One of the days at Santa Catalina we went for a diving trip at Isla Coiba. The marine park is absolutely fantastic and I would highly recommend it if you are into diving. Enjoy.
Diving at Isla Coiba, Panama
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Santa Catalina: the end of another road…
We meet lots of people on the road, and everyone has an opinion. The question in Panama was which coastal town is better, Santa Catalina or Bocas. We consulted with locals and foreigners alike and decided we shall visit both. After a quick visit to Bocas, we hopped in Vida for an easy-breezy eight-hour coast-to-coast drive. If anybody is keeping track, this is +1 for two oceans one day.
The two-minute research we did for camping spots in town told us to drive to ‘the end of the road’ and look for Oasis Surf Camp. I vaguely remembered reading something about a water crossing but didn’t make much of it. Turned out to be a small river, which fortunately wasn’t much of a problem for Vida.
We set camp on the beach thanks to some help from our friendly Italian host David. Our initial plan was to spend only two days here, but we liked the place enough to stay 5 days/4 nights. We did some walks around town, found an awesome bakery and I did some surfing. It wasn’t Internet surfing for a change… The highlight of our Santa Catalina visit was a scuba/snorkeling trip to the largest and most remote marine reserve in Panama – Isla Coiba.
Coiba National Park is a World Heritage Site. The island used to be Panama’s Alcatraz until ten years ago. The prison was known for torture and murder of some of the inmates, so the locals avoided the place. This helped preserve the park’s amazing marine life and also the island itself. According to Wikipedia, over 75% of the island is forested where the majority of this is ancient forest. Let me just tell you, the island is huge and it is far off the coast … We explored only a tiny smidge of the marine park, and it was fantastic. We saw tons of really large fish including white tip and bull sharks, large rays, dolphins, turtles, stonefish and a massive schools of barracudas. The coral was in very good shape as well.
I did three dives and Teresa snorkeled. Can you believe Teresa saw three bull sharks while snorkeling and did not freak out?! Oh, and she successfully retrieved her snorkel after dropping it off the boat and diving right after to get it … The snorkel was well on his way down to the bottom, some thirty meters below. That was some impressive stuff T!
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- Two brothers from Uruguay lived in this shack. They were on their way to Mexico by bicycle. It seemed they were surviving only on coconuts …
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- The view from our tent towards the beginning of the place.
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- Our modest coffee stack 🙂
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- Teresa making a dust cover for the car’s back.
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- Coffee and rum stash! 🙂 Left to right the rum is from Guatemala, Panama, Panama, Nicaragua.
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- I bought a fish for $1 USD from a local store. The fish is cut, salted and ready for the frying pan. Yum!
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- The house.
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- It takes one hour by boat to get to Isla Coiba
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- Smiling and wondering how are we going to get fitted on this tiny boat with all the scuba gear.
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- Stone fish!
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- Hi mom :).
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- Me pointing at a white tip shark.
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- Nothing to be afraid. They are asleep during the day. Just don’t wake them up…
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- Tito the crocodile. Apparently there is a 3 meter long croc somewhere behind this sign. I found nothing …
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- Isla Coiba ranger station. Park entrance $20 USD.
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- All three dives had very strong current so you usually go up and down by a chain.
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- Upside down shot 1
Bocas – island cruising
We mentioned to one of the guys in Boquete that we were planning to visit Santa Catalina. He strongly encouraged us to visit Bocas instead. We thought, why not? It’s the Caribbean. The drive to Bocas was along a windy mountain road. At one point, we had to pass through some check point. It was unclear to us the purpose of this checkpoint other than to deliver instructions for George to put a shirt on (he often drives shirtless because of the heat). Now, if you know George, you know he doesn’t like to be told what to do. Immediately after the checkpoint, he disrobed and ranted for the next 30 minutes about the encounter. I tuned out.
We had decided to leave Vida on the mainland and take a water taxi from Almirante. Driving into town, my hopes for Bocas were squashed. Almirante is run down and dirty. We were almost immediately tailed by a fella on a bike. He finally caught up to us at a stop sign. He of course had the solution to all of our problems, if we would just follow him. Normally these situations end poorly, but he led us to a very secure parking area complete with 6 dogs, 2 of which were rottweilers. I believe that rottweilers have one purpose in life, and that is to eat me, so I cowered in the car while George took care of the details. We made it safely to the water taxi, and for $4, we arrived in Bocas after 30 minutes. We hoofed it to the hostel where a lovely Italian showed us around.
The following day, we decided to rent some cruisers and bike out to Bluff Beach to do some wave frolicking. The beach was stunning with clear blue and turquoise water. On the way back we stopped at a beachside bar, since we had earned some cold beverages with all the biking and then the unimaginable happened. George located the only other Bulgarian in Central American. Oh the Bulgarian pride was oozing off of him.
After a fresh fish lunch, we headed back to the hostel. We planned to take it easy that evening, because we needed to be on the 6am water taxi to make the pacific coast that afternoon.
Boquete – the Napa Valley of coffee
…or so lonely planet says. G and I being coffee junkies were obviously in whole hog. As an aside, I have no idea when I picked up the phrase ‘whole hog’. I’m just going to roll with it. It turns out much of the Panamanian produce and coffee is grown in the Boquete area. There is plenty of hiking, and the town itself is picturesquely back dropped by Volcán Barú.
We had heard from some lovely ladies that we met in Osa that Refugio del Rio was the hostel to be at and included a river and hot tub. Since we now have a full-blown bed bug anxiety disorder, we schemed on ways to sleep in our truck but use the hostel facilities. This turned out to be a piece of cake. The hostel sees lots of campers and overlanders. We snagged a spot in front of the hostel by the river. The wonderful little river drowns out all the sound at night.
Every Thursday, the hostel has a bbq open to the public at a steel of $5. G was able to top off the meat reserves, and I had piles of veggies and rice. Since I was first in line, I got my pick of the bounty.
Most of the subsequent days were spent abusing the internet (we had some trip planning to take care of). We did manage a few walks around town, a visit to the local panadería, as well as a few visits to the grocery store. At the grocery store we went balls to the wall and bought bags upon bags of coffee as well as several bottles of rum. Feeling a little lazy after a day of interneting, we ventured out to an underdeveloped hot springs. On that front though, I advise travellers to steer clear. I like my hot springs in two varieties: resort setting with all the amenities or pristine pool in a remote location. What Boquete offered were two mosquito baths complete with farm animals for your viewing pleasure (we heard there was a more developed pool in the area but didn’t get a chance to check it out).
All and all, I think the town is worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighborhood and the cooler climate is a nice break from the heat in the low-lying areas.
