Visiting the island of Coiba

One morning this past weekend I woke up and walked about 20 minutes along rural Panamanian roads to a nearby beach.

The receding water leaves beautiful patterns around
the stones and shells in the sand.

Many of my friends back home are grading homework, preparing classes, dealing with plagiarism cases, reading and writing committee reports, and fretting about budget cuts.  If I hadn't retired, I could be doing that, too.

The guys who walked with me to this beach.

Instead, I was doing pushups in the sand with a bunch of really good-looking guys.

And sticking my bare toes in the sand, then the warm water,
then the sand, then the warm water . . . 

When I put it that way, I think I made a good choice here.

The beach trip was the brain child of Juan Carlos, the guy I call "Mr. Adventure".  He organized a group of 14 people who crammed into a van in Panama City to drive to the beach-side town of Santa Catalina, about 230 miles away. 

The view from the Bridge of the Americas.
I've seen this bridge from below many times, 
but this was the first time I actually crossed it myself!

Roads are bad enough, and congested enough, here that the trip took 7 hours one direction and 9 hours the other.  The van trip was nobody's favorite part of this trip, I will admit.

Countryside, passing trees while we were actually traveling at speed.

After dark (which happens here at 6:30ish every night, no matter what time of year), we arrived in this little town of Santa Catalina.  From what I can tell, it essentially has two roads: one running down to the ocean, the other running parallel to the shore and then down to the ocean.  Our hotel and dive shop and restaurants were all on the former of these two roads.

The road was narrow with a lot of foot traffic
(people, dogs, cats, chickens . . )

The restaurant where we got coffee in the morning.

On Saturday morning, the alarm roosters started sounding around 5:00, but I slept in until 6 a.m. or so.  By 7:30 we'd gathered at the dive shop; we got our gear and then divided up into small boats.  We had a one-hour, very choppy ride out to Coiba Island. 

The boat would fly over these small waves and then 
slam down onto the water, repeatedly. It was a pretty trip,
but hard on the spine and hips. 

All I really knew about this trip beforehand was: (1) there's an island called Coiba that used to be a prison but is now a protected zone, (2) some people were going scuba diving, (3) I'd signed up for snorkeling.

So it did not surprise me that when we showed up at the first island, we saw beautiful beaches and clear water. Nonetheless, it did delight me.

It is kind of hard to believe this is a picture from my own life.
But it is; I took it.

When I put on my fins, my mask, and breathing tube and poked my head in the water, it was incredibly cool to see a school of fish swim by.  I stood up and gestured to the others who were gearing up, "hey guys! Guess what?  There are fish here!!" . . . and our snorkel guide laughed in a "well, duh" (but nice "well, duh") kind of way.  

The islands of Coiba are surrounded by coral reefs, and I spent the rest of the day in awe.  I swam through schools of angel fish, saw puffer fish toodling along, sea turtles digging in the coral surrounded by throngs of other fish waiting for the scraps to come their way.  Shafts of sunlight come through the water all parallel, like a diagonal fence.  At one point, the guide swam over to me and said, "there's a shark . . . come see it!". (It was about 3 feet long or less, and very much doing little meandering down at the bottom of the reef, surrounded by a throng of other fish lazing around it, so it wasn't even remotely threatening).

From a lookout on the actual island of Coiba, 
looking at the three smaller islands where we had snorkeled
earlier in the day.

A whale skeleton stretched out next to the building that
house the small museum on Coiba.

We ate lunch on another little island with beautiful beaches and gorgeous water. 

I loved how this tree ahead of me just spread itself across the ground. 

The water was so clear; here you can see the rock formation
both above and below the water.

Mr. Adventure found a coconut on the ground and opened it for us; I was so intrigued (and delighted) that I'm not the only person who eats things I find on the ground that he hunted down a second one for me. 

A found coconut with "embryo".

After a day of snorkeling, we took the slam-slam-slam boat back to Santa Catalina.  We went to a restaurant on the beach for pasta and lobster . . .

The view from our restaurant table.

. . . where we got to watch the sun setting over the ocean we'd traveled earlier in the day.

The next morning, I rose and walked to the other beach with those guys, and then we piled into the van for a very long drive back.  

Why so long?  Some roads are dirt with giant ruts, and we had to go slow.  Some roads are paved but super curvy and have occasional people walking alongside (no shoulders on the roads here, and seldom any sidewalks).  Some roads are paved and suitable for traffic that can go, I'm guessing, about 50 mph -- but then the "tranques" (traffic jams) from all the weekenders returning to the city clogged everything up.  

Bruna, from the front seat, shared this photo:
"Karaoke time - we are all happy it only lasted 2 minutes"
I had downloaded some lyrics on my computer, 
which is why I'm holding it up.

There may have been some Gloria Gaynor and "YMCA" happening in the back of the van.

As I said above, the transportation parts of this trip were not super comfortable, and that's putting it mildly. But at least we got to share the discomfort with a bunch of really, really neat and energetic people.  And the experience of snorkeling the islands . . . it was total wow.  I'm so glad I went.

The Coiba crew