Playa Venao and Santa Catalina (January 4th-January 11th)

Thursday January 4th

We ate our canned rice and beans this morning for breakfast. It was our only option, and although it doesn’t sounds very appetizing, they are actually really good. Eden Organic brand makes them. They contain brown rice, beans and seasoning. We’ve used them in the past for road trips and camping. They are not easy to find in the US, I usually order them online, so I was thrilled to find them in Riba Smith in Panama City.

Canned rice and beans

A fine hotel, Miami Mike´s, Bob Marley room

We almost set the hostel on fire trying to microwave our rice and beans! The microwave needed a 3 prong outlet, but there wasn’t one, so there was an orange converter on it. I don’t know if it was old and crappy or not rated for the job or what, but it starting smoking and melting and almost lit on fire. Good thing I was watching it! We ate our breakfast cold instead.

We were out of the hostel by 8, before any of the volunteers were even out of their room. The day started with a taxi ride to the bus terminal, then an hour bus ride to Las Tablas, the next major town down the highway. In Las Tablas we were lucky to get off the bus in the right place to catch the next bus to Pedasí, another town a little further down the highway. This ride was in a van with bench seats in the back. It was about another hour ride. We also stopped to deliver groceries to two different houses along the way. I wonder if the driver was doing them a favor or if this is a service that can be bought.

It was about 10:30 when we’d made it to Pedasí, the last town before the beach. The next bus wasn’t until noon, so we took advantage of the time to buy groceries. It is a pretty small town and so is the grocery store, but it was surprisingly well stocked. The beach has no grocery store, just a convenience store or two, and we aren’t expecting an abundance of wonderful restaurants. I tried to come up with a plan of meals to make, but I kind of struggle with planning ahead. What ended up happening is that I went into the store and picked up all of the things I like and always want to buy. I filled up a basket and hoped for the best! It was fun. I found Bob’s Red Mill steel cut oats and 10 grain hot cereal! I didn’t think I’d ever see steel cut oats again until I got to the US. They also had glass bottles of soy milk beverages imported from Thailand. I think they were intended to be single serve refreshments, like a soda, so I got one to drink outside the store.

Soy milk refreshment from Thailand

An excellent grocery haul

We got back to the bus stop a half hour early. The “bus,” another mini van showed up 20 minutes early, filled up and off we went. Good thing we didn’t come back right on time! Our backpacks went on the roof and I got shoved in the very narrow back row with 3 bags of groceries stuffed all around me, 2 other adults and a baby. In the small vans and buses there are fold down seat that go over the aisle so that every square inch of space can be utilized for seating. This meant that I got trapped in the back for 45 minutes before my neighbors finally got out. Space in the front quickly cleared out as people got off, and Jeff was riding with oodles of room almost the whole way. An hour into the third ride, we’d finally arrived to our hostel!! It took 3 hours to go 65 miles, and it had been 5 hours since we left our hostel! Since yesterday we have traveled 8 bus hours and gone about 150 miles!! 😂 The last hour was the only rough road we encountered, the buses are just slow because they stop so frequently to let people off and on. Panama has excellent roads, especially the Pan-American Highway, which is a multi-lane highway that stretches from the Costa Rican border to a little ways beyond Panama City. It actually covers the whole of the America’s. I rode my bike on it from Belize to Panama City in 2011. The section in Panama is the best maintained. So far all of the other roads, with the exception of the last stretch to get here, have been in excellent condition. No more crazy horrible motion sick bus rides.

Route covered today

Our hostel is called Venao Cove. The beach is a few mile long cove, and we are on the far end away from the party animals. We are really pleased to have chosen this place because the beach is right in our backyard! We are in an eight bed dorm, but we are the only occupants. The property also has a fancy restaurant, some private cabins and houses for rent, as well as some private rooms in the main building. Our room is also in the main building and it’s attached to an open air kitchen and dining area.

Backyard at the hostel

High tide

We went swimming soon after we got here, then lied in the hammocks for awhile before I started dinner. From my assortment of ingredients, I chose to make a stew with the starches that I bought: a real yam, a green plantain and yucca. To the base of starches I added some diced carrot, onion and bell pepper. I decided I’d make it a curry stew since I have so much curry powder from free bins. I also added fresh ginger, garlic powder, lime and oregano. I happened to have bought a can of guandú with coconut. I thought coconut sounded good with curry, so I added that too. I had no idea what I was making when I bought the ingredients, but it turned out really good. The yam mostly disintegrated into the broth to make it nice and thick, but big chunks of plantain and yucca remained. Green plantain is really good in soup. It sounds strange, but it is not sweet and banana like at all. It probably would have been good with ripe plantains too though!

We are now laying down in our beds. I am catching up on my typing and Jeff is reading. It has become apparent to us that the communal area and it’s accompanying music are right outside our window. Luckily this is a sensible place, and people are asked to be quiet after 10, and the music is turned off. There don’t seem to be any hooligans here. Mostly families and that suits us just fine!

Friday January 5th

For breakfast we had green plantain mash. This is a recipe from the Dominican Republic that’s considered the national breakfast dish. I made it about a month ago when we were in Medellin. It’s served with pickled red onions on top and is really good and cheap with the abundant plantains around here.

After breakfast we took command of some hammocks that seem to always be occupied. I stayed there for hours reading recipes from the blog that had the plantain recipe. It’s the same recipe I used last time, but I never looked anything else on the blog. It turns out the author has been vegan, vegetarian and pescatarian at different times in her life, so there were a lot of nice Dominican style veggie recipes. I was enthralled, reading and pinning 20 or so recipes over the course of 2 hours. Jeff doesn’t understand how that could be interesting. The best part is I can easily make a lot of the recipes down here since I have access to the same sort of ingredients here that they use in the Dominican Republic.

At noon we set out for a low tide walk along the beach. It took us 1 1/2 hours to go to the other end of the cove and back, at a very leisurely pace, leading me to believe that the beach isn’t much more than a mile long. Our end of the cove is quiet and undeveloped. Our hotel property still has lots of the original trees. On the more developed end of the cove, it looks deforested and ugly. There is also a loud party hostel down there called Selina. It belongs to a chain of hostels owned by an Israeli corporation. Many reviews I read about this beach said that Selina hostel ruins the place by blasting club music into the early morning hours. Luckily, we can’t hear that at our end of the beach.

We returned from our walk for a late lunch of curried beans with peppers and onion, pumpkin mash and Panamanian tortillas. After lunch we did some swimming and some more lounging. I got caught up on some blogging and Jeff got a new book from the book exchange here.

Open air kitchen and dining

Panamanian tortillas, curry lentils and pumpkin

Instead of cooking dinner, we participated in spaghetti dinner being offered by a couple that are volunteering at the hostel. The guy is from Italy and the girl is from Colombia. The guy, Nico, did the cooking and made a really good plate of veggie spaghetti with mushrooms. He is vegetarian, so we didn’t have to worry about any beef in our spaghetti. It was served with a glass of red wine and cost $7 per person. It’s a nice way for them to make money. I much prefer it to the sale of bracelets that so many low budget travelers make and try to sell! They all have exactly the same things for sale!


Saturday January 6th

We had chocolate steel cut oatmeal for breakfast with flax seeds, peanut butter and raisins along with a pineapple, papaya, banana and avocado smoothie. The hostel posts the low and high tides each day on a chalk board. We learned that the best surfing is 2 hours before and 2 hours after the high tide. Next to the tides on the chalk board this morning 10:00 was written with a bunch of stars next to it. We figured this must mean that’s the good time to surf! So we hurried up after breakfast to get all sunscreened up and take a walk to watch the surfers during peak time. We both hate sunscreen. It’s such a pain. We brought 3 tubes of non-poison sunscreen from USA. The brand is think sport. It’s the least poisonous and also most pleasant of all of the natural sunscreens we’ve tried.

We were out walking the beach for about 1 1/2 hours. There aren’t many shells on the beach, but there are some sand dollars. I always get excited to see sand dollars. It reminds me of being a kid in Florida. Uncle Georgie used to come visit us and he’d take us out on the sand bars where we’d find huge sand dollars. We’d collect them by the bucket full! We also collected every other kind of shell or starfish, whether they were alive or not! Yikes! 😬 I hope there aren’t any kids like me around!!

Low tide

Lots of small sand dollars

Today was actually sunny, with lots of puffy white cotton candy clouds. It’s been raining all over Panama even though the dry season is supposed to have began already. Luckily we are in the least rainy place in all of Panama, the Azuero Peninsula! There were lots of experienced and beginner surfers in the water. The waves aren’t huge here, but they have a nice barrel curl to them. The beach also makes a long gradual decent out to the deep water, making for waves that break further from the shore, since it stays shallow for a long distance. The difference between the low and high tide probably isn’t much vertically, but it’s huge in terms of how much sands gets exposed or covered up.

When we got back we went swimming and laid in the water where the waves meet the sand. There was no one else on our quiet end of the beach. The best of the waves break further down the cove near where all the ugly hotels are located, so our stretch of beach remains vacant most of the time. There’s also nothing past our hostel, we are at the end, so there’s so through traffic along the beach.

Nice surf waves

surfers

more waves

pretty sand at low tide

For lunch we had spaghetti with lentils, carrots and onion. After lunch we had an energy crash. We were zapped by the sun and had to lay down in the grass for awhile.

tree house, not really a house, just a few boards and a rickety ladder

the hostel has a tree house in one of the trees by the beach

nice view from the tree

lots of biting ants in the grass

Eventually we mustered up the energy to go boogie boarding. The hostel has surfboards for rent and also one boogie board. We got to use it for free. No one else seems interested in it! We took turns on it, staying out in the water for over an hour just before sunset. I don’t have many special talents, but I can say with confidence that I am good at boogie boarding!! And it’s always more fun doing something if you’re actually good at it! The waves were great for boogie boarding. It’s actually a lot of exercise too. We worked up quite an appetite for dinner. We ate the leftover yam, plantain and yucca soup. Afterward we had “Crema de maiz,” or cream of corn. Warm “cream” drinks are popular here. I remember having them regularly in the house of my host family. They are basically just various kinds of flour mixed with water or milk and sugar and heated on the stove until thickened. We have flour for cream of oatmeal and cream of plantain, and I have also seen barley and sorghum. I find them very delicious. Jeff doesn’t seem to care for most of the weird simple things that I like, but he eats whatever I give him!

At every hostel we stay in, we usually have nicknames for people that irritate us. Here we have nicknamed a young hooligan girl Buttcheek, because she has about 20 different scandalous thong butt swim suit, and she wears nothing but her thong butt swim suits all day every day. She changes to a different one probably 4 times a day. We have yet to see a repeat swim suit. We think her and her boyfriend are sleeping in a tent somewhere on the property, but they store all their stuff in our dorm room. They come in here frequently dripping wet and make a mess. They also do salsa dancing frequently, lots of cooking and acrobatic yoga and hands stands and hang upside down from a pull up bar and all sorts of other crap. All with the thong butt hanging out. They have many strikes against them. This is hostel life!


Sunday January 7th

We were going to rent a surfboard today and trade between it and the free boogie board, but the waves were just about non existent all day. We tried boogie boarding for awhile, but there weren’t even sufficient waves for that. The girl at the front desk told us that the waves would be better starting around 5 pm when the tide would be a little higher. By that time we didn’t feel like going in the water anymore though, so we got dressed and walked down the beach for dinner. We stopped for awhile to watch the surfers and the sunset around 6:30. There was music coming from the hostel and hotel at the busy end of the beach, the atmosphere felt festival like.

There is a dirt road that parallels the beach behind the busy stretch of beach. On that road are a couple restaurants and a convenience store. We chose Coleos Café, a place run by vegan Israelis. They serve meat, but have several vegan options. We got a whole fire roasted eggplant covered in tomatoes, tahini and fresh parsley, we also had a falafel and hummus plate and a veggie pad Thai. The food was really good. It’s nice to find vegan food in such a remote place. It’s amazing how exciting hummus can be when you don’t get to have to regularly!! It was also nice getting to sit one meal out from the hostel kitchen. It’s a busy kitchen in which you have to compete with many others for space.

sunset

oven roasted eggplant with tahini

We walked back from the restaurant on the highway because the tide was too high for beach walking. It was really dark and there were only a couple street lamps along the 2.5 Km stretch. We had our headlamps and enjoyed the incredibly bright stars.


Monday January 8th

We left Playa Venao this morning. I made us each a cup of cream of oatmeal. I also made us coffee, which we probably haven’t had since long ago in Colombia. I decided to make it because our hostel has moka pots or stove top espresso makers. I was curious to learn how they work and also how they make the coffee taste. I used the national brand of Panamanian coffee called Café Duran. The coffee seemed to come out kind of thicker than drip coffee and I liked the result, but still don’t like coffee!

We waited out on the side of the road for the 7 AM bus. There aren’t many busses per day. The next bus was at 9, but we figured that bus might be real crowded. I guess others had the same idea though, because there were 5 of us waiting for the bus. A howler monkey made a ruckus in the tree above us.

On our ride to the beach, we had been in what is called a mini bus. A mini bus is really just a van though. Luckily the bus that picked us up this morning was bigger, maybe 30 feet. This is the standard size for buses outside of Panama City. They have 27 passenger seats. I would call that a mini bus! Since our bus was the first one of the morning it took us all the way back to Las Tablas. We didn’t have to get off in Padasi, so that was nice.

A really nice, brand new bus. This is the standard size.

In Las Tablas we had to get a bus back to Chitré, then from there a bus back out to the Pan-American Highway to the town of Santiago. Santiago is the midway stopping point of cross country buses between Panama City and David (near the Costa Rican border). I fondly remember the stop from the many times I have ridden that route. There are a number of cafeterias lining the highway for the buses to pull into and take lunch. My favorite one was a place called Los Tucanes. In 2011 I got to ride my bicycle to the restaurant. I was excited to get to eat lunch there today. It was however not as exciting as I remember! They seemed to be out of all the good things, yucca, plantains, tortillas, hojaldras (fry bread)! The food was cheap though, $4 a plate. I had Russian potato salad (the kind with beets), boiled potatoes, veggies and lentils. Jeff had the same but with rice instead of potato salad.

Cafeteria food at Los Tucanes

Jeff´s meal

We had planned to take a layover night in Santiago, but we got there much earlier than we had planned. We had already finished lunch by noon, so we walked across the street to a big grocery store and stocked up. Our next destination is another remote surfing beach and the place we are staying won’t have a kitchen, so we got foods that don’t need to be cooked, stuff for sandwiches and overnight oats. We will plan to have one meal out per day.

Heavily loaded down we searched for the bus terminal, where we boarded the 4th bus of the day heading to the town of Soná an hour away. At the terminal in Soná we waited for our last bus of the day, another hour and a half to Santa Catalina beach. I had a feeling it would be a busy bus, because there aren’t many departures per day, so we waited standing, ready to pounce when the bus pulled up. It was a good thing we did, because the 27 seater bus left the station with more than 40 people on board! We luckily had seats and together too.

On the bus to Sona. Sometimes the buses have fancy decorations and a TV screen for watching music videos

These are the sorts of videos we enjoy while riding the bus. We can´t tear our eyes away no matter how much we want to!
 Shaky Shaky by Daddy Yankee for your viewing pleasure!!
 
Because we hadn’t planned to get here until tomorrow, we had no reservation for tonight. The place we do have reservations at is on the outskirts of “town” and may or may not involve crossing a tidal river to get to, so we decided to try a hostel in town instead. It was about 4 PM when we arrived to the Villa Vento Surf backpackers hostel. At first they told us it was all full, but then they conjured up a double bed in a dorm type room with 2 other double beds. The cost would be $26 for the night. It is the first hostel we’ve been too in Panama that doesn’t take credit cards. We’ve gotten used to paying for everything with credit cards, and have barely used cash in Panama. It is also our first hostel that doesn’t have WiFi. We really are off the beaten track!

While they prepared the bed for us, we took a walk to explore town. We were in route for 9 hours, from 7 am to 4 pm. Along the way we saw mostly endless rolling hills that were cleared for livestock grazing. We saw a couple slaughterhouses too. This area is similar. It’s supposed to be a fishing village, and we did see lots of little boats down along the town beach, but there is also still lots of pasture for farm animals. There is a main paved road that runs though town, and a couple of dirt roads that branch off. It’s not very developed. There are a few established restaurants and places to stay, a couple of convenience store type markets, and lots of dive shops and tour operators, but for the most part it’s just a bunch of farm fields. It was kind of a ghost town when we were out walking. We wondered where everyone was.

Hand drawn map of the roads, looks big, but probably only a mile or two across

Low tide at Point Break, a popular surf spot

Undeveloped roads and lots for sale

A fun sign that many tourists ignore! Not us!

We are in the only place on the pacific coast of Panama where you can see the sun setting at the beach, for this reason, they call it the sunset coast. We stayed out for sunset, then headed back to the hostel to take advantage of the kitchen we could use to cook dinner. I made us whole wheat spaghetti with black beans, garlic, onion, carrot and bell pepper. There was no one else in the kitchen. Sure doesn’t seem as busy as a full hostel should! After dinner we read our books and went to bed early.

The route of travel today

Tuesday January 9th

This hostel has a free breakfast included, but can you guess what it is?? Pancakes of course! It’s either no breakfast at all or pancakes at the hostels of Panamá. I prefer none at all, at least then I don’t have to watch people pour batter all over the place and use an over abundance of oil!

Not again! Free shirt from lost and found at Playa Venao hostel. It fits Jeff better, so it´s his now!

We walked across the street to an Italian bakery that makes fresh pastries and bread each morning. They also have breakfast available too, but we just wanted to try the fresh bread. We got a gigantic whole wheat roll and took it back to the hostel to eat with peanut butter and jelly, steel cut oats and pan fried ripe plantain slices.

After breakfast we packed up our bags and begsn the walk to the hotel we had reservations for. Unfortunately it’s located at the far end of town. It was about a half hour walk with no shade, and our backpacks were heavy with our food. I picked this hotel because it’s supposed to be the only place in town that has beach front property. In the photos I saw palm roof shade umbrellas and lounge chairs and that was enough to sell me on the place.

After half an hour walking we arrived to Estero Beach and the river that we would need to cross to get to the hotel. It wasn’t flowing fast, but was a little too deep to get across with out wetting the bottom of our backpacks. We were deciding what to do when a family on the other side began loading up a little boat with their bags. The wife and kids hopped in the boat and the husband towed them across. The boat was then handed off to us. I went in with all our bags and Jeff towed us across.

Boat ride across the river to Oasis Surf Camp at high tide

Our room wasn’t ready yet, but we got to store our bags in the office and enjoy the lounge chairs and the beach and go for a swim. We ended up getting to check in a few hours early. It seems only one room was vacated today, ours, so they only had one to clean. We have our own room. It was pretty cheap considering the location, $45 a night. The rooms come in sets of two per building and each has its own porch with a hammock and bench. There are about a dozen different building, all of which are brightly painted. Out front of the rooms is a pretty palm lined avenue, palm umbrellas and lounge chairs, then just beyond that, the beach! It’s a really nice place.

Nice beach and lounge areas, Playa Estero

Beach bungalows, Oasis Surf Camp

We decided to try the hotel restaurant for lunch. The menu looked promising, smoothies, yucca and patacones, salad, pasta, a veggie burger and a rice and bean meal! Sadly they were out of a lot of things. They are waiting on a resupply that probably won’t come until tomorrow. Jeff got a veggie burger with fries and I had rice and lentils that came with a side salad. The lentils came in the tiniest little cup, about the size of a sake glass! The rice at least was coconut rice and was good. The salad was oily. Jeff’s veggie burger was so-so. The cost was $20, more than twice as much as our meal at Los Tucanes yesterday, and I liked that meal better! It’s sad that we keep striking out with Panamanian food. I want to like it! The restaurant is located in a large open air palm hut and it along with the hotel are run by Italians. I guess we should have gone for the pasta!

Sad lunch

Before we came here I made sure the hotel and restaurant accepted credit cards. The website says something along the lines of Santa Catalina being remote and for guest convenience they accept credit cards. What they don’t say is that they charge an extra 10% for this service! It’s not a huge deal, as it’s only 5% more than what we pay for ATM money and I get points on my credit card, it’s just annoying they don’t mention that on the website! It also seems they rarely use the card machine. The signal wasn’t so good and for awhile it seemed it wasn’t going to go through! If we go out again we will probably eat at the one upscale hotel in town. I would imagine that they take credit cards with more regularity and they are located on a bluff above one of the popular surf breaks.

After lunch we went swimming and lounging on the beach. It’s a black sand beach with lots of iron content in the sand, so it gets blazing hot in the sun! The water here is really clear and feels silky smooth on the skin. The waves weren’t huge, but they are consistent and break far from the shore in shallow water. There were lots of beginner surfers. We saw a surf report/weather/tide report posted on the wall of the reception, and it looks like it’s a bad week for big waves. Each day is given a star rating on a 1-10 scale, and the highest rating all week has been a 3. Today was a 1. That explains the small waves or lack of waves at Playa Venao. The waves are certainly big enough for us though! We will probably rent a board one of the days we are here. They are $15 for a whole day.

Today is a Panamanian national holiday, so there were lots or families enjoying the beach. The tide was really low in the afternoon and lots of trucks drove across the river and families had set up camps along the beach. In the late afternoon we took a walk. For dinner we enjoyed apples slices and peanut butter, banana, avocado sandwiches from our deck and watched the sunset. After dark we got to enjoy a lightening storm lighting up the sky.

A typical Panamanian beach scene. The lady is leering at me as I capture the photo. They had a crazy sound system in the bed of the truck.

Playa Estero at low tide

low tide, Playa Estero

The river is easy to walk across at low tide, only ankle deep

Wednesday January 10th

Today we took a snorkel tour to Isla de Coiba. The island is only 20 km from the mainland, but about 35 km from where we are. Isla Coiba is a National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage site. There used to be a remote prison on the island, so the surrounding waters have remained pristine, and the forest on the island is still original. All of the hotels and hostels work with dive and snorkel companies to sell their tours, so we were able to reserve it through the front desk at our hotel.

The pick up for our tour was set between 7:40 and 8, so we set an alarm for 6 to make sure we had plenty of time. It was still dark when we got up. We watched the sun brighten the sky from our front patio as I worked on our breakfast: apple slices and sandwiches containing our favorite combination, peanut butter, banana and avocado. We are eating the “healthy” Bimbo bread. It’s not 100% whole grain, and it’s super soft and airy. I prefer more dense whole grain bread. I read the ingredients more carefully this morning and saw that it contains azocarbamide, the ingredient that Subway got in trouble for using a few years back. Apparently it is an ingredient that is also used for making yoga mats! 😆 Subway has since removed it from its bread, due to public outrage. Mmm yoga mat bread...

We crossed the river after breakfast to wait for our ride. Conveniently it was low tide and easy to get across. We were really early and ended up waiting about half and hour. Jeff likes to be early.

At the tour company’s office we were given our gear, and confirmed our vegan lunch. Yesterday when we booked the tour I overheard the front desk guy on the phone say vegetarian instead of vegan, like maybe he doesn’t understand that it’s not the same. So we asked our English speaking guide, Sabrina, and when I heard her convey our order in Spanish, she also used the word vegetarian. We decided to leave it at that and let lunch be a mystery.

We were once again faced with the challenge of paying with a credit card. Over the phone the company told our front desk guy that credit card was no problem, but when we got there we learned they don’t even have a credit card machine, so we’d have to go somewhere else to run the transaction.

There were about 10 other people joining us on the tour. Once we all had gear, we walked down the main road to where it ends at the public beach and boarded a speed boat. After we were already on the boat, they decided it was time for us to do our credit card payment. We had to get back out and walk up the beach to the road and into a restaurant. They tried unsuccessfully to run our card. The signal was bad, and they eventually gave up and said we could try again later.

Thankfully the boat had a shade canopy! The ride to the island took about an hour and 15 minutes in relatively calm seas. As soon as we arrived, the captain dropped us at a beach where we all got out and put on our gear. We swam around for about a half hour. This is when Jeff and I found out that both of our masks leak. Annoying, but at least the snorkels didn’t leak, that would have been worse. We saw some some beautiful spotted eagle rays, lots of sting rays, a few small sharks (that stayed down deep along the sandy bottom) and tons of colorful fish. There were some microscopic jellyfish in the water that stung everyone repeatedly!

After the first snorkel we went to a small island for lunch. There is the main island, Coiba, and lots of other small islands surrounding it. The island we stopped at for lunch is called Ranchería Island. It used to have a Smithsonian Research Institute Laboratory on it, but all that remains now is the shell of the building. There were lots of plastic tables and chairs that the tour companies must have put there.

Our snorkel boat at Rancheria Island

Rancheria Island, Coiba National Park

Shortly after our arrival to the island, we learned that lunch was sandwiches made on the nice big rolls from the bakery in town! But sadly we were informed that only one vegetarian sandwich was in the box. Sabrina felt really bad and offered us a pineapple that would have been a snack for everyone. We were on the island for over an hour. Eventually Sabrina and the captain disappeared from the area and we looked into the sandwich box, and found right on top the other veggie sandwich!! Did she somehow miss it or was she purposely withholding it??! We stole the sandwich and ran off to eat hidden in the bushes, feeling like criminals. Our morale greatly increased after the discovery of the second sandwich!

Sabrina and the captain eventually reappeared with some coconuts from the abundant coconut palms on the island. So not only did we get two sandwiches (which were really good, veggies and no cheese!) and the pineapple, but we also got to have fresh coconut. It was turning out the be a pretty good day.

We visited two more snorkel sites after lunch. The first one for about a half hour and the second one for an hour. We saw a gigantic grouper, some small eels, a huge morey eel, starfish, needle fish, lots of big turtles, numerous large schools of fish and lots more colorful tropical fish of all sizes. The variety of aquatic life was pretty amazing! We got to get pretty close to the turtles a few times, swimming right next to them and coming up for air with them too!

Beach at 3rd snorkel spot

Our group snorkeling at the 3rd and final snorkel boat. Pirate ship in the background was some sort of all inclusive luxury adventure cruise full of Europeans.

We didn´t get sunburn like everyone else because we wore our matching shirts! Thanks Cousin Billy!!

A few people in the group had go pros for underwater photography. Although it’s nice to have photos, I think the experience is kind of ruined by focusing so much on trying to take photos, rather than just seeing and enjoying. On several occasions the idiots with the go pros scared off fish and turtles by charging after them trying to take photos or videos.

It turned out to be a great day. The boat ride back was even more calm than the ride out had been, and our credit card transaction went though on the first try when we got back!

Glassy water on the ride back, great for boating, no good for surfing

On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped at the other “mini super” in town, one we hadn’t been to yet. I think the vegetable truck had just been through town, because they had some nice looking produce. For $1.60 we got a cucumber, a Siamese carrot and a real nice big red tomato. We started walking back, but got picked up and driven the rest of the way. Inside of the car were two other people that had been on our tour, so we think it must have been someone from the tour company driving them back.

Back at our hotel we enjoyed our dinner on our porch and watched the sun sink toward the horizon. We ate tomato and cucumber slices with Cajun seasoning and carrot sticks with peanut butter. We also had “overnight” oats. I call them overnight oats, because that’s how I normally make them, but I didn’t do that, because last time they fermented. It’s too hot down here. There are many ways to make overnight oats. I usually use ground flax seeds, chia seeds, raisins, spices, a smashed banana, soy milk and oats. They just need to be soaked long enough for the flax and chia seeds to thicken the mixture.

After dinner we took a walk on the beach to watch the sunset. We were out for an hour and it was nearly dark when we got back. While we were out, I found a tank top buried in a tide pool and also what I think may be a tangled fishing net. It was too dark to know for sure. We brought them both back and put them in the debris pile at the high tide line in front of the hotel.

We really like our hotel. It reminds me of an old fashioned motor inn. Feels like we are on vacation in Florida or something! It’s certainly an escape from hostel life.

Low tide walk at Estero Beach

Designs near the water line left by small snail like creatures that burrow in the sand

Thursday January 11th

Since we hate putting on sunscreen so much, and also cleaning it off, we sometimes designate certain days, such as today, as no sunscreen days. We get away with this by spending the sunny part of the day in the shade. We swam and played in the waves for awhile in the late morning before the sun got strong, then didn’t go back in until a little before sunset time.

Sunrise. Jeff likes to take sunrise and sunset photos.

Good morning! Doggie on our front porch to greet us with a smile! (:

We had thought about renting surfboards today, but the surf rating is still really low. It was actually a zero today! The rentals are cheap, $15 for the whole day. It’s a shame that we didn’t get to see the big waves here. This area is supposed to have world class surf waves, and probably the best ones in Panama. The surf report begins improving starting tomorrow and into next week, but we are leaving tomorrow. There will be other opportunities to surf.

In the middle of the day, we went out in search of food. The walk to town lacks shade and can get really hot. We walked with our trusty $3 Bogotá umbrella for shade. We were down to just bread and peanut butter remaining and needed to get something to supplement that and also get one meal out. We tried the fancy hotel first, Hotel Santa Catalina, since it was on the way to town and we were certain they would take credit cards no problem. Unfortunately their menu wasn’t very interesting or vegetarian friendly, so we continued on in to town.

There’s a hotel here called La Buena Vida that is run by a couple from the United States. I knew they had a restaurant with lots of vegetarian food and figured they might also take credit cards. Not only did they take them, but they didn’t charge us any fee! We both got refreshing blended drinks, an appetizer of patacones, a Lebanese style wrap filled with veggies, a Thai style peanut sauce bowl with quinoa and watermelon popsicles for dessert. It’s all sounded great on paper, but sadly none of it was great. It was all ok, but we appreciated all of the options. This abundant meal cost $36. That’s about what we’d pay going out to eat in the US. Going out to eat in Panama definitely doesn’t compare to Colombia! We miss our cheap meals, street foods and corner fruit salads!

The best part, patacones with a mound of fat ass sauce!

On the walk back, there was a truck driving the streets with a announcement blasting through a rooftop mounted speaker that there fruits and vegetables for sale. It is common for vehicles to do this. We saw it frequently in Colombia also. The garbage truck has an announcer, and there are junk collectors that will haul off your old electronics, appliances and bicycles, they also announce this as they drive by. We flagged down the truck and bought some bananas and a pineapple. There were lots of other things to choose from. It was essentially a fully stocked traveling farmers market.

Traveling fruits and vegetables, my dream come true! I listen for his call like a child listens for the ice cream man!

Jeff likes the living fences. The trees are connected with barbed wire and are the classic style of fence throughout Central America, no rot!

For dinner we ate our whole pineapple and triple decker peanut butter and banana sandwiches. In addition to our walking and swimming, we did a lot of reading and laying around today. I have little patches of itchy rash all over me from my jelly fish stings. One even got me on my chin! I am also recovering from a bug bite extravaganza that took place at Playa Venao. I never get bug bites in the US, but the bugs of the tropics sure like me. Jeff is only suffering minor discomfort. I am definitely ready to leave the beach for a little while.

our sunny front porch in the afternoon light

view of our bungalow from the beach, many nice coconut palms