On our first full day in Bocas del Toro, we had no plans, in fact we had no plans for our entire week in Bocas, so we stopped by a few different places to get advice. The surf shop, the dive shop, a few restaurants and a tourist / real estate office told us that a trip to Red Frog beach was a “must see” so we opted to explore that beach on our first day. It was not disappointing in any way.

There are essentially 4 ways to get around Bocas. On foot, on a bike, via a taxi or via a water taxi. Red Frog Beach is on a different island than the one were were staying on, so we hired a water taxi to drive us over to Red Frog. Red Frog Beach is in national park, so the water taxi ride cost us $40 (round trip) and then we had to pay $12 for the 5 of us to enter the park. We got dropped off on the southern side of the island and walked about 10 or 15 minutes through the jungle to emerge on the north side of the island and at Red Frog Beach. It was amazingly beautiful.  Crystal clear blue/green water, perfect sand as far as the eye can see, ending in beautiful black rock formations that are the end caps to the huge beach. There were maybe 20 other people on the beach so it was nice and secluded.

We rented a boogie board for a few hours and all of us played in the water, surf and sand until lunch. I haven’t seen water that blue since we lived in Maui, so I was content staring at the waves.

Once the kids were “done” and “starving” we walked to the end of the beach to the only restaurant on the water (and possibly in the area?) and had a pretty good lunch. While we were sitting at the restaurant, we witnessed a man who was clearly fed up with Panama (or life?) explode on a waitress about taking too long (or something like that). It led to a teaching moment with the kids about an article Erin had just read regarding the differences between being a Traveler and a Tourist.

Erin wrote a great post about that article and it was a fun conversation between us and the kids. The kids all decided that they would rather be travelers (instead of tourists) which turned out to be a good thing, because our food order was messed up 3 times before they finally got it right! It was actually quite amusing and annoying all the same.

Post lunch, we headed up a intriguing deck/path to a scenic overlook. We tried to take a family photo, but failed. Then we headed back to the docks on the other side of the island to meet our water taxi who was supposed to arrive at 3:30. Sure enough at 3:29, he arrived, ready to take us back to Bocas. If you are in Bocas, make sure to visit Red Frog, it’s worth the journey for sure!