Panama blog #2 - islands, beaches, and rain

After leaving Mount Totumas we spent an entire day on the seriously amazing (compared to Africa and Asia) and well-organized Panamanian bus system as we headed southeast to the tiny surfer town of Santa Catalina. We had no plans to surf, however, because we were headed here in order to dive in Nacional Parque Coiba, known as one of the best dive sites in Panama. Divers called this spot the "Galapagos of Panama". Well - that might be a bit of a stretch! I've been diving in the Galapagos and they have these creatures called sharks. They have lots and lots of sharks in the Galapagos. Coiba had sharks, but the Galapagos had a SHITLOAD of sharks. Big sharks. Schooling sharks. Not just your white-tip reef shark sharks. The Galapagos were nothing like Coiba. The Galapagos win, hands down. But I digress. Coiba had some great dives loaded with big fishes (and yes, some sharks) and we thoroughly enjoyed our time here. Another plus was the quaint town of Santa Catalina which gave us our first chance to take in some sights of a Panamanian town along the Pacific coast.

Our day out diving along the shores of Isla Coiba also happened to be the day we had the best weather of our entire trip. No complaints here - this was the place to have the awesome weather. The beaches were gorgeous, we were chilly by the end of the dives and the sun warmed us back up, and we just like frying O.K.?

I wish I had remembered to bring our underwater camera housing, but I did not. I originally had it packed in our backpack. But, for safe transport, I wisely slipped the housing into an old bag for a pair of headsets labeled "JVC". When I wasn't thinking straight and I was trying to reduce the crap we were bringing, I glanced at the bag and asked Jay if he wanted to bring headsets with him and he said "nah". So out came the bag with the "headset" that was really our camera housing and there it sat on our couch while we were diving in Panama without it. Ergh....  So you will just have to imagine the dives without my help. But here is a great view of the spot where we ate lunch!

The important stuff to consume in Panama

Our first dive was near a rocky islet with strong current blasting around the backside. We jumped in and took our time taking in the sights of huge oysters, lobsters, corals, fishes, etc. This is not a coral reef - it is mostly rocky substrate with some hard and soft corals growing here and there. As we rounded a corner and really got ourselves into the strong current we also got surrounded by large schools of big and healthy fishes like jacks and trevally. I found this random YouTube video taken by someone else at this dive site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswL7edyZ8A. That should give you a better idea of the site, although it doesn't look like they had much current. The current we encountered, on the other hand, was so strong that we had to hug rocks in order to stay in one place so we could watch the fishy show go by. White tip reef sharks commonly swam within an arm's distance to me, as did the blue trevally. Our second and third dives were less eventful - but awesome sightings included frogfish (three on one dive!) and seahorses. We loved the first dive and our lunch spot the most and after that we were just thrilled to be diving in wetsuits instead of drysuits and we lapped up the ease of diving in the tropics. Cold water diving is tough (40 lb. belt and loads of fleece) when you compare it to a eight pound weight belt and a thin neoprene wetsuit!

 Gorgeous Santa Catalina

We never planned on staying in Santa Catalina that long - it was a quick trip to get in our dive day and then we headed back out on the buses to get to a B&B where we planned to do nothing on a beach for a while. This image is a classic view from the buses where the bus dude hangs out the door and gets the driver to stop every 10 ft. to pick up another passenger.

My bag took a ride with some chickens. This was also different from Asia and Africa where the chickens tend to ride with the passengers and bags get tied to the top of the buses!

I had to include this photo because the situation cracked me up so much - it is certainly one I have experienced many times which is probably why I laughed so much. This woman (ten bucks says she is British, just a hunch) was trying oh so hard to ignore the group of Panamanian men that had gathered around her. As she wrote in her journal all the men would, not so discretely, watch her write. She tried to pretend this wasn't going on and they never really tried to pretend that they weren't watching her. The man in the Panamanian hat watched too - it was just when I took this photo that he looked up. The joys of travel and bus stations!

Playa Blanca! We arrived in the early afternoon after a strong rainfall cleared the skies for some beach time in the late afternoon. We had four days here.... two full days.... and of these four days the sun only came out to play for 1 1/2 days. This was a a bit of a bummer since this was supposed to be our Vitamin D time, but it was still lovely and relaxing.

The beach was a bright white sand, as promised by our research. But the guidebooks made no mention of the fact that most of the beach was bulkheaded and houses sat right on the spot where there should have been palm trees. So we ignored the bulkheads and stared out toward the Pacific instead; it was much nicer that way. Aside from the beach, we also scored on staying at an awesome place, Togo B&B. We opted to get the suite with the kitchen because we didn't have a rental car to easily reach restaurants, restaurants were too expensive anyway, and we make better food when we cook. So we stayed in a lot and enjoyed our hammocks, our swanky room, the fantastic owners of the B&B, the B&B cats, and the beach! After busy quarters in school and in his job (Jay) and sometimes stressful job times for me (Julie) - this was the important detox time we needed.

I gave up on cheap tropical beer because it just sucks. Admit it. It sucks. Sometimes it is lovely, but that typically requires a hot day in the sun. Since we didn't get that much, a piña colada ended up in my hand. It was tasty.

 Crabs! 

 Fishermen!

 Most of our weather! 

Apparently we wanted more rain because we decided to spend the remainder of our trip in a lower elevation rainforest. We headed to Gamboa via Panama City on a rainy day that just got more and more rainy. Here is a view of one of the buses along a highway as we were entering Panama City. My last blog from Panama will focus on our soggy but birdy times in Gamboa!