Spent some time wandering around looking for a hostel to stay in, something cheap, but all I could find was $15 a night places (that were decent) sharing in a dorm. Bocas isn't your cheap destination like Thailand or India where u can stay in your own room for a few dollars a night. It's very much a popular Carribean tourist destination, nice but not your cheap backpacker kinda place, perhaps a lot of Central and South America is like this.
Frank had a couch surfer to stay with, this really awesome guy called Cahuil, but I met up with them later and he took us on this long bike ride over sand and rocks around the coast of the Island to a place called Bluff beach which is just the most idyllic place I've ever visited. It's like what you would imagine The Carribean to look like, perfect sands, coconuts and massive waves...basically Bocas is a surfers Paradise.
Cahuil taught us how to open coconuts! First you tear off the tough fibre exterior so you can get to the shell. A lot harder than you think...you gotta smash the coconut against a rock or a stick to break in the shell...then once you get to the coconut you can poke a hollow stick through 2 soft ends of the coconut, if it's ripe and then drink through the stick like a straw, and then when u finish you smash it to open it up s d eat the flesh...fantastic! I never had such fresh coconut before.
You see you'd never get to do things like this if it wasn't for meeting couch surfers, local people and spending time with them...you'd never find the places and have the experiences.
The Problem with PADI:
Cahuil has been Travelling, or atleast not been home to Argentina, for 3 years. He has been all over Central America, but decided to stop off for a bit and stay in Bocas. He got involved in Diving kinda by accident, his friend just told him to come one day. He hasn't done his dive master but he works for a school and knows more than some people who have paid the money and had the training...which is my issue with PADI (put another dollar in) if you have the money you can be an instructor in no time, but without the experience you really need to actually be an instructor...a guy French guy called Bertran, who I met at my hostel and runs a dive school near La Rochelle in France, told me that for a while French dive schools were not allowed to let PADI instructors work at their schools without them doing the qualification CMAS first, because with CMAS you have to have 8 months worth of experience before you can take the exam...with PADI its a couple of weeks! So Cahuil is in this situation where he is a qualified through experience to be a dive master or an instructor but doesn't have the money to pay to get to that level, and until you do you can't officially work. So what you can have in the PADI world is relatively unqualified instructors and dive masters working, taking care of the lives of other people who got their not necessarily through experience but cause they had the money...I'm by no way saying this is everyone, I'm sure there are tonnes of PADI instructors and divers who love what they do and are good at it, but by the very nature of PADI it means you can have people who aren't as qualified to take care of people's lives.
The Cats of Bocas:
So many cute kittens, through dinner at this awesome pizza place had a cute one day on my lap. But at 3 months old they are still tiny...I feel sorry for them. Puk, Ben's kitten, in Amsterdam was about 3 times the size by that age...they need to eat more!
In the evening we watched Cahuil do his awesome fire show! I'll post video later.
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