Uncontrollably. We raced out of the water and found that we still itched on land. We tried to wait it out, pouring purified water from our bottles down the front of our suits, but failed. We didn’t have much to change into, but we had to get off our suits. We sprinted for the outhouse, and changed outside, not daring to go into one of the most disgusting bathrooms we’ve seen to date and at this point not caring if anyone saw.

The itching stopped when we changed into our scandalous attire and we went to go sit on the swings again. We were “getting” cranky, and just wanted to sit tight until the boat came to get everyone.

As we were reading, we began to notice small fleas at our ankles. We raised our legs up, but they followed, gnawing away at our legs. We covered our legs to no avail, and practically flew to the boat dock when we heard it was time to go. On the boat, we discovered that Beth and I had been completely chewed up by sand fleas (I still have the bites as I write this, a week and a half later). The boat ride, by the way, was $5 each, bringing us up to $1 more than we would have paid if we had taken Miguel’s first offer. Screw Miguel!

That night, after a shower and watching a movie on our cable TV, we sat down to cervesas and dinner at another cute restaurant on the water. It had been a long day - from pulling out a knife and walking the Green Mile with gators to Pups from the Crypt and sand fleas - and it was time for a drink.

“Welcome to your vacation!” we cheered for Kassie as we laughed about the craziness of the day.

“Maybe tomorrow will be better,” we mused.

Maybe not.