Provincia de Bocas del Toro

The province is less a single place than a sequence of contrasts. On the mainland the land flattens into lowland, where the Changuinola river runs slow and brown past plantations laid out in ruler-straight rows. Towards Almirante the landscape turns commercial and practical, with port cranes, a working waterfront and the ferry traffic that keeps the rest of the province supplied. Inland and to the west, the forest climbs into the foothills, and the Ngäbe communities there keep their own rhythms, far from the tourist-facing lanes of the islands. Out on the cays, the mood shifts again. Reef and sand take over, the mangroves thin, and the water turns a clear green that seems to have no bottom at all.

A day here usually begins in Bocas town on Isla Colón, where the streets are sand and planks rather than tarmac, and bicycles lean against the verandas. People speak Spanish, but also the English-based Creole that is the first language of many families descended from workers brought to the region a century ago, and the two mix easily across a counter or a fence. Across the channel, Isla Bastimentos has a quieter character. Its villages are small, its paths run through palm and dense understorey, and the sound of surf reaches you before you see it. The Bastimentos National Marine Park protects reefs and mangrove channels, and walking its trails you pass tangles of roots that grip the mud like hands.

Water is the organising fact of the province. Whether you are crossing to Isla Carenero for an afternoon of swimming, drifting over seagrass in the shallows or sitting on a dock while the tide turns, you are always moving between one landmass and the next. Fishermen mend nets on the sand. Children jump from pilings into the harbour. The meal that arrives is usually fish, cooked simply, with rice and coconut and a bottle of something cold.

What stays with you is not any single view but the way the province refuses to settle into one identity. It is a working river delta, a Creole town, an indigenous highland, and a string of reefs, all held together by the sea. Leaving by the last water taxi of the evening, you find yourself looking back at the lamps coming on across the water, already wanting to come back and see the parts you missed.