Travel Banter

A few weeks ago we searched for Oropendola nesting colonies. They are unique birds that nest in groups, high under the tree canopies. The birds live in the jungle of Latin and South America. Their nests resemble long ‘socks’.

We did not find them last time. But some mornings, I hear Oropendola calls near our boat. The calls are unmistakable, deep, and distinctive. To me, they sound like a melodic gurgling or bubbling of water through a metallic pipe.

The calls tempted me to explore the jungle next door. I found the birds, and I found the nests, but not where I expected.

Join me for a walk through the jungle, feel the heat, and wonder at the thick vegetation. Check out tiny immature bananas on a tree when I stumbled into a remote ‘finca’ - a tiny farm an indigenous person is keeping atop a random hill.

They are bright. They are poisonous, They are the frogs of Bocas Del Toro, Panama. When Charles Darwin noticed the diversions of features among closely-related species on neighboring islands, he arrived to a profound idea - the principle of natural selection.

Darwin focused on the beaks of finches but the Poison Dart frogs of Bocas Del Toro are another great example of such polymorphism. The many islands are only a mile apart, but each has a frog of its own color. And they are beautiful. We go to Isla Bastimentos to look for them, and find them.

I am deeply in love with nature and the manifestations of its creativity. No one would argue nature’s impact on art. But few realize how powerful its influence is in my own field of mathematics. In fact, the ants were responsible for my choices in life, with their uncanny ability to optimize travel routes. The ants are amazing at efficiency, and the understanding of how they operate, led to the modern optimization algorithms. Not of the social media variety, but of the type that allow your phones to work.

The realization that individually simple, but socially complex ants could perform the nearly intractable computations for millions of years ahead of us made me interested in understanding how to crack their code.

I digress. Or maybe, I am making a point that nature is the rock which informs my thinking, and my relationship with the world. So, when an opportunity to explore a new magic of nature arrives, Alex and I usually take it. And when it does not, we turn off the noise of modernity and go looking for it.

While my mind is entirely consumed by my book project until the end of August, I am happy to find respite in telling stories of what excites us through video.

We chat about a few facts, and watch the frogs hop around. They are very difficult to stop watching.

The following is an auto-generated summary of the show:

We took a trip to Isla Bastimentos in search of the famous red poison dart frogs, one of the many colorful frog varieties found throughout the Bocas del Toro archipelago. Each island has its own unique frog coloration due to geographic isolation—on Bastimentos, they’re bright red; on Isla Colón, typically green; and on the mainland, some are black with green spots.

As we hiked through the jungle, we were excited but cautious, especially with our dog in tow—we worried he might try to lick or eat one of the frogs, which could be dangerous. Fortunately, he seemed to instinctively avoid them, maybe put off by their striking red color.

When we finally spotted the frogs, we were amazed. They were even smaller than we expected—about the size of a thumb—but incredibly vibrant, glowing red with tiny black spots. Though they’re known for their toxicity, we learned that these frogs don’t start out very poisonous; they build up their chemical defenses over time through their diet, and the mothers feed them unfertilized eggs to boost their toxicity as they grow. Watching the frogs sit still and puff their tiny throats in and out as we approached was a surreal and unforgettable moment.

Stilt homes are all around us in Panama. Some are over the water, others are embedded into to steep hillsides of the surrounding hills and mountains. We chat about these homes, their construction and ecological benefits and risks.

The stilt houses are not new. The indigenous people have lived in these since before Columbus visited the area in 1502. And they only have grown in popularity since.

Watch the episode for a glimpse of these places…

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Episode transcript summary:

In this episode, we explore the unique charm and long-standing tradition of stilt houses built over the water in Bocas del Toro, Panama. From restaurants and homes to hotels and even co-working hostels, the over-the-water lifestyle is deeply integrated into daily life here. We visited an indigenous community in Salt Creek on Isla Bastimentos, where people have been living in stilt homes for generations—long before Columbus arrived in 1502. The geography of the region, with steep hills and flood-prone mangroves, made elevated housing practical and necessary. Later, Afro-Caribbean workers brought additional stilt-house traditions during the banana boom of the 1800s, further shaping the region’s architectural identity.

We noticed that construction methods remain simple and consistent—wooden stilts (now often concrete-wrapped in PVC), open walls, thatch or zinc roofs, and even floorboard gaps for airflow. These structures are often built just beyond the mangroves, helping preserve this vital ecosystem and buffer against sea surges. However, there’s an ecological downside: older homes sometimes lack proper sanitation systems, with waste going directly into the water. That poses risks for marine life and local residents who fish and swim nearby. It’s a clear reminder that traditional living must also adapt to modern environmental standards.

As we talked about whether we’d live in an over-the-water house ourselves, we found ourselves split. The views and tranquility are tempting, and there are fewer bugs out on the water. But practical concerns like space for our dog and long-term effects of climate change gave us pause. We’d need some essentials—a composting toilet, for one—before making that leap. For now, it’s a solid “maybe,” but we definitely appreciate the beauty, culture, and ingenuity behind this way of life.

Talking of weather is not fun you say? Well, we beg to differ. The rainy season in Panama lasts from May until November. It rains a lot, but the sun still shines.

What is it like to live with it? Surprisingly fine. We unpack the story of the rain and share what it’s like to be here.

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Episode Summary:

In this episode of Travel Banter, we talk about what the rainy season really feels like here in Bocas del Toro, Panama. While the forecast from April to December often shows daily rain, the reality is more balanced. Yes, it rains frequently—sometimes every day—but usually only for a few hours. We still get plenty of sunshine, whether it’s a bright afternoon after a morning shower or a sunny morning before an afternoon thunderstorm.

We compared Bocas to Seattle and were surprised by the numbers. Bocas gets nearly four times as much rain—about 140 inches a year—but also nearly twice as many sunny days. The rain here is warm, and the weather shifts quickly. It’s all driven by trade winds from the Atlantic colliding with the mountains, and the convective build-up from the hot ocean. Some days, we watch the clouds grow into giant thunderheads and light up the night sky with lightning.

Living here means adapting. We always carry rain gear—umbrellas, trench coats, and rubber boots. Our dog loves playing in the rain, though it means extra clean-up before he comes aboard. Locals often collect rainwater from rooftops into big tanks, which we use too—for drinking, washing, and showering. Rain is part of life here, and we’ve grown to love the rhythm of it. It’s lush, it’s practical, and it makes Bocas feel alive.

We are in the Bocas Del Toro archipelago. The islands are home to much wildlife: howler and capuchin monkeys, sea turtles, poisoned dart frogs, and many more. But today, we talk about sloth.

They are unique creatures, docile symbols of the islands and the island life. We ran into one on our recent walk. We talk about their habits, habitats, and unique symbioses - mammalian-plant mutualism.

This episode is both video and audio. The audio is available on all podcast distribution channels. And you can see the video episode on Substack at blueplanetstories.com, or on YouTube:

You can subscribe for free. If you choose to support us, we donate 15% of our net proceeds to World Literacy Foundation. Help children read.

Episode summary:

In this episode of Blue Planet Travel Banter, we dive into one of our favorite topics—the sloths of Isla Colón. These peaceful, slow-moving animals have fascinated us for years, and we share some of the most surprising things we’ve learned. From their habit of only coming down from trees once a week to poop, to the green algae that grows in their fur as camouflage, sloths are full of quiet complexity. That algae isn’t just for show—it forms part of a remarkable plant-animal mutualism, one of the only known examples in mammals.

We also recount a personal encounter with a sloth that had wandered onto the forest floor and was being harassed by a couple of dogs. After chasing the dogs off, we helped the sloth back into a tree and contacted a local rescue group to make sure it was okay. Watching the sloth move so slowly, unsure if it was injured or just doing what sloths do, reminded us how vulnerable and misunderstood these creatures are—especially on islands like Colón, where dogs, roads, and shrinking habitats create constant threats.

Throughout the episode, we talk about where you can find sloths on Isla Colón—places like Playa Bluff, Big Creek, and near cecropia trees, their favorite hangouts. We offer tips for spotting them in the wild (bring binoculars and a lot of patience!) and reflect on why these animals mean so much to us. In their stillness and simplicity, sloths model a kind of natural mindfulness—and remind us that slowing down isn’t always a bad thing.

Bocas del Toro is an archipelago of 200 islands and islets on the west side of Panama. Boats are the way, the main way, to get around between the islands, to grocery shop or get to work.

We talk about the two main boat types that make life possible here for the locals and tourists.

We are in Bocas Del Toro, Panama embracing the local’s way of drinking. Yes, an occasional Balboa beer, but mostly coconut water, fresh off the tree.

But first, we chat about machetes, the most useful tool in these parts and the shortcut to feeling like a local.

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In the podcast Alex narrates the story then we talk about our experience in the city of One Hundred Fires. You can read the story below and view the photo gallery after.

I start on Malecon, the main boulevard connecting Punta Gorda to the center of Cienfuegos. The Malecon is busy on the weekends and for an hour before sunsets, but in the morning it is mine. Only a few electric tuk-tuk taxis, and a smoky car or two.

I run between the Cienfuegos Bay and the parks, among palms and potholes, and through the memories of my youth. No palm trees in my teenage years but the potholes and the strife of life in a communist country. Deficits, limited future, and creative ways to have fun without the amenities to spend your money, or without the money to spend. Cuba reminds me of too much.

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I ran the Malecon three times since we arrived last week, and I am looking for something new. I turn away from the bay and towards the only high-rise apartment building to the East. It is no higher than twelve stories tall, yet the most prominent feature for miles.

I zig-zag towards it. A right turns me directly into the sun and its growing heat. A left brings me into the shade of the low-slung two-story homes. Calling these “two-story” oversells their size. They are tiny, two rooms stacked above each other, with the second floor offset to make room for a balcony. Once bright in magenta, yellow, light blue, and rose, they are now grey, the color of crumbling concrete, with the evidence of old paint as stubborn flakes refusing to let go.

An elderly man sits in a chair on the flat roof of the first floor. It is not like a balcony as it is open to the sky. Nor like a patio as it has no rails. Just a flat section of roof in front of the second-story room offset to the back of the home. Two children exit the door underneath the old man, parents follow them out, then the grandma. I assume they are a single family, all living in a tiny home.

Such concentrated living is a plight of Communism and a plight of poverty. I saw “Komunalki” in old Soviet Union. They were the four or five-bedroom apartments that housed multiple families. Before the revolution of 1917, a large family owned each flat. After the revolution, in a version of people’s justice, half of that family was thrown out on the street, and the other half “disappeared” into the camps or to the mass graves. Other four families moved in, a family to a room, four families to a toilet. I wonder how the Cuban revolution managed that transition.

I run into a busier avenue. The high rise is two blocks away, but dead-end streets and fences block my path. I turn and run along a stream of walkers. They are packing the sidewalk, so I run on a road against the traffic, between people and cars.

Most people are in uniforms on this block. There are nurses in white dresses, white stockings, and white hats, as if from a World War I movie set. There are boys in blue shorts and white shirts, and girls in blue skirts and white shirts. Girls wear white knee-high socks. Both wear little red pioneer ties tucked under the white collars. They could be from a Soviet propaganda film about happy children marching to school.

In two blocks, I see the school on my left and the hospital on my right. The uniforms make sense now. In two more blocks, the uniforms change to the military greens of interior ministry, and the universal uniform of office workers: skirts and blouses with heels. Although, I don’t see dressed-up men. I can’t explain it.

The traffic is busy on the main streets. It is hard to breathe. The pollution is in my lungs. The morning humidity smothers the smog and keeps it hovering near the ground. I can smell it and feel it in my lungs. It acts like altitude hypoxia suppressing my breathing and slowing my running pace. I turn onto a small street past a busy bus station. The stench of pollution lessens.

I run into a crowd of kids. They are younger, elementary school-age, but wear the same uniforms as the other schoolchildren, only the ties are light blue.

I remember the red ties, but not the blues of the young kids. In elementary school, we wore a lapel pin - a red shiny star with a gold bust of Lenin in the middle. We were the young “Octobrist,” then young “Pioneers” after the third grade when we graduated to red ties. I slow to ask the kids what they call themselves but I realize I don’t have the vocabulary for a chat about dogma.

I climb a hill and pass a horse carriage. Six people are in the cart, mostly well dressed, three on each side, facing each other. “Taxi de Caballo” is hand-painted on the boards of the cart in a well-executed font. The man prods a diminutive horse, or a mule, to pull up the hill, and it does, yet slower than me. The fact that it does at all, astounds me. Then the carriage passes me on the downhill. How does it stop?

I run toward the city center. I see less color of concrete and more paint on the homes. A few buildings grow taller, up to three stories, some grow wider. The ubiquitous anti-theft cages on windows and doors are more ornate and painted black. They show no rust of poverty.

I pass a newer Mercedes, a lightly used GMC pickup truck, an old Soviet Lada, a Czech Java motorcycle with a sidecar, a 1950s well-used Chevy, and two more horse carriages. Two centuries of transportation in two regular blocks. The past, present, and future.

They simultaneously exist in Cuba in a nod to physics’ theory of Eternalism. The flow of time is an illusion, it says. Past, present, and future all exist at once, laid out across time, comfortably coexisting. The idea was born from a theory - the scientific revolution of Einstein’s special relativity. Cuba’s Eternalism was born from a failed experiment, a people’s revolution, grown from aspirations of equality but fizzled from the mandates of realities and reluctant human nature.

A motorcycle nearly hits me at a cross street. He beeps and swerves. I jump back to the curb and resolve to run without esoteric diversions. The tourist city center is too busy for that. The chaos is already on the streets.

“Cambio, cambio,” a man hollers at me. He offers to exchange my dollars for pesos. Why me? I am in a running tank top, hat, and running shorts. Where would I keep the money? But I am white, and I am running. I have not seen Cubans run here. I am a foreigner indeed. Why not try yelling at me?

I jump over a gap between the road and a curb. It is a foot deep and is common on roads with sidewalks. When the city lays a new layer of asphalt to improve the road, it does so directly on top of the old, without the hassle of grinding and hauling the asphalt out. Efficient, and dangerous. The road repairs grow the road taller, the asphalt layers divulging its age like a cut-down tree.

The downtown square is beautiful. The description of Cienfuegos's Spanish colonial architecture is in every tour book. I will leave it out. But under the trees, next to a statue of some once-important fellow, I see a scene of note. A young man and a young woman, in their school uniforms and their red ties, are in a tight embrace. They look into each other’s eyes and kiss. Ten yards away, another girl in a red tie is smoking on a bench and stares at the couple. She looks at a girl in a hug and clenches her fist. She clenches her jaw. She looks at a guy and her features soften. Well, s**t. The story is the same world all over.

I laugh inside. And then I think of their future. These young people believe it is in their hands. I silently urge them to act on their hopes before life’s disappointments morph them into the complacent fatalism of the adults. Their futures ought not to be determined, not by governments nor by physics. Forget Eternalism, predestination, and fate, and let them choose what they want to be, and what their country can be. Let them have the agency to steer their future and break through the restrictions of ideologies and stifling embargoes of the West.

We read the story from the island and talk about the majestic place. The story is below.

The sand is the whitest in Cayo Largo. It is coral ground by the relentless swell of the Caribbean Sea. The swell crushes against the reefs, breaks the dead bits, and abrades them against the older sand in a slow motion of years. It uses the sand to make more of it.

The reefs run for a hundred miles along this South Cuban archipelago. Its entire length. They form quiet lagoons and protect them from the anger of an open sea. The sand is soft and warm, but hard on the eyes with the albedo of snow. Sunglasses help.

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We walk along the beach, Alex and I. The dog runs. He dashes between the bushes and little palms where the lizards hide, sniffs there, wags his erect tail, then dashes back into the clear azure sea to cool off from the heat. He is relentless.

Tourists walk by. Not many but a steady trickle, every minute or so. A group of Europeans speaking French. A young couple bantering in Portuguese. An older couple, nudists, the woman is wearing panties and no bra, and the man wearing nothing at all. He has the biggest hairy bush, trimmed in a perfect cube, and the longest, and possibly, the oldest penis I have ever seen. Flaccid and tired.

‘How is the island?’ Amaury asks on WhatsApp. ‘I hear it is the most beautiful place.’

‘Yeah,’ I type back, ‘have you never been?’

‘Cubans are not allowed there. It is for tourists. For generating convertible cash.’

Foreigners only on Cayo Largo beach. Cuban’s trim palms, lay palm fronds on a roof over a stage, sweep, running a bar and a store. They are the workers, the cogs of communist machinery perpetuating tourism and showcasing the communist paradise. This beautiful piece of Cuba is off-limits to Cubans. Fucked up, isn’t it?

The next day I run along the beach and think about the injustice. I am part of it in a way.

But, is it not the same in most places of beauty? Here, the locals work for the tourists on government orders. Elsewhere, the dictates of economy enforce an implicit divide. Around the all-inclusive resorts of the Caribbean, the tourists spill out of the airplanes, pack the gated walls of a contrived paradise, party, spill their drinks, and spill their stories to each other, without noticing that the only locals around are the ones changing their bedsheets. It is the same around the world.

I run another mile then slow. The sun is higher now, and hot. I fight the urge to check what is around another corner. I still have to run back. I whistle to the dog. He turns, sees me stop, and dashes for the bushes. I let him.

This part of the beach is empty. I am the only one. I take off my clothes and wade naked into the sea. This is after all a nudist beach, but I am uncomfortable without the small patch of my running shorts. Why is it so hard to shed the puritan dogma? Even in places where it is suspended.

I float in two feet of water. My knees scrape the waves of sand on the bottom. The dog rushes into the bay and shatters the mirror surface of the turquoise water. He comes over to check in, then wades among the starfish. They taunt him with their bright color and complete indifference. He is fascinated by these creatures in plain view, a foot away, but out of reach.

Soon we are both cool. I put on the shorts, and we run the miles back to Alex. I round a tiny inlet and jump away from the water. A small salt-water crocodile glares at me. I catch him on a video scurrying away and settling on the sandy bottom a few feet away. A youngster - only five feet long, most of him are tail and teeth.

“Hey, look,” I show the video to Alex when we are back. She shivers. “That’s the only local on this beach,” I say, “and I still ran him off his spot.”

We rounded the Western Tip of Cuba and explored islands of the Archipelago de Los Canarreos. In this episode, we talk about our visit to Cayo Campos and read a story from that island.

It is a slice of paradise, a site for a study of human impact on remote areas, and a place to ask ourselves questions about what we want to see for ourselves.

You can subscribe for free. If you choose to support us, we donate 15% of our net proceeds to World Literacy Foundation. Help children read.