Playas y Montañas

In Panamá, one can hop from the beach to the mountains and back again within a few hours on the autobús. The ability to switch it up every few days has kept things very interesting, as I´m able to enjoy the best of both worlds in this lovely little country. My first stop after Panama City was Playa Venao*, a remote little surf town on the southern coast of the relatively unexplored Península Azuero. A wide, sandy beach enclosed by rocky, jungle-covered bluffs at either end make it a perfect little cove for catching consistent, rolling waves. And that´s pretty much all I did for a couple days. One day, when I was finally getting back in the groove of surfing (it had been two years), I was fortunate enough to discover the beauty of surfing in a tropical rainstorm with smooth, glassy water that didn´t mind that it was raining at all. On top of that, I had the company of some lively, laid-back locals and an especially attractive chica from Argentina that quickly showed me up with her fluid turns and seemingly effortless rides.

*To see the kind of waves that hit Playa Venao, you can check out the Billabong ISA World Surfing Games starting June 25th - it´s an event that will bring this little surf town into the spotlight as a surf destination and could quite possibly change it drastically, for better or for worse.

From the beach I headed up to the mountains of the Veraguas province, to a little town called Santa Fé. There I discovered the tranquility of this rural town, where locals use machetes for almost everthing they do, whether it´s gathering firewood, trimming shrubs and bushes or harvesting crops. A few friends from the hostel and I went out exploring one day and ended up hitching a ride in the back of a pickup truck to the next town, Alto de Piedra. The truck driver was not only nice enough to take us up the steep and winding road, he even asked his ten-year-old nephew to take us to the waterfalls just beyond the town. This little guy, Ariel, willingly led us to each one of these cascadas (waterfalls) and waited patiently as we bushwaked arduously along the slippery, unmarked trail. At the end of the hike, he was happy to accept an ice cold Coca-Cola and a little tip for his hard work.

Can you guess where I went next? That´s right, the beach. This time I took the bus (well four, to be exact) to Playa Santa Catalina. A past surf competition was supposed to change this place for the better, with improved roads and internet access. But as far as the locals are concerned, nothing has changed. Although they´re paved, the roads are filled with axle-bending potholes and ruts. As for the internet, I didn´t bother for the four days I was there; it was slow as molasses and probably just as expensive, so I didn´t bother with that noise. ATM? Yeah right, I left with just $5 of my carefully bugeted cash remaining in my pocket.

Although there´s epic surfing in Santa Catalina, my major focus for this stop was to do some diving, which was a long time coming for me (it had also been two years). After earning my Open Water certification in Galápagos, I hadn´t gone since. So when I heard that Isla de Coiba was a hot spot for Pacific coast diving in Central America, I had to jump on the opportunity. About 75km from the coast, many have called this isolated island and former site of a penal colony the ¨Galápagos of Panamá¨. With all of the wildlife I saw, I wasn´t disappointed.

Along the way to our dive site we saw majestic Bryde´s whales surfacing for air and playful spinner dolphins that could launch themselves up to ten feet in the air (scroll to the bottom of this page to see a photo). But that was just the beginning. Under the surface we encountered white-tipped reef sharks, nurse sharks, huge moray eels, octopus, lobster, green sea turtles and massive schools of vibrantly colored fish. I was estatic to have my first dive with favorable conditions to see such an abundant array of aquatic life.