the arrival

The time came, and quickly at that, for me to renew my visa. Many of the students that I had met at the Institute were going home for Christmas, and those that were staying here had their families here. An answer to prayer was that I found a friend to travel with, that soon turned into a group of 6 to go to Panama for 6 days.

Crossing the border to Panama by foot, we are all anticipating the adventure ahead of us...
First on our agenda was to go to the islands off the Carribean coast of Panama in the North named Bocas Del Torros. We had heard that they were beautiful, and did our research and planned to spend a couple days there. After crossing the border by foor, getting a stamp, paying $5, we got in a taxi to the boat depot to be brought out to the main island.

This a snap shot of the main island. All of the buildings on the coast were on planks and in the water. Pretty neat.
We walked our way to the hostel we had picked out, and had been referred to by many. The name of the house was Mondu Taitu. Little did we know it was actually the "Party House" in the island and was known for it's great night life. We (4 guys: Matt, Steve, David and Salem (the last two being the Koreans on our team!)) and the two girls me and Ashley had planned on just bunking it in the dorm room, but thankfully we had our own rooms (one with two beds for the girls, and one with 4 beds for the guys). What a blessing!!!