Yea we will get to the wild life and bars, but this one is about the wildlife here in Bocas. Some pretty amazing creatures to see and experience for sure. Both of our properties are in rain forests – with one of them being on a bay and the other on the beach directly facing the Caribbean Sea. They are on different Islands as well, so there are somewhat different creatures at each place. There is a lot of biodiversity in Panama – very similar to Costa Rica, and since we are only about 25 miles south of Costa Rica this is not surprising. So I want to go through and talk about some of the animals we have seen and interacted with and maybe do it by cool factor – at least what I think are the coolest animals we have seen. Before I get to that I can say that the animal interactions have really been a good bonding experience for me with my kids. They love seeing the animals and hunting for them. I need to find anything I can these days to connect with them as they are full on teenagers at this point – and the animals do fit that bill.
I think one of my favorite animals in Bocas is the three toed sloth. These guys are pretty common actually even though they are on endangered species lists. They are in the trees around both of our homes and I see at least one almost everyday I am there. What has been really interesting is that they do come down to the ground when they have to go to urinate, so we have had several ground encounters. When we first bought our beach home that we call Casa de las Olas (house of the waves), we were driving down the dirt road to get to it for the very first time and take possession and right in front of us a mother with a baby on her back were crawling across the road. I teased the realtor that he planted them there “queue the sloth”, but it was just one of those moments and of course we had to all get lots of pictures. I had another up close experience when we were coming over the volcano on the mainland from David to Bocas and we slammed on our brakes because a sloth was crossing around a blind curve on a paved road with faster moving cars. We got out and I picked the sloth up and carried him to safety. I tested it out first to make sure they really did move slowly even when pissed, and yes they do – so I felt comfortable grabbing him.
Sloths tend to hang out in Cecropia trees and eat the leaves. They are distinctive looking trees so its pretty easy to locate them once you know what you are looking for. And once you find one, you can be pretty sure you will have plenty of time to take pictures etc.
The other animals I really like to watch are the monkeys. At the beach house we have both howler monkeys and white faced capuchin monkeys. They just happen to have a monkey freeway which goes right over the house which is great for seeing them, but not so great when the howlers decide to show up a bit early. If you have never heard a howler you are in for a surprise. They are small to medium size monkeys but it sounds like they are King Kong. These guys make some really loud sounds and I read somewhere that they are the loudest animal there is – don’t quote me on that. They come in pretty good sized packs and hang in the trees for a bit and then move on. I hear they can be a little nasty sometimes, but they have always been pretty cool with us. The capuchins are smaller with cute white faces and they are less commonly seen but they still cruise through. We watched a mom training her baby to leap off a branch which was pretty cool.
Next on the cool animal list for us are the sea turtles. It just so happens that the beach house is on a very isolated beach with no other homes around. Four types of sea turtles lay their eggs on our beach – Leatherbacks, Hawskbill turtles, green turtles and loggerhead turtles. They come in to lay their eggs at night so we have seen them but we try and stay away so they are not disturbed. The leatherbacks are enormous and we have seen a couple of those – picture a Volkswagen bug. Mostly what we see on our morning walks is their nests and and flipper marks. We typically spend a little time covering up their tracks as unfortunately there are poachers that want the eggs. Luckily not much of this goes on where we are, but it does happen and it sucks with all of these turtle species being endangered.
One of the really neat things that happened to us last time we were down is that several nests were hatching. Unfortunately we found one nest when a local dog cruised by with a baby turtle in its mouth which we rescued. So we all worked together to protect the nest and assist the babies for the next several hours and make sure they made it to the ocean. It was one of those experiences we will never forget, and again a bonding moment with the kids. Only 1 in a thousand make it to breeding age, so we want to do everything we can on our little stretch of beach to guard and protect these magnificent creatures.
There are supposed to be some big cats in the jungles of panama but not on these islands, they are on the mainland near by. There are smaller cats and ocelots, but we have not seen any yet.
At our home in Dolphin Bay, guess what, there are lots of dolphins. They are bottle nose dolphins that live in our bay for their whole lives. Smithsonian says they have been living there for around 1,000 years and have isolated themselves from other ocean dolphins. Since Dolphin Bay is very protected the water is extremely calm – more like a lake than an ocean. The dolphins frolic out in front of us and occasionally come up and check out whats happening when we are kayaking or paddle boarding. They have their babies and at certain times of year they stay in the shallows with their babies right in front of our house. Pretty amazing.
There is no shortage of reptiles or amphibians to see. In Dolphin Bay we have lots of red frogs – the poisonous kind. They are pretty harmless to humans even if you handle them but a secretion from their skin was used at some point to make poison for poison darts. We have a number of other types of frogs around and lots of lizards. We just had two that were really cool and looked like mini dinosaurs. They are the kind that stand up and run on their back legs when they get spooked – someone told me they are called Jesus lizards, but I have no idea if this is true.
One amazing reptile experience we had was at the beach house. Lauren and I were out kicking around in the waves on a pretty rough day. I looked over and saw an Iguanas head. It looked like it was struggling and kept getting pounded by the waves. I ran in and grabbed a huge palm leaf to try and help him. I got him on the palm frond and he fell off and went under water and was limp. A wave hit us and we lost track of him for a few seconds. Lauren is a vet tech and has worked with animals her whole life, so once we were able to see him again, she grabbed him and carried him out of the waves. He was completely limp and looked lifeless. And um, he was five feet long, so not a small creature. Remember I told you I am a doctor? I know nothing about reptiles but I took him once I knew he would not bite my hand off and hung him upside down and squeezed his chest. Water was coming out of his mouth but he still wasn’t moving. No, I didn’t do mouth the mouth. What we did is ran him up to a really sunny branch and laid him on it. We didn’t see any movement for about 2 minutes and then his eyes opened. He sat there for a long time just breathing and watching us. His eyes would track us more and more, but he just laid there and hung out. We got some good pictures and then went in the house to give him some space and when we came back he was gone and we could see his tracks into the forest. It was an amazing experience. Wish the kids were there for that one, but Lauren and I got to have that as ours.
I have seen a couple vine snakes so far but nothing bigger or scarier than that. There are some Fer de lance snakes in the jungles that are poisonous, but we take precautions when we go into the jungle and wear boots and bring our experienced caretakers with us who see everything like a minute before we do.
The birds are off the hook here too. Lots of types of parrots and there are Toucans and we have even seen them. 
Hummingbirds of all kinds are everywhere. We have some neighbors that are birders and they took my mom out birdwatching. They saw some insane number of bird types in a couple hours so we may have to do a little more learning about the birds.
I wont go into all the amazing things that we see snorkeling but there are a LOT of amazing creatures including many types of starfish near our place.
Lastly for now there are Manatees around these islands somewhere. Really want to see one, but have not so far.
So there you have it, amazing animals all over the place in Bocas. Notice how I didn’t go into the insects? Maybe we do that another time…
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