Email Us Your Experiences
We want to hear if you have experienced problems in Bocas del Toro, particularly if you have had a negative experience with a real estate developer.
and let us know.
Bocas Joke: "Waiter! There's a fly in my soup!" ... "So it's not biting you then is it Sir."
No-See-Ums are No Joke!
Sand flies (no-see-ums, chitras, biting midges) are a major holiday-destroying experience - and this was what I found in in Bocas del Toro. Some real estate developers, building nearby to Bocas del Toro town, described this as a minor irritation occasionally ... something you just forgot about a few days later. I was there for many months and it was more of a problem for me the longer it went on. Sometimes on the beaches I only had ten a day, sometimes 30 ... and God help you if you itched the bites.
The "bug problem" is generally agreed to be worse on the Caribbean side than the Pacific side of Panama - on the Caribbean side there is substantially more rain, for longer (about 9 months of the year!) and loads of mangrove. The situation with mangrove is that it is a protected species (which is good, as it binds the land together around the sea). However, it is mangrove which holds the eggs of the chitras/sand flies in its roots and surrounding mud. Some of the developers, although they will minimise the severity of the problem, will spray the mangrove every few days with a chemical smog in order to interrupt the egg-laying cycle: I experienced this at one development, when I was woken early several mornings by a guy (who wore no mask) with a loud, gasoline-driven sprayer spewing dense white clouds of I-know-not-what into the mangroves surrounding the cabina (this stuff came up through the floorboards). Great solution.
What is a No-See-Um?
"No-see-ums are tiny biting flies that often live near water. You often see many of them swarming together in a cloud. Keep your mouth shut or you might breathe some in or swallow them! (It won’t hurt you, but it will probably make you cough.) Biting midges are called no-see-ums because they’re so tiny that it is hard to see ‘um". (no-see-ums).
A Bocas Del Toro Traveller's Nightmare
"Ever heard of the infamous "chitras"? They are f...... mean, they come in different sizes and colours and they bite like Hell!!!! It is a plague here, and even a speciality of the place, but even knowing that, it does not help. Every newcomer gets eaten alive day in-day out and even a 50% deet repellent which could kill anybody is not of any use to keep them away". chitras.