Isla Bastimentos

The following morning was the first time we actually got an idea of the place where we had landed. From the lanai outside our room, we got a good impression of the area: pockets of jungle rising from the sea all around, and a the foot of the hotel, the little village along and encroaching on the water, a little run down (the storm didn’t help, it got the best of a couple of wooden docks and houses on stilts) but colorful.

View from the hotel

The village had only one concrete footpath from one end of it to the other and, faithful to what Lonely Planet said, no cars!... There were kids everywhere and people just hanging out, taking it easy… so we did a lot of that too during the two weeks we spent on the island!

View from the hotel

We tried surfing at Isla Careneros a few times; the arrival at the surf spot was the best: the water taxi dropped us off right in the water outside the surf break, which was at the point of the island, and hardly reachable by land. The surf break itself was a bit beyond my abilities really: the bigger waves were scary because of their size, and the smaller waves scary too because they broke closer to shore, near a nice shallow reef with lots of coral heads and fans just below the surface…
I learned that lesson quickly when my butt brushed against the coral… and then I didn’t come close to shore again! (If anyone was wondering, I am definitely NOT turning into a daredevil surfer hehehe… no braving the reefs to get the “perfect barrel” for me!! ☺)

We also hiked around the island a few times… First hike attempted: short hike across the island to go to the scenic Wizard Beach which also was supposed to have some good waves… pretty hike through the jungle with plenty of butterflies and… mud! Since it was short, we just wore our slippers the first time we went and almost lost them in the mud pools! The beach itself was really pretty but windy, and the waves were just rough chop so forget about surfing, swimming, or snorkeling around there.

Wizard Beach

Second hike: this time going farther to the famed Red Frog Beach – famous for the stunning white sand beach and the poison dart frogs… The mud pools of the hike to Red Frog dwarfed the ones we had faced on the way to Wizard Beach! Good thing this time we had proper attire, but we still ended up with mud caked all the way up our legs! As for Red Frog Beach – we saw neither the frogs nor the beach… The red frogs, while we heard them loud and clear, were hiding high up in the trees though, and the only frogs we saw were little brown ones that camouflaged in the dead leaves on the ground.
Wait! Actually we did see a red one: in the hand of a local kid that was trying to make money by letting tourists play with it… aaahh, nature!
As for the praised beach, it was no more… the storm waves from a few days back pulled all the beach sand offshore up to the tree line and several palm trees had their roots out in the open.

So the rest of the time, we decided to do like the locals: relax and enjoy the wildlife right outside the porch! We got closer to hummingbirds in the hotel, which had several feeders, than we could ever have in the forest! :)