Boat ride onto Boca del Toro

Best $10 I ever spent? Well it goes like this, after travelling for close to 10 hours, a 5 hour border stop and twisty mountain roads we arrived at a city called Almirante. Turns out we spent too long at the border(not by our choice) and arrived just short of the last official boat leaving to the island of Bocas. Confused and without a clue of what to do we are about to walk into a shop when a man pulls up on a very nice Harley and says: "hey guys what's up?" After some conversing he says that he can help us not only get to Bocas but also find somewhere to park our bikes safely... at a bombardos (firestation). After paying the $9 fee we take a taxi to the water taxi dock and find this man who is going by his own boat to Bocas with his family, after settling on a fee of $10 we are on board and committed. As we are leaving the dock the engine is clearly struggling and spluttering frequently. Not to far away are massive black storm clouds. Great. About 10 minutes in it starts chucking it down: rain, thunder and lightning. The weather looking worse and worse by the second, the boat driver flags his friend down in another boat. Basically he feared that he would have engine problems and get stuck so he had us transfer mid ocean to this other small vessel. Once on board the rain came down even harder, making it impossible to see. By now it had gone dark and the only way we had of knowing where we were going was by the bright flashes of lightning that helped illuminate our way. After about thirty minutes we stop and I am tasked with holding on to a buoy so we don't drift away (I don't remember that being included in the price) whilst we wait for our original driver to catch up so they can figure out what's going on the rain let's off a little. After about 15 minutes we decide to leave to another island where both boat drivers live and wait there. Eventually he catches up and after a small discussion it is decided we will hop back into his small, very run down boat with a busted engine and he will take us the remaining way to Bocas. What was a '25 minute boat ride' took us an hour and a half..
Even so it was the honest best $10 I've ever spent. What an experience, not one you would get catching a regular water taxi!