I've been putting off writing this post for as long as I can because there's so much to tell that maybe the longer I leave it the more I'll forget to tell. But I've just arrived in bocas town, a small town on an island in the north of Panama with a Caribbean life style. I just ordered some tacos and the chef walked out the kitchen to go to the supermarket. Nows the time. So like Christmas, I was concerned about what to do for New Years. I definitely wasn't going to spend New Years on my own. I had this san blas adventures thing in the back of my mind since about September. But I didn't want to lock in crossing from south to central, it's not exactly a small movement. And to lock it in with random people that I wouldn't be able to get away from, risky business, especially with all the Americans in this part of the world. We left cartagena on the 27th and traveled 10 hours to turbo with our "guide" named Isabella. I was quick to point out that she was Isa and I was Bella. She was hopeless. Pretty sure we lost 3 people along the way as she couldn't get her self together enough just to do a simple roll call. The next morning from turbo, slowly getting to know the group. I gladly jumped on our first boat to take a two hour journey to a small beach town where we would exit Colombia. Little did I know this was about to be pretty much the worst two hours of my life. It was the bumpiest ride everrrr up the front and I pretty much needed to pee the whole time. I'm still not sure if my bladder has fully recovered. All I could think was should I just wet my pants slash when I'm fifty I'll remember back to this day when I struggle not to wet my self when I laugh. We spent the afternoon here stocking up on rum, waterproofing our bags, meeting the whole group and our actually guides, thank god. Tess, a Brit, and Freddy, a kiwi. I was aching all over and dreading the thought of getting on the boat again tomorrow. Let alone the next 5 days. This time up the back where it wasn't so bumpy, and having drunk minimal water and peed as much as I could we crossed the boarder!! We were told at the bottom of these waters of the bay of this boarder crossing lays hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars worth of cocaine waiting for either the Panamanian whose paying for it or an extremely lucky fisherman. That does actually happen. Super poor local kuna fisherman find them and then send all 12 kids to collage in the US. No biggy. There were bag searches and begging for the smallest stamps possible as close together as possible as Panamanian security guards wanted to know everything there was to know about Isabella Maria's piece of shit passport and whole life for that matter. Then the tour really began. We set off on our first private speed boat for 2 hours to our first deserted lunch island. Waving to the Kuna village on the way that would be our home that night. The coco nuts were knocked outta the palm trees and the rum cracked open. There was white sand, sun and sparkling blue warm water. We'd made it! Paradise!! Everyone slowly started to open up this afternoon as we got pleasantly tipsy and I'd be surprised if this wasn't when everyone started to realize how cool of a group of people we were. 7 Aussies 1 gorgeous Canadian and one old Canadian 5 Brits 2 Americans 1 Argentinian 1 German 1 Brazilian We spent the first two days learning how the Kuna people live on the islands, with drop toilets over the sea, an average of 12 kids per family, selling coconuts to Colombia and spinning round in hammocks being almost a religious ceremony, they live a pretty happy life. How could you not when you wake up surrounded by Caribbean waters and palm trees everyday. Only a few beers or rums each night and a lot of card games, New Years was shaping up to be nothing short of a nice quite night. On the 31st we arrived at Coco Bandana island after another mornings 2 hour bumpy ride, by now I was used to being thrown up and down. We started tipping our rum into our coco nuts and sipping away, excited two be spending New Years on such a tiny deserted island, let along two whole days here. Then looked at the time and thought oops, it's only 10:30. Oh well, we'll play some volly ball. Who needs time on a deserted island anyway. By lunch time another group arrived who were heading in the direction of colombia. They're only left Panama City that morning and there for didn't know each other as well as we did. It's fair to say they were pretty average people and it didn't take us long to realise that we were going to continue just party with our selfs. Why not, we were pretty good mates by now. After our massive seafood dinner was when the fun really started. Everyone quite wasted, I'm going to try and tell all the hilarious things that happened in the shortest possible way. We decided Don Lucas from California was so cool we made a religion called don lucaisum and bowed down to him for 5 or so minutes. Old Canada and Matt didn't get along at all, always arguing. When old Canada saw Matt passed out she took the opportunity to pee on him, which then caused him to vomit on him self, in disbelief, we had to throw him in the sea. You can imagine naturally I let old Canada know that I thought she was a monkey hence why she wasn't doing a real cruise with people her own age. She had nothing to say for the remainder of the tour. The owner of the company joined us for the night. A complete sleaze, I decided it was the funniest thing in the world if I let him keep sleazing on me so I could put it in my trip advisor review for his friends and family to see. Naturally at 3am, Jade, Jonah and myself got hungry so we stole the other groups hummus and pita bread while evilly giggling to our selfs about how we didn't care if the other group staved on their way to Colombia. Ironically the next day Jonah was given a job as a guide for the other group and headed back to Colombia with them. When we finally got into our hammocks to get some sleep The Don poked his head over the side of his a puked his guts out. I could not stop laughing!!! Aside from those memorable moments there was a bucket load of drunken dancing round the fire, toasted marshmallows, rum punch, fireworks, champagne and big smiles bringing in the new year. I couldn't have welcomed 2015 in a happier way. For those of us that got up the next day, there was hours of laugher over what we never imagined would have happened the night before, during a million rounds of cards with the occasional swim or lunch break, your average New Year's Day really, only we were on a deserted island with our awesome new mates.
