This week has been the highlight of Winterline. It was great. I loved every single moment and felt like I was in my element. We just got back from spending 8 days in an island called Solarte. It’s one of the islands in the archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama. There we lived off-the-grid underneath the house of a guy called Wilson. We slept in tents and cooked our own food, more or less like if we were camping, but we were sleeping underneath a roof. I don’t know, it was kind of weird, but I somehow liked it. The first 5 days we spent there was learning how to scuba dive and the last 3 days we went on a sea kayaking expedition. For the scuba diving days we basically divided the group in half, so half the group would go scuba diving in the morning and have theory class in the afternoon and half the group would have theory lessons in the morning and go scuba diving in the afternoon. Since I already have a scuba diving certification, I was able to skip the theory class and got to scuba dive in the morning and in the afternoon. I loved it so much. The dive sites were so nice, the visibility was great, the corals were so colorful, and the marine life was awesome. I saw fishes from blue tangs, sergeant mayors, angel fish, and foureye butterfly fish to starfish, jellyfish, manta rays, and dolphins. We even got to go on a wreck dive and it was amazing.
The last day of scuba diving was the best day ever. In the morning we went to this beautiful coral dive site called Coral Garden that had a drop-off that reached 50 feet. Then we went back to the house, got lunch and I went again with the second group to the same dive site in the afternoon. We got back to the house, got dinner and went on a night dive with almost the entire group, some people went snorkeling. That night dive literally felt as if we were swimming through the stars. There were planktons in the sea that lighted up so bright when you moved the water that it wasn’t even necessary to use our flashlights. We had it on to see the ground but immediately turned it off when we saw the planktons lighting up in the darkness. When my dive buddy and I got to the surface, I looked around for the red light on our boat and it took me a while to find it, why? Because we were so fricking far from the boat, I could barely see it. Shoot! We started swimming on the surface but after a while of realizing we were going too slow we decided to descend so it would be easier to swim to the boat. As we were swimming underwater, I realized my buddy was drifting away from me. I ignored it for a little bit but then it felt like we were drifting a lot so I decided to ascend and make sure we were heading on the right direction. Fml. The boat looked even farther than before! Oh god. We were victims of the current. We stayed in the surface until we reached the boat. Oh, and the worst part? There was another buddy team in front of us, in the same situation as us but closer to the boat, we could hear them complaining about how far they were and all we could think was that they had no idea of our worst situation. Oh well, we finally reached the boat and got to descend again for a couple of minutes. Besides the little incident we had, it was a great dive. Also during the week we got the opportunity to go wakeboarding twice. It was my first time doing it and I really enjoyed it. It was so fun, once I got up it wasn’t that hard. We also learned a little about sea kayaking before heading on our expedition. I tried to do the self-rescue roll on the kayak, but in a learning time frame of one hour it was kind of hard. I still had so much fun, the sea kayaking instructor was so fun to work with.
After 5 days, our days of scuba were over and our days of sea kayaking were just starting. Thursday morning, we woke up and cooked breakfast as usual (pancakes) and started loading up our kayaks with what we would need for the next three days. We all had our personal dry bags with our clothes and we also had food, water, stoves, pans and pots, and a sleeping pad. We departed from Solarte and paddled 12 kilometers to another island called Bastimentos. There we slept in a hut above the water that had a dock that connected to a restaurant. It was a little weird having to cook our own dinner when there was a restaurant just in front of us. We slept in the dock since there was a nice breeze but then it started raining so we moved to the restaurant and slept there the remaining of the night. It was a nice place, we could jump in the clear water from the dock which was nice, but that was our shower for the day, since there wasn’t a shower or hose to rinse of the salt water. The toilet situation? There were power-flushed toilets. You filled a bucket with sea water and dump it in the toilet to make it flush. Not bad. The next morning we headed to the next island called Popa Island. It was such a nice day. We only paddled for about 8 kilometers and got to take a shower when we got there. Then we went to explore the island and the community. The Outward Bound staff taught us about the different types of leaders (the north, south, west, and east) and we learned what type of leader we are and with which one we would work well and not. Then we played with the kids of the community. I played volleyball with them, some were playing soccer, others were running around with them and some kids were just jumping into people and hanging from them. It was somewhat adorable. I had so much fun with them. The next morning, we paddled all the way back to Wilson’s house, unloaded all the kayaks, cleaned them, and made dinner. We slept there one more night in Solarte Island and this morning got a boat ride back to Colon Island, the main island in Bocas del Toro. I had so much fun during the kayaking expedition which was so unexpected because I had no idea I would like it so much. I think I want to go sea kayaking again. It was a great experience and I’m so glad I did it.
