New Year’s on Bastimentos, Panamá

While the tourists have gone to the neighboring bigger island isla Colón to celebrate New Year’s in style in Bocas del Toro, the small Caribbean island Bastimentos remains relatively calm, even when at midnight the New Year is rung in and loud screams ring across the bay from the Bocas del Toro tourist discos.

I can hardly imagine a better setting for a New Year’s celebration than the beautiful Caribbean archipelago of Bocas del Toro. However, I was not the only traveler with the idea of spending New Year’s here and upon arrival found the entire island booked out and reluctantly resorted to spend the night on the neighboring and smaller Bastimentos Island, only because there was still space available. This decision, however, turned out to be excellent as Bastimentos is much more charming than Bocas del Toro. In addition to a truly mellow Caribbean vibe and amazing virgin white sand beaches lined with green palm trees and jungle vegetation, Bastimentos has a special New Year’s tradition that makes it unique.

The nights leading up to New Year’s and even the night of the 31st remain suspiciously quiet and I was starting to wonder whether Bastimentos is so relaxed that New Year’s has completely blown past it. But no, the morning of the 1st of January I learned differently as the neighbor turns up his stereo so loud that I thought the speaker was next to my ear. As it turns out the people of Bastimentos had been resting for a 3 day New Year’s party marathon that starts on the 1st of January. All families on the island buy lots of alcohol in advance and prepare large dishes of food. Then starting on the 1st of January or whenever they feel like it (at 7am in my neighbor’s case) they turn on loud music. This is a symbol and represents an invitation for anybody to stop in for drinks and food. After a few hours the music is turned off and the hosts hit the road to visit a neighbor. Day and night the streets are filled with partying locals heading from one house to the next to anyone of the many houses where music is audible. And so the party goes on until the night of the 3rd of January (or until all the rum has been drunk). While I have been to a lot of New Year’s parties, this one was both unique and a very fun tradition. Happy New Year!!!