Starfish Beach

I slept ok in the loft. It wasn’t too hot, but I did wake up at 6:00 with what sounded like birds fluttering in the ceiling. I’m pretty sure they were outside, but they were loud enough that it disrupted my sleep. It had rained over night, so maybe what I heard had something to do with that. I got up around 8:00ish and joined Linda on the deck. We saw some birds off the deck and I used my new App to identify the male and female scarlet-rumped tanager, a clay-colored thrush, and a Rufous Hornero (also known as red ovenbird) in addition to a hummingbird.

Pete and Laurie hadn’t made there presence yet, so I decided to get dressed and go for a walk. I looked at a map and saw that Playa Escondida and Playa Bluff were about 2 miles down the road so I made that my destination. Along the way I passed a bus stop and thought to myself that it would be a good place for geocache. I kept on walking and then pulled out my phone and saw there was in-fact a geocache there. I kept walking with the intention to get it on the way back.

I had been walking along the road, but came across some major construction with heavy equipment so I hopped over to a small amount of beach to walk around the construction. I’m glad I did! It was a sea-glass treasure trove! There was lots to choose from and I was soon telling myself to be more picky about the ones I picked up. The distance of walkable beach wasn’t far and I soon popped back-up and continued to walk the road with my pockets weighed down with my findings. There was another geocache about a mile from the first. I read the hints and previous cachers logs, but I couldn’t come up with it. We still have a couple of mornings here, so my intent is to go online later tonight and look at images and more logs. I will try again!

I kept my walk going and finally got to my destination. The beach was a beautiful sandy beach. I walked just a little ways before I decided to turn around and head back, since I had already been gone more than an hour and I wasn’t sure what our plans for the day were.

On the way back I again hopped off the road at the construction site, but did not pick up any glass on the way back. I did stop at the geocache at the bus stop, which was a travel bug hotel. It was super cute. I’m glad I read the cache description as I was walking because I needed to Google some answers to get the numbers for the combination lock on the cache. Did you know a sloth could hold it’s breath for 40 minutes under water? I logged the find and got back to the house 2 hours and 14 minutes after I left totaling 4.35 miles round trip. When I returned I found Linda relaxing on the deck and Pete and Laurie went out walking the opposite direction then I had into Bocas Town.

I read my book on the deck as we waited for Pete and Laurie to get back. They had walked approximately 7 miles round trip and were pretty tired when they got back and wanted to rest before we headed out. We left around 2:30 to hail a cab to take us to Starfish Beach. I think we had to wait about 5-7 minutes before a cab drove by, but eventually one did and he agreed to take us to the other side of the island to the beach for $25. This taxi driver drove as if he was in the Indy 500. We were flying all over the place. I think he was doing 75 KPH when the speed limit was 30 KPH. No police around to stop him! He dropped us to the point where cars could go no further and we hiked the 20 minutes along a nice trail running along side the ocean to the beach.

The water here was beautiful and we did see the starfish almost immediately upon arrival. There were a bunch of restaurants and stores along the beach and we walked a bit before we found an empty table to put our things. I walked a bit further and waded in the water to view the starfish before I walked back to swim with Pete and Laurie. Having our fill we got out of the water and picked one of the restaurants on the beach for dinner. I had an excellent fish filet. It was really good and this meal now ranks up in the top 3 of meals I had in Panama. Linda had a lobster (only $25) that was lounging in a cage in the ocean minutes before it was cooked. I had a few bites of that as well and it was really delicious! When dinner was over it was now after 5:00 and the beach was starting to empty. For $10/person we chose to take a water taxi back to Bocas Town. It was more expensive then the regular taxi, but we were paying for the experience and I’m not entirely too sure how easy it would have been to get a regular taxi at that time of night. We passed some really nice over the water homes, and even dropped a couple off at one of them. In town we walked a bit before we were finally able to hail a taxi to take us back to our house.

Once again tonight we played Mexican Train and I came out the big winner!!! My day had certainly turned around from the previous day.

We didn’t make any set plans for tomorrow, but I plan on walking back to the sea glass treasure trove and attempting the geocache I missed once again.

Stats of the Day:

Steps: 15,887
Pieces of Sea glass/Pottery Picked Up: 95
Geocaches: 1 Found/1 DNF