In “Isla Bastimentos–Visit Pre or Post a Panama Canal Transit,” Carol Bareuther (All at Sea) gives us another item to add to our bucket list, an island on Panama’s Caribbean Sea side:

Transiting the Panama Canal can be a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket-list experience. What it’s not is a relaxing pleasure cruise. There’re crowds, time constraints and costs. That’s what makes it so important, and pleasurable, to visit a spot totally the opposite of the canal zone just before or after a transit. Chart your course for beautiful Isla Bastimentos, located 150 nautical miles to the west on Panama’s Caribbean Sea side. It’s a relaxed tropical destination, ready to explore by land and sea, with first-rate facilities and reasonable rates at IGY’s Red Frog Marina. [. . .]

Isla Bastimentos is a 24-square-mile island, and one of the largest of the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, a chain of islands located west in Panama in the Caribbean Sea. The island itself is home to the Isla Bastimentos National Marine Park and the Red Frog Island Resort’s Nature Preserve, both of which cover a large portion of the island. The crowds here are Mother Nature made: schools of fish, flocks of birds and species of amphibians galore. Add to this miles of beautiful beaches, lush mangrove forests and -easily-navigable waterways. Its this setting that makes for a watersport’s wonderland. [. . .] IGY’s Red Frog Marina is a great base from which to explore this seaside paradise of Isla Bastimentos.

See full article at https://www.allatsea.net/isla-bastimentos-visit-pre-post-panama-canal-transit/

Also see www.igymarinas.com/marinas/panama