Activity Summary
Saturday 17th June - Day 289
Travel to Santa Catalina
Walk to Playa Santa Catalina
Book tour with Unlimited Adventures Coiba
Walk to Playa El Estero
Sunday 18th June - Day 290
Luke: Coiba National Park snorkelling & boat trip
Nicola: chill & research day
Dinner at Tiki Lodge Bar & Restaurant
Summary
Santa Catalina
Very small town and a bit of a strange place.
Every day of the week there seems to be a party of some sort going on, locals pulling up in their trucks at the side of the road and blaring offensively loud music that is the complete opposite of enjoyable. The one perk was that it never went on too late unlike some other places we have stayed.
The town itself is tiny, not overly appealing food joints and the beaches are not great. Minus Coiba, which is incredible and makes the whole place worth visiting, there isn’t many overly great things to do.
Transport
Santa Catalina
Private shuttle from Boquete to Santa Catalina from Hello Travel Panama for £30 each.
Accommodation
Santa Catalina - Sunset Catalina
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £16
As far as accomodation goes in Santa Catalina I am not sure there was anything much better in our price range. It was noisy because it was next to the main road, but pretty much everything in the town was so this in effect was unavoidable.
The kitchen was alright, the room and private bathroom was decent enough with aircon so we were plenty comfortable the whole time we were here.
Diary
Once again we decided to be passenger princesses and opted for a private shuttle from Boquete to Santa Catalina, solidified in our decision upon hearing it would be 4 public buses. For the sake of £30 each, hell na.
We did however have to get there at 7am to leave 30 minutes later. That wasn’t too fun and trying to make conversation with Gill (from the waterfall walk) so early with little give back was painful. Mark also joined on the bus and while Nicola was able to plug her headphones in and ignore the world, Luke spent most of the journey chatting to Mark and towards the end was able to get some blog writing in. It was a 5 hour journey and Luke ended up getting incredibly bored with the one sided conversation plus there were some questionable old people comments that didn’t sit right - when he would later get on the public bus to Panama he would completely shun any attempt at talking. Probably seen as rude by Mark but allow those types of conversations / people. More rude was Luke ignoring his WhatsApp message but as most who know him at this stage of his life, he accidentally ignores everyone - not great with a phone this guy.
The private shuttle was super easy. A long ride but it was comfortable and there were plenty of seats free so we had tons of space. The roads towards Santa Catalina from Sona got a bit rougher, more like a better condition Costa Rican secondaria road of which Mark couldn’t stop commenting about the terrible quality. It really wasn’t that bad.
We were in the very small town of Santa Catalina just after midday and fortunately were able to check in early and have a quick plan of what we were going to do with our time here. The main attraction for us was Coiba National park, a marine reserve that was a hefty hour and a half boat ride away from the mainland for an all day trip with snorkelling. We had both done little research about this and a bit of an o shit moment hit Nicola when realising how far Coiba was and having lost her sea sickness bands was getting super stressed about the crossing. The weather turns pretty quickly in the rainy season and there was a real risk Nicola would spend 3 hours savagely unwell.
On walking down to book Luke on to the tour with Unlimited Adventures Coiba, we enquired after a bit more information about the crossing but the guy was frikin hopeless. The decision was made that the cost v risk reward was too high and given Nicola would have spent the day and whole trip stressed, not enjoying herself & then potentially unwell, Luke would go solo.
We stopped by Playa Santa Catalina and it really wasn’t a very nice beach. There would be no chilling done here.
To scout out the remaining area and see what other things there were to do in the area we had a walk over to Playa El Estero, a good 25 minutes along Panama’s equivalent to a country lane and probably one of the weirdest places we have encountered. We had picked up Gill who wanted to do the same and walked the pretty much barren road with half developed properties, a rogue kids play area and absolutely nothing else until we got to a sort of secondary town for the beach access.
The beach connects up to an inland river that flows into the sea which we crossed with relative ease and had a short walk along the beach. It was grey the whole time but there were plenty of stubborn beach goers in full swimmers soaking up no rays.
We didn’t need to spend much time here before walking back to town, parting ways with Gill and frequenting a local shop. Long gone are the days of the Super Baru as there were very limited food choices available in Santa Catalina.
Luke also struggled to find any restaurants here that seemed remotely worth going to so were more than happy rustling up pesto pasta from our Boquete reserves and did little else all evening. Marks parting words to him were ‘see you in a bar’ and we both knew there was a fat chance of that happening. Body. Temple.
Luke story time:
It was a relatively early meet time for the snorkel tour. I was at the office at 8am to get all the snorkel gear and wait for our 6 person group to arrive. I came armed deeted to the hilt after some vicious mozzies annihilated us in seconds just talking to the tour operator the day before.
The group was super nice. A holidaying Spanish couple, two Spanish-Panamanian full time workers on a weekend away and a Swiss-German girl made up the group with the most enthusiastic and passionate Venezuelan tour guide. Everyone got on really well (I couldn’t speak to the older lady of the group who spoke no English) and the tour guide was so amazing I actually ended up tipping at the end despite the initial cost.
It seemed like I had chosen an absolutely stellar day. There was beautiful sunshine throughout, and while the winds were pretty strong over the sea it wasn’t enough to make me feel super uneasy. That said, one of the girls ended up getting pretty seasick and ended up having to ask another tourist for tablets. It was fairly choppy getting out, more so closer to Coiba, and in a speedboat style long boat it was pretty unforgiving. Although the cushioned seats were a nice touch I didn’t think my boney ass would be afforded. It was probably the right idea for Nicola to give this a miss.
After an hour and a half watching the water and occasionally being thrown around, we arrived in the crystal blue, calm waters surrounding Coiba island. It was so beautiful and pretty much the entire boat got super gassed.
This was the first of our three snorkel spots and I could not remember where any of them were. We all got dropped at the beach, snorkel gear all kitted on with decent screen wash and everything worked perfectly - cannot be underestimated how bad some of the snorkelling equipment has been on previous tours.
The first site was absolutely fucking incredible. If we had just done one site, I could have gone home happy. We saw all sorts of cool animals; white tipped sharks (not full grown - those guys eat people), turtles, starfish, grey rays and tons of different types of fish. Natalie (our tour guide) was unbelievably knowledgeable, able to dive and point out all sorts of fish and then tell us all about them. Some of these fish were absolute behemoths and all were so chill with people getting close because Coiba is so well protected.
I cannot understate how many fish there were. I have never seen anything like it, massive shoals of all types of fish in every single direction I looked of all different sizes. Probably the best snorkelling experience I have ever had, up there with the Great Barrier Reef which had an insane vibrancy and variety but I don’t think it competed on volume.
Our second spot slayed just as much as the first. More sharks, more turtles and shed tons of fish. The small remote island was super nice as well so naturally everyone got their insta game on point.
It was a short boat ride over to Coiba island where there was a well established place for lunch. This was provided by the tour, a decent tuna pasta bowl with hot sauce and Parmesan. Pretty nice.
There was a short walk up to a viewpoint of two of the 3 islands we had been snorkelling around. It was a nice view and Natalie was so engaging that another tour group completely ignored their own guide to listen and interact with us.
On the way down we got to see a wild agouti and iguana making their way into the forest.
There were a couple more beautiful island photos squeezed in before we got back on the boat and over to our final snorkelling spot.
The spot was called turtle island and while there wasn’t the same abundance of other wildlife, we ended up seeing 5 different species of turtle of all different sizes. At one point there were 6 of them swimming in my eye line - never in my experience has it been this easy to find turtles snorkelling. All of us were so happy with the experience and got back on the boat in a great mood.
The last stop was another island to say hello to some resident crocodiles (there are 54 of them on the island). Tita is the oldest and her spot was right at the fringes of the mangroves that meet the beach where the tourists frequented. When I saw her I had a proper ‘o shit’ moment. The closest I will ever get to a wild crocodile (hopefully).
The Swiss girl and I had a walk along the beach to take in a view of the whole beach area and then spent a short time chilling before we departed.
On our way back we took a couple of diversions to follow a pod of dolphins and more amazingly, a whale that was moving back to Coiba. Actually insane.
The hour and a half ride back was a lot bumpier than on the way out but minus a few swerves and jolts there wasn’t anything super dramatic. It was a little difficult to disembark at the beach as the tide had come in so it was almost a crawl across rocks while waiting for the swell to die down and try not to lose our flip flops. One of the group nearly did, stopped by a well timed leg seizure from my end.
Everyone said their goodbyes at the tour office, the wonderful day slightly soured by the 4 savage bites I got on my shins as a parting gift. Excited to see the back of those things when in the UK for our break.
Luke story over.
Nicola had spent the day at a nearby coffee shop doing research but only lasted 45 minutes as there was no aircon and it was a toasty day. To avoid spending all her dollar on drinks to stay cool, she retreated back to the much more temperature regulated room for the South America planning session.
We were really in two minds whether to go out for food or slum it again with our meal. Initially we tried going to a well rated local restaurant but couldn’t see that anything was open so eventually settled on Tiki Lodge Bar & Restaurant which didn’t look great but we were tired and irritable. Burgers were ok and did the job.
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