Shelly's BBQ Bocas del Toro

Shelly’s BBQ is a small restaurant and looks like a hole in the wall located in Bocas town. Do not let this fool you. The food is great. My personal favorite is the crispy pork tacos. The shells are fried and crispy and the pork is tender and juicy which makes a very dynamic combination. It takes a bit longer than the other meals since they have to fry the tortillas, but it is worth the wait.

The Shelly’s Special is also a go to item. You can chose between beef brisket, pork or baby back ribs. All of these are worthy choices. Also, the hot sauce and pico de gallo are decent. While the price tag is a bit on the high side, it is still worth it.

Balboa Beer Distributor in Bocas del Toro

Spending a day on a boat in Bocas del Toro typically requires copious amounts of ice cold beer. There are three popular Panamanian brews: Panama, Atlas and Balboa. My personal favorite is Balboa, which is a light and refreshing beverage. Also, it is very accessible since there is a distributor right on the water in Bocas town.

Bring in your old crate of empty bottles and get a replacement crate for less than $15 for 24 beers in a bottle. Always go for bottles. The cans have a different and in my opinion, unpleasant taste.

If you want to experience the true cuisine of Bocas del Toro, Beso del Drago is the place to go. Typically a dish will consist of mostly starches, but not the bad kind like you find in the States and Europe. Bocas cuisine consists of a lot of rice, noodles and plantains. Whereas in the US you find a lot of over processed meals from fast food restaurants and mega supermarkets.

A dish of pork, rice, noodles and lentils will cost you around $3.50 USD. While the pork is a small portion it still equals roughly 25grams of protein. And if you are a fat back enthusiast like myself, this meal will satisfy your needs with a piece of cooked fat with pork attached. Add hot sauce.

Beso del Drago is located right in Bocas town at the municipal boat dock that Bocas Villas uses for client transportation. Good beer, good food, just don’t get anything on the gringo menu such as fish tacos. You will get your food after your dinner companions have already finished.

An article posted in Yahoo Finance has mentioned Bocas del Toro as one of the top 8 spots for retirement abroad.  The weather and the Caribbean of course make Bocas del Toro a great place to retire.  The article also looked at a health care index that puts Panama on par with Portugal, the options being the local hospital in Bocas as well as the bigger medical centers in David and Panama City.  What I am a little confused about is that Panama tied with Costa Rica for monthly affordability.  Costa Rica has a 13% sales tax compared to Panama’s 7%, and Costa Rica’s import tax is a whopping 23% for merchandise.  The tax on cars in Costa Rica is the blue book value: any given car costs twice as much in Costa Rica as Panama.  The rating is from some affordability index, so it just depends what kinds of goods were compared, but it is surprising to me having lived in Costa Rica.

 The other positives mentioned were Panama’s “pensionados” program that offers significant discounts to retirees on things like transportation, and the prevalence of English as a spoken language in Bocas.

Bocas del Toro is clearly a place that depends upon boats and now

A nature lover’s paradise and one of Panama’s most popular tourist spots, Bocas’ 5,000 residents are still way outnumbered by the surrounding wildlife. Enjoy the town’s laid-back vibe and easy access to the region’s nine major islands, 52 keys and roughly 200 tiny islands. There are two marinas for those who want to explore this archipelago’s treasures. And reader Dan Cranney reminded us that “this island archipelago off the Caribbean coast of Panama is one of the few hurricane-free places in the Caribbean.”

Everything here revolves around the water and the diversity throughout the islands.  There are so many places to go and different reefs and islands to explore on daytrips or you can drop anchor anywhere and spend the night.

A new program by the Panamanian government includes travel insurance for all visitors entering the country on tourist visas.  The New York Times recently wrote this article and accompanied the story with a picture of a man in a bikini bottom (I’m not sure if he is in need of medical attention or not).  Regardless, this is a great idea for tourism in Panama and not something I have heard about being done elsewhere.  

The insurance is paid for by a $40 departure tax and the insurance expires 30 days after entry.  The coverage allows $7,000 in treatment for accidents or disease, $2,000 for emergency dental, and $20,000 for accidental death.  Even accidents during adventure activities (horseback riding, white water rafting, fishing, etc.) are covered, which is a good point to make clear to tourists. 

The insurance does not cover accidents or death involving alcohol or drugs, nor does it extend to prior illnesses or conditions.  Had the insurance covered accidents and death caused by alcohol and drugs, Panama and Bocas del Toro could have expected a much hipper crowd.  Here at Bocas Villas we could have had the type of traveler who feels good about coming to a foreign country and overdosing on street drugs.  As the program is, I think we can expect to attract professional adults, responsible travelers and small families.  So, instead of going for the hip, chemically and financially unstable tourists, the insurance appeals to a more responsible, professional group of people, just the kind we want to come visit our beautiful islands.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the contest or accommodations. Cheers!

When I arrived here there were no horseback riding tours readily available, although there are a significant amount of cow farms and horses being used throughout the nearby islands (now there are a couple of horse tours).  We are in the process now of training several new horses for tours in Dolphin Bay for our guests beginning in September.  The tour will be through pasture and private nature reserves as well as farms and will probably include some basic work with the calves, which will be a cool experience for whoever wants to participate: moving them from pastures or helping to wrangle them for vaccinations.  Dolphin Bay is a beautiful setting and I was able to get a couple of great looking, light-weight Criollo horses for a little over $100 a piece and a local partner there to train and keep the horses on pasture, and guide the tours.

The main catch here with the purchase is that these are stallions which have never even had ropes around them, they are almost completely wild.  There were four of us yesterday with one on horseback that chased a new stallion through pasture and jungle until we got him through a gate into a smaller pasture that unfortunately also connects to the local village.  He was going completely ape-shit and broke through the school fence (school was out) kicking everything and truly throwing his weight around, I mean it’s a big animal.  My lasso skills suck, but the older dad there got a good rope around him.  Once they get heated up like that they are very dangerous and definitely unsafe to try and hop on, which is the first goal in the breaking process.

The plains Indians used to jump on horses and bite down on their ears to make the horse run full speed, they are unable to buck well running and they just run until exhausted and are broken that way.  Most of the guys yesterday did not have a good set of teeth, so that was not a good option.  What they do here is drag them out into the water to a sand bar to cool them off and relax them, and it’s also a safer place to ride.  The horse can’t buck and kick as effectively in chest deep water.  This horse threw himself head over hoof off a 40 foot cliff into shallow water, it was a disaster, but he did get into the water at least.  At one point we were there wrestling with this horse and a pod of dolphins past 20 yards behind us, it made me take a breath and look around.  He was in mud and it took a long time to “coax” him out, but I was able to get on his back then and we got reins on him.  He is tied up now and the next step is to get a saddle on him and stay on as long as possible…I’m scared, I have to say.  We learned yesterday he is a powerful kicker and throws himself onto his side and back when he’s pissed.  I do not receive kicks well, nor do I land well on my back under things.

My computer and business skills have thus far not transferred well to horse training, but I’m excited about being able to offer the tours and the process is a lot of fun for me personally.  I could never afford to have and house a horse in the US and living here gives me that opportunity and I’m always happy about taking advantage of the positive differences in location.

The volcano is usually covered in clouds, but last time I was there we were able to get a great view of the whole cone for the two days we spent and actually saw glowing lava flows at night while we soaked in the thermal pools at Tabacon.  The thermal springs area is very impressive, but man the water is really hot and it seems like every time I leave there I have some kind of rash, that could be from any number of activities though and I would still go back.

To stay one night we paid $200 for a really nice room, a delicious breakfast, and access to the hot springs for the two days and night that we spent.  Tabacon has to be one of the few places in Central America where you have a king-sized bed with big down comforters, and the bathroom is like a mini pleasure palace.  We took our own wine to save a little money and ate nearby at an outdoor grill that I would recommend but which did not appear to have a name, it was the last restaurant on the right before reaching Tabacon.

La Fortuna Waterfall

The morning after some of the best sleep of my life we went on a horseback riding tour through a large cow farm to the La Fortuna Waterfall.  The tour was with Alberto’s Horses just before you get into La Fortuna; tel. 2479-9043 email albertoshorses@gmail.com.  We spent about 4 hours on the trip for $35 each.  The destination is a beautiful waterfall with swimming pools, the hike down there is not so bad, but coming back up is literally the opposite.

Visiting Arenal is one of the most worthwhile attempts in Costa Rica even though odds aren’t great that you will actually see the cone and/or eruptions.

Jon and his stand-in production crew, which consisted of a buddy with a clipboard and some sort of mixed drink, were only at Bocas Villas for a few days. The first was rainy and the forecast didn’t look good. Brown says the Ngobe Indians throw a cat in the water when they need it to rain, but didn’t have any ideas about calling out the sun. We did get some great weather, though, and had a couple of good days to send Jon on some tours that we do. Their first day they went (in the rain) to Redfrog Beach on Bastimentos Island to look for some surf and got the shot you see in the video of a poison dart frog.

The next day, when the sun came out, they did another full-day tour, going through Dolphin Bay to Coral Key and the Zapatillas Islands in the Bastimentos Marine Park. That’s really a great day. It’s about 45 minutes to get there, but you go through a lot of the mangrove islets, see really unique sand beach islands, and get to do some great snorkeling. We also did a quick trip to Starfish Beach and Bocas del Drago. That’s one of my favorites because its so easy and close and has everything I like in a beach: sand, shade and a bar. Jon ended up getting some excellent raw footage and then he needed to interview me for the information.

I was in my own house, talking about something I talk about every day, was in a good mood, but, man, talking on cue for the camera really freaked me out. The interview was well edited, but I can hear in my voice in a couple parts that I start to lose my shit a little bit. Jon is a good sport, though, and produced a great video with some beautiful weather and my spotty performance.

The video is a nice feature for guests to view and learn what they are getting into. But we also want to use it as a marketing tool, to get people to see our website and make a reservsation. I don’t know the real details of how this happens, but that is Blake’s professional focus  and his blog has some helpful information on how to use features like this. We are also going to track as precisely as possible the impact this video has on traffic and conversions, and both Blake and Jon will be able to provide details about that. Assuming this goes well their services are available.