I’m in Panama’s Bastimentos island. The weather is very hot, but the people are a little cold on the contrary.. A classic Caribbean island. Islanders are mostly black and speak Caribbean English.. Not the type that likes tourists too much.. Getting used to easy money, drugs if any. Anyway, I settled in the cheapest hostel on the island, 7.5 usd per night.. After having a little chat with the Brazilian boy at the reception, he arranged a bed for me in a 6-person room, but there is no one else in the room but me.. It also takes other people who come to other rooms.. So I use it like a private room. There’s also a fan in the room, I’m running it ohh miss. When I edit my travel articles, I prefer to be alone like this.. The view from the hostel is beautiful, 20 meters from the sea, full of banana trees, palm trees and hammocks.. On the face of it, everything is fine, but at night, things change.
The hostel is completely wooden. Since the island is almost always forested, it is possible to encounter all kinds of reptiles or insects.. Cockroaches invade the hostel at night. Especially when you go to the kitchen, you hear their voices even if you don’t turn on the light.. They have evolved so much.. If you turn on the light, they suddenly scatter like a daisy.. Since the kitchen is already completely open, everything from the outside can come in.. Normally I hate bugs but when I’m on a trip I can handle these things so I just ignore them. But the problem with this hostel isn’t just insects, it’s rats the size of a tiny cat.. After 11 pm, everyone usually goes to bed and so the lights go out.. Rats take the stage right after you. But they are not mice like that, I have never seen such big ones before.
Another feature of the hostel when it’s evening is that it hosts stray dogs.. Since the door is always open, the dogs come to the hostel when it gets dark, they hang out in the kitchen and the common area and are happy with the food given by the people.. Then they hunt the rats in the hostel until morning. Yes, this is the first time I’ve seen this one.
My night toilet is coming. outside on the toilet. As soon as I open the door of the room I’m staying in, the rats are running around, and some are jumping in front of me.. I close the door right away so I can’t hear it, so I can’t see it.. I wait 1-2 minutes and turn it on again, this time there is no sound. You have to walk 20-25 meters until you go to the toilet.. It’s dark all around, I’m leaving with the light of the phone. The dogs have not been idle, they kill a few mice every night and leave them bloody and alive.. The corridors of the hostel are full of blood like a horror movie, and then you see a rat, almost the size of a cat. Friend, if I come back, I have a toilet, I have to go, the mouse lies in the middle of the corridor, I have to jump over it to pass.. I don’t want to look because it’s covered in blood. Just when I’m passing by, I come to life or something, I’m going to be completely crazy, I have to go to the toilet.. Of course, it doesn’t end with going to the toilet, this time you have to take out the frog/s inside.. I mean a forest area, there is also a small stream, so frogs are also very popular.. The friend frog doesn’t come out either.. almost to my head. When the light is on, it passes and starts bouncing against the wall.. Jumps in place for minutes. wait for it to come out. The toilet is already a square meter, it doesn’t make much sense to enter it without leaving it.. In the morning, I see that someone has taken the mice, but the tiny traces of blood are still there.. In short, every night has passed like this without exaggeration.. I tell the owner of the hostel, just because this is the island, he says such things.. There is another hostel to stay, but it is expensive, I stayed here for 6 days because I had to work during the day on my own.. I stayed but even as I write now I still don’t know how, why I stayed there. It means that you have to experience this too.
From here on, I moved to the larger island of Bocas Del Toro.. The hostel I found there was 10 usd per night.. The room is air conditioned oh how nice when you say. An itch began to take hold at night. There are bed bugs called bed bugs in the bed. You can’t see it but I know it itch. I said friend, what is this?. i can’t sleep i can’t sleep. OK, no mice, cockroaches or frogs here, but bed bugs are worse than them.. Luckily I was able to get to the other empty bed and barely get some sleep without being bitten by them any more.. First thing in the morning was to look for another hostel.. At that time, I came in front of Selina Hostel.. I will look for a room and take a tour to go to the island of Zapatilla.. While talking to the tour official, I mentioned that I was traveling like this, I was a photographer, I shot videos.. The woman was very interested. When you look at the work I’ve done, okay, let’s get you a free room, we can even arrange a tour, you can shoot a video for us.. Friend, after a sleepless week, it was like winning the lottery.. I said ok straight. While waiting for a shared room they gave me the king room in the hostel. Don’t look at what I call a hostel, it’s the biggest hostel in Central and South America.. 300 bed capacity if I’m not mistaken. They also have luxury rooms like they gave me. I went into the room, a huge bed with white sheets, a brand new air conditioner, and most importantly, a private bathroom for me.. It’s really hard for me to explain what it means to have a private bathroom in the room.. Especially in the last week, after going to the toilet every night by jumping over rats, the value of such a bathroom is tripled or quintupled.
I stayed 3 nights in this hostel you see below.. The common use area, being by the sea, everywhere full of hammocks, clean, the music is beautiful, the weather is beautiful, there is a free breakfast special for me like a king, everyone shows me a special interest, they take me for two days for free on the island tour, which normally costs 30 usd, so as long as I stay there, I’m the king you know.
They loved this video I prepared. They told me that they wanted to host me again for other different tours, but I didn’t want to stay any longer because I was bored with the island, so I came to the capital Panama.. In short, the reward for the trouble I went through for 7 nights was so good.