From the air, the scene vaguely resembled Washington's Puget Sound, forested islands strewn across a mountain-rimmed bay. Then our plane's gradual descent magnified a geometric patchwork of banana fields by the mainland shore, thick mangroves and turquoise reefs in the shallows around the many islets. In the waterside villages, rusty metal roofs capped open-air bars and restaurants. As the airplane dropped toward the small airport, several boats criss-crossed the bay below us, a mix of yellow and blue motor launches, homemade wooden skiffs and dugout canoes. We were in Bocas del Toro, Panama, and it was time to go diving.

Our friend, Rolando Arburola of Costa Rica Dive, was investigating a new itinerary for his travel company. He wanted an outsider's opinion of Bocas, an archipelago of islands nestled in a broad bay on Panama's northwest Caribbean coast. Amy and I were willing test subjects, having 'endured' a trip with him on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica the previous year. This September, we returned to Costa Rica. Our plan, however, was to venture into its southern neighbor.

The morning after our flight into San Jose, a mural-splotched Nature Air DHC-6-300 lifted us and our gear into the sky, and then angled toward Panama. Below us, the red and green roofs, like a mosaic valley, of Costa Rica's capital city soon gave way to densely forested mountains and ribbons of cascading whitewater. Out one side of the plane, the Caribbean shimmered; out the other side, we could see the peaks of the Cordillera de Talamanca guarding the way to the nearby Pacific coast.

Part of the allure of Bocas del Toro is that it is still relatively unknown to most North American divers. As we soon learned, it isn't such a secret to young vagabonds, European vacationers and South American watersports enthusiasts. The Bocas locals, too, are far-flung and varied in origin; native tribesmen share the towns and waterways with Jamaican, Colombian, European and Chinese transplants. The history of these islands is an upwelling current; it flows with traces of pre-Columbian settlements, a 1502 visit by Columbus himself, an influx of planters cultivating bananas and building company towns, and civil wars and border skirmishes between Colombia, Panama, and colonial powers.

In the modest airport terminal, immigration forms were meticulously filled out by hand, duplicated with a well-worn piece of carbon paper. We were greeted by a driver from the Hotel Bahia, where we would be staying for the next few days. Outside, past a merchant selling ice cream from a tricycle cart, Avenue E led though a verdant neighborhood into Ciudad de Bocas del Toro-- Bocas Town.

Laid out on low, flat ground at the southern tip of Isla Colon, Bocas Town is a friendly, funky mix of fishing village and rustic resort town. It is still, thankfully, a throwback to a time of simpler, less tourist-based Caribbean beach destinations. But Bocas Town also boasts surf shops, grocery markets, eco-adventure operators, and enough young global wanderers to fill an old Michener novel. More than a dozen good restaurants (some serving Indian, Thai, Italian, and American food), and a wide selection of bars are available within walking distance. Many of the hotels, which range from very cheap-but-clean to very nice-but-what-a-deal, have their own bars and restaurants, either overhanging the bay's waters, or on spacious balconies facing the town streets. This is a Caribbean coastal town not yet tainted by megacruiseship passengers and global-chain theme restaurants.

We climbed out of the van at the Hotel Bahia, near the south end of town. Immediately we were transported into an old Humphrey Bogart movie, walking up the steps onto the broad wooden porch, in through the doors, past a massive old safe. Upstairs, down the hallway, a large covered terrace afforded views of parts of the bay, the nearby island of Carenero, and the human activity along the street and by the docks. That large safe downstairs? It belonged to the United Fruit Company, the American corporation that spawned the Chiquita banana label. This building was their local headquarters, built in 1905. After the banana boom ended here (a fungus blight ravaged the trees in the 1920s), the local economy shifted to hemp production for the American effort in World War II, supplying the material for battleships' mooring lines.

At the Hotel Bahia front desk, Darla, proudly wearing a Panama baseball cap, checked us in. Her family restored this sixteen-room hotel. Our room was clean, simple, comfortable and air-conditioned. The staff service was impeccable. In the mornings, before walking across the street to the dive shop, we enjoyed fresh banana pancakes on the porch restaurant.

Bocas Water Sports (BWS) sits directly across the street, in a metal-roofed wooden building alongside other structures built over and on the water. It doesn't look fancy, and neither do the shop's dive boats. While there are plans for replacement of these waterfront structures with more modern facilities soon, the real selling point of BWS is the attentive service. The owner, Jaime Jaramillo, met us in the front office. His son Carlos, a wiry young scuba instructor with an intense gaze and a ponytail, was in the classroom working with two PADI divemaster candidates: Colin, a tall young Canadian, and Maria, an athletic Swiss. Past the classroom, in the gear locker and at the dock, the boat captains and divemasters helped us get our gear together and into the boats.

Pointing to spots on a huge mural map painted on the wall in the shop, Carlos explained that most of the dive sites here are sheltered from rough seas by the numerous islands. Visibility is variable, because of the proximity to the mainland and rivers, tropical rainfall, and tides (we were told that the two best times of year for diving were now, in September and October, and in the spring). We could expect little current and warm tropical water. Even though the wooden BWS boats were fairly Spartan, the trips to the sites were short, the crew was professional and friendly, and the international flavor of the other divers made for excellent company.

The BWS crewmembers, all locals trained by the shop, enhanced the experience for us. Irving was always smiling, Alfredo was helpful, Umberto a laid-back joker. One morning, two of the divemasters held an impromptu swim meet directly off the pier, to the hoots and jeers of the other employees. Although a divemaster accompanied us underwater on every outing, they let us dive our profiles and desires (photographer's speed, in our case!). All of them spoke good English.

Our first underwater exposure to Bocas came at a spot named The Garden, a sloping reef that started in less than 10 feet of water. Here, we descended over large, blocky coral heads that gave way to formations that looked like large toy castles, thin red and purple spires festooned with equally colorful brittle starfish. Huge feather dusters, arrow crabs, and tiny iridescent cleaner shrimp stood guard on these ornate structures. The riot of color, and the cityscape of coral, petered out below fifty feet, as the slope flattened out. On the ascent we passed through an area of huge truck-sized coral heads, in shallow, very clear water, with several large jackknife fish dwelling in the crevices.

After departing The Garden, we motored over to a spot very near to the south end of Bocas Town. Within a baseball's toss of the mangrove shore, an old landing-craft ferry, about sixty feet long, rests on the bottom. Descending from the boat, past a field of sea grass, some large starfish, and a short stretch of white sand, we approached the wreck. Rough file clams affixed to the sides of the vehicle well snapped shut when we approached them, then slowly opened to reveal their red interiors. Crabs, feather dusters, spindly arrow crabs, and a toadfish greeted us warily. A few large groupers exited and entered portholes in the rear portion of the hull. We departed the wreck after a few minutes to explore the adjacent reef, which trailed away into the gloom. Here we hovered over brain corals, more of the "Cinderella castle" heads, and patches of big sheet and lettuce corals. Stonefish tried to blend into the terrain discretely. After turning around, we again approached the wreck, which was now in the middle of the pre-evening rush hour, as fish swam hurriedly past the hull. We surfaced to a choppy surface and approaching storm clouds.

Next morning, we headed out to Marker Nineteen, a four-posted navigation light standing in less than twenty feet of water. We entered the warm, placid water with the shop's two divemaster candidates, our boat divemaster, and a group of four enthusiastic Colombians. Below the water's surface, the legs of the marker structure were clothed in a riot of carnival colors. Juvenile damsels and sergeant majors swam around the coral-encrusted posts. A beautiful shallow reef lay directly underneath. After exploring the coral garden near the tower, our group descended down the slope leading away from the light.

The Marker Nineteen reef slope is a grandstand of coral tiers, gardens of plate, lettuce, and sheet corals in layers, jutting out and down toward the depths. Perhaps Atlantean mermaids were copying terrace-farming techniques from the Incas, or building ornate spectator boxes for an underwater stadium. I checked my gauges--no, only around sixty feet here, so it wasn't narcosis… Popping out here and there from the slabs of terraces were more of those intricate coral castles. Out in the deeper gloom, where the coral diminished, we spied a few eagle rays paralleling the reefline. We continued along the reef, returning at a shallower depth. A large school of Atlantic spadefish cruised back and forth, the occasional grouper eyed us warily, cuttlefish shadowed us, and arrow crabs and cleaning shrimp peered out from their homes. Back at the tower, we explored the shallower potion of the reef again, and then hauled ourselves back on the boat.

Afterward, we returned to the previous day's wreck site. Other guests on the boat hadn't visited it yet, and we didn't mind going back for more pictures. Today the open bow of the barge was a staging area for decorator crabs and bearded fireworms. Just above the port bow, tiny yellow fish (juvenile bluehead wrasse?) cleaned several snappers.

We embarked on an all-day excursion the next morning. Amy and I were diving, but the other passengers, young honeymooners from Spain and a Spanish ex-pat living in Amsterdam, brought snorkel gear. We motored south to Laguna Bocatorito, or Dolphin Bay. In this shallow, mangrove-rimmed lagoon, families of bottle-nosed dolphins come for the ambience and stay for the food. We viewed a couple groups of three or four, slowly traversing the wide bay. After about half an hour, we motored out of the lagoon and headed north to Cayo Crawl (Crawl Cay), a wooded point in the channel between the islands of Popa and Bastimentos. Above gin-clear shallow water, where large needlefish hunted for a meal, three small, rustic open-air restaurants sat on stilts. We tied up to one restaurant's dock, walked past some individual table huts, and placed our lunch orders with the waitress. Then we reboarded the boat and headed to the nearby reef. While the snorkelers stayed near the boat, Amy and I followed Umberto, our divemaster, into a garden of gorgonians.

We were learning that the Bocas reefs each have very different personalities. Crawl Cay's reef is a thicket of growth on a slope from fifteen to forty-five feet deep. Great star and other hard mound corals are overgrown with a variety of sea rods, sea plumes, fans, whips, and feathering corals. Dinner plate-sized jellies hovered nearby, like birds pollinating an untended grotto. Too soon the dive was over, but now food beckoned at the waterside restaurant.

We ate a relaxing lunch of fresh seafood and chicken, finally able to talk more with our fellow travelers. Pilar and Jose, the honeymooners, hailed from Madrid. Joaquin, also a Spaniard, lived in Amsterdam. After eating, we met an indigenous fisherman who paddled up in a dugout canoe to sell his lobster and fish to the chef. He showed us his tools: a snare and small spear. Departing this idyllic spot, we headed for Isla Bastimentos and Red Frog Beach.

At many other places in the Caribbean, Red Frog Beach would already be the private domain of condo-happy outsiders, but here we emerged from a short forest trail onto a spectacular sand beach facing the open Caribbean. (Get here soon--there are developers' plans afoot…)

At the east end of the sandy arc, we climbed steps on a rock outcropping that led to a platform overlooking the clean surf. Here Alfredo, our boat captain, found one of the tiny frogs that are this beach's namesake. The strawberry poison-dart frog, less than an inch long, lives in the foliage surrounding the beach. Fortunately we had already eaten--the frogs are toxic if ingested. This isn't the same species, I was told, that is used to poison spear tips in the Amazon, but still…

We retired down the beach for a swim in the waist-high surf, retraced the short hike back to our boat, and motored a short distance to Isla Solarte and Hospital Point. Next to the manicured grounds of the old United Fruit Company employee hospital, we slipped over the boat's side in a small cove protected by palm trees. The three snorkelers explored the surrounding area while we followed Umberto underwater to the Hospital Point wall.

In the shallows, coral heads in six feet of water suddenly plunge off a mini-wall. While it's nothing like Cayman or Roatan vertigo-inducing cliff faces, this reef is a nice vertical structure only yards from shore. Here the profusion of hard corals housed many small fish, including several nice spotted drums. The rays of the late afternoon sun danced along the top of the reef, illuminating wandering schools of silvery fish. After the dive, a short boat ride brought us back across the strait to Bocas Town.

The next morning a short thunderstorm delayed our excursion. Once underway, we returned to Marker Nineteen, with a different camera lens setup this time, to take more photos. The visibility was slightly murkier here this morning, but the reef was still beautiful. Umberto then took us to a spot in the narrow gap between Bocas Town and Isla Carenero (Careening Island, named after the old Spanish sailors' practice of bringing their wooden ships here, up on the shore, to repair the hulls).

This reef, called The Playground, is a cross between Marker Nineteen and the Garden. The slope is covered with a variety of corals, adorned with feather dusters and Christmas tree worms. It was midday near a busy boat channel, so the fish life wasn't exactly jumping, but the colors and shapes of the reef were, as in all our dives here, keeping Amy's camera busy.

A German ex-pat helped round out our knowledge and appreciation of the local flora and fauna. On his 42-foot sailing catamaran departing from the south end of Bocas Town, Captain Marcell Schmitt shanghaied the two of us and a pair of feisty Irish girls for an all-day excursion. The itinerary included a stop at Dolphin Bay, lunch, some time under sail, and a couple of snorkeling sessions, but Marcel wound up giving us quite a bit more.

Looking like a Teutonic, unshaven Hugh Laurie, the acerbic surgeon in the popular American TV show House, Marcell exhibits a similar sardonic manner and wit as that character (Dr. Haus?). He has an environmentalist's appreciation for the beauty of this archipelago, and is genuinely concerned about the future health of these islands as development and encroachment loom on the horizon. His humor and knowledge of the area made the conversations on deck enjoyable, and after some coaxing with questions about the catamaran, he opened up with stories about his several transatlantic sailings and his visits to uninhabited Caribbean islands.

We took a slow pass through Dolphin Bay, where we watched Smithsonian Institute researchers taking notes on the bow of their small boat as porpoises jumped out of the water. After enjoying the show, Marcell brought the catamaran over to a mangrove-lined shore where the passengers could snorkel while he prepared sandwiches.

A couple hundred yards away, a solitary Indian in a dugout canoe paddled toward another (abandoned?) dugout. In crystal-clear water, we floated toward the trees. The shallow reef was beautiful, sloping up from twenty-five feet to within a yard of the surface, where it dipped slightly deeper as it reached the watery mangrove treeline. Under the mangroves we spied fleets of juvenile barracudas, tropicals and baitfish. Below us in the open, damselfish darted out from a dense carpet of anemones, sponges, silver algae balls, and coral. A garden patch of small uniform lettuce coral lay several yards across the bottom. One of the girls from Ireland had never snorkeled before, so this aquarium-view experience was an epiphany for her.

We ate lunch aboard the cat and sailed to another reef that lay near to Crawl Cay. Unlike the nearby 'heavily foliaged' coral we dove a couple days ago, however, this reef cut a wide swath across a gently rolling bottom in ten to thirty feet of water. Big brain corals studded the terrain among a landscape of smaller sponges and corals. A solitary eagle ray circled us, made another pass, and then flew away like a ghost, a remora on its speckled back. One of our compatriots got stung by sea lice on her upper lip--welcome to the ocean! Once back aboard, vinegar, Marcell's medical ministrations and the rush of sea wind under a full sail soon made her forget about her stinging ocean initiation. We sat on the cargo net stretched across the twin hulls and watched the waters rush by below us, glinting in the afternoon sun.

While in Bocas, we hung out or dined with new friends from at least nine other countries, an experience we don't always get when traveling in the Caribbean. The town is small enough that we ran into acquaintances several times while wandering down the streets of Bocas. We made some fascinating finds, too, including an open-air bar/nightclub named the Barco Hundido that is partially constructed over a small shipwreck. One evening, sitting at a table on the dock of the Buena Vista Bar and Grill, we were enjoying burgers and tropical drinks at the unofficial home of American expats. A seedy-looking wooden boat approached the dock, an attractive young European couple on board. The outboard motor suddenly stalled, and the craft rushed silently and toward the dock's edge (roughly five feet from our table). The man at the tiller jumped over his girlfriend, who sat amidships with a bottle of wine, and attempted jumping off the bow, onto the dock, and somehow holding back the impending collision. It didn't work, but at least he realized at the last second that he wouldn't make a good bumper. There was a crash, a divot was taken out of a plank on the dock, the couple survived with no injuries but to their dignity, and the patrons and staff of the Buena Vista had a good laugh. Life in the tropics…

We were sad to leave Bocas del Toro, but gladdened by the knowledge that there are still places like it just a few hours' flight from Florida. Fortunately, our friend Rolando still had some exciting ideas for us when we flew back to Costa Rica., including short treks to the Irazu and Poas volcanoes and a visit to the beautiful La Paz waterfall gardens. None of these activities involved breathing compressed air, but sometimes you have to sacrifice!