Preparing for the trip

After Pauline decided to spend an ecological half year in South America to improve her Spanish skills, I immediately knew that I wanted to go there too, even if only for a short vacation. So I started planning. Since I already had my vacation planned for 2022, 2023 was the only option for me. Pauline would end her stay on 02/02/2023, so it was clear to me that I would go there to spend a few more days with her. Anne wasn't thrilled about sacrificing her vacation for this, as it's not exactly relaxing to travel so far for 2-3 weeks. I decided on 2 weeks, from 01/27/2023 to 02/10/2023. Since I had already traveled to Ecuador as a backpacker 25 years ago, I didn't necessarily want to travel through the country again for 2 weeks, but rather see something new. So I decided to spend 5 days in Cuenca and 9 days in Colombia. After a few weeks, Anne decided to come along, but only if we don't go to Colombia due to the security situation. Too bad, I wanted to walk in the footsteps of Pablo Escobar. But oh well, let's go to Panama then. And so I started choosing a route, which should look like this:

Arrival on 01/27/2023, Cuenca until 02/01/23, flight to PANAMA CITY on 02/02/23, flight to BOCAS del Toro on 02/05/23, return flight to Europe on 02/10/23.

Pauline already had the return ticket from Quito on 02/02/23 from her organization, so I just had to change it to Panama on 02/10/23.

Then I started looking for accommodations, which I quickly found through well-known platforms like Booking and Airbnb.