Surfing in Panama

After a great but short visit to Cuba I flew back with Ben to Panama City to meet Maree so we could travel up the coast for a few days. I had a horrible time getting from Alabama to Panama a few days earlier, and Maree had a similar nightmare flight that resulted in her losing her half day to visit the city before we arrived.

Ben had convinced me to try out surfing so from Panama City we drove up the Panamerican Highway for a long time, like 4 to 5 hours, to get to a surfing beach called Playa Venao. It's a long beach with reliable waves almost all day long and scattered with a handful of small lodges. Populated only by surfers, it was not a crowded place.

This is not Cuba.

It was deep into the dry season when we were in Panama. I don't think i've ever been there during that time, but generally they have the dry season and they have the rest of year.

Palms scattered across cow pasture with volcanoes in the distance.

This is the beach at Surfcamp Guanico, at low tide during a wind storm in the dry season. The whole time we were at Playa Venao it was very windy.

Even farther down the road is another beach with a protected cove. We briefly stopped at a new place called Sansara Surf and Yoga Resort. The whole region is slowly being discovered by developers.

At Surfcamp Guanico the surfing is much closer.

This is a clear worm that lives in the sand. They collect broken bits of shells and use them to form a protective coating over their bodies. They were very weird and i spent a lot of effort trying not to step on them.

This place had good food, good music and good drinks. About two hours later i threw all that stuff back up.

One day i tried surfing and then the next day i got a nasty stomach virus that lasted 24 hours. During the beginning of that problem we went on a road trip to another beach 45 minutes away where Ben knew the owners of another lodge called Surfcamp Guanico. They were nice people and their beach was far less crowded than even Playa Venao. In fact the whole beach was mostly deserted. Back at Venao the virus destroyed any ambitions i had to do anything physical but Ben spent nearly all his time in the waves.

After a few days at Playa Veao we drove to Palenque where we stayed for 5 or 6 days. That drive was also 5 or 6 hours because the entire highway is under construction right now. Then from Paleque Maree and drove an additional 5 hours (this time due to crazy indigenous protests that blocked all traffic on the highway for 2 hours) to David and Boquette. Our last visit was a high altitude agricultural town called Cerro Punta in a hidden valley less than 10 miles from Costa Rica and bordering the continental divide.

One the way to Cerro Punta we drove past the highest mountain in Panama: Volcan Baru. Baru is an active volcano with a whole bunch of radio towers on top of it at 11,398ft. They say on a rare clear day you can briefly see both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans at the same time.

A high mountain stream with a lot of suspension bridges over it so farmers can reach their fields on the other side.

A log cabin on a rock solid foundation. Nice piece of property.

A dog who lives on a foundation of garbage and junk. Poor guy.

Maree looks over one of the narrow bridges.

A very rickety looking suspension bridge.

Driving into Cerro Punta i would have bet you money that we were in a collapsed caldera of a huge volcano. The whole area is surrounded in almost circular ring of mountains and is completely hidden from the outside world. You can only get in through a narrow steep walled jungle canyon, a very pretty drive by itself. Cerro Punta shares the valley with a handful of other named communities but to me it was pretty much all the same place, with the scattered "townsites" made to serve the local workers, many of which probably don't have cars.

In reality there is indeed a collapsed caldera but it's on Volcan Baru. The north wall of Baru seals off on side of the valley and comes down to pinch the river that leaves the area, i guess giving off the illusion of being in a crater. At lest that's what i guess from the small amount of local info i found at the time.

Looking up at the continental divide.

There were several large horse ranches in the valley in addition to all the croplands.

The fields on the hillsides were way to steep for automated machinery. It's all done by backbreaking labor.

Fieldworkers in the upper right.

Unlike Cuba, they have satellite TV on their roofs.

It's very very pretty.

Potatoes fresh from the fields.

Many fields were being actively sprayed with pesticides that keep many of their products out of the United States. I imagine that stuff runs right off into the streams.

In this distant view of croplands encroaching into the jungle you can get an idea of the size of the trees.

When we arrived at Cerro Punta there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the whole valley was brilliantly colorful. We ate lunch at Los Quetzales Ecolodge where i ate the best trout i have had in many years. Unfortunately, during that single hour the entire sky became overcast. I had no excuse to be surprised that a high continental divide surrounded by water on both sides would get cloudy in the afternoon. Still, the hand worked farms and streams were very pretty, clouds or not.

Cerro Punta was the last thing we did during that trip and we were only there for a few hours of a long day of driving and flying back to Panama City. You could stay there for a couple of days for sure. It's a good bird viewing area and has access to Amistad National Park. I wish we could have stayed there longer.