In keeping with my squirrel-on-crack timelines for things, I should probably go back a bit in our Panama adventures…
Walking out to surf Playa Morillo with Mathias, one of the owners of Casa Morillo. It is a clean, comfortable spot on Playa Morillo, with a great bar and nice clean rooms. It has been on this stretch of beach for a few years, and I couldn’t recommend it enough if you want to get away (like really, really away) from the real world and surf uncrowded beach perfection. Casa Morillo is a three minute walk down the beach to “Main Break”, which is this beautiful, heavy, fast, hollow beach break that reminded me how out of shape I am for surfing beautiful, heavy, fast, hollow beach breaks. Over five days I got a few handfuls of great waves, and at least four handfuls of solid beat-downs. I was a bit out of paddling shape for the size and quality of these waves.
Turned in and running away from a smaller closed-out one at Playa Morillo. We have a couple other pictures that my sister caught, but they will show up later in another post.
Tam and I looking at pebbles on Playa Mata Oscura. No surfing here, but it is a beautiful beach. And not a soul around. I still find it surprising to find a beach like this, anywhere in the world, and not have it overrun with tourist hordes. It is a pleasant surprise every time.
The beach at Mata Oscura doing its best impression of what I assume beaches in Iceland must look like. At least here it is a pleasant eighty-five degrees, and there are no icebergs floating around.
We found yet another deserted beach, this time South of my sister’s place, called Playa Plaza. We didn’t expect to surf, but found these little knee-high waves with nobody else around, and ended up having a good time. We always have a good time when we get to surf waves together (sometimes Tam won’t paddle out in the chunkier stuff with me). These little waves were a bit of a reprieve from the heavies at Play Morillo. I was just about at my size limit there on the first two days, so some silly, playful surf with my bestest girl was perfect!
After a fun week of beaching, surfing, and exploring at my sister’s place in Mata Oscura, we drove North and a bit West and ended up in a grungy little surf town called Santa Catalina. It is the self-described “center” of surfing in Panama.
I cannot confirm this.
We left perfect, glassy, head-high to two-foot overhead surf on Playa Morillo, with just a few of us out surfing perfect waves every day, for crowded, knee-high closed out beach breaks in Santa Catalina.
Well, shit. What’s that old saying?
Oh, yeah… Never drive away from good surf.
But we did.
Before we left, we bought Tam a new board for this trip, and it is nice to see her really starting to enjoy the “Sweet Potato”. it is a 6′-0″, forty-nine liter board, and she is catching more waves with it than I am with my board. It’s the perfect board for her! She caught a ton here in Santa Catalina.
Santa Catalina was kinda cool as towns go. And, as a bonus, with the surf kinda crappy it left lots of time for long, long, long walks on the beach. The beaches are at least interesting: there are massive flats of rock reef all over the area, with beaches between them, so tons of really great tide pooling and beach combing.
We didn’t get many pictures of Santa Catalina — sometimes you just have to leave the phone behind. There was this one, of one of the many local birds that sit at the edge of the surf hurling verbal abuse at you when you surf like a kook (which for me is quite often).
Then, after a quick five days, we did a seven hour drive to Almirante, where we would catch the ferry over to the island of Bocas Del Toro. Bocas was our Christmas-week destination, and Dolly and Mark would be coming up to visit again. Bocas is in the Northeastern corner of Panama, almost on the border with Costa Rica, and on the Caribbean.
I do love the Caribbean for the cultural pride and rich history.
And we would surf again. If there were waves…
In Almirante, we stayed at this really pleasant place called Mama Ines’ Garage. It was, yep, you guessed it, a converted garage. It was really comfy, and it came pre-loaded with the friendliest pets ever.
These two were so cute!
This guy a little less so, but he was really sweet — probably a little too sweet, cause he smelled pretty bad and just wanted to snuggle and be held.
We had a nice dinner at a Pirate bar on the water. The Caribbean theme started before we even got on the ferry and out to the island.
The next morning was the ferry to Bocas Del Toro…
The ferry stop in Almirante. You need to get there early to get in line. Some locals said, “Oh, no worries, just go an hour early”, and others insisted you had to be there two or three hours early. They do not sell tickets in advance. Because we had the car, we needed to get on what is the only car ferry on this line, and Sundays are limited, so we got there over two hours early. We were first in line, and spent the hours eating fried chicken and pork chops with fried eggs and jojaldre (fried bread that is super puffy and delicious). You can see Tam in there swatting at mosquitos and finishing her breakfast.
My sister missed this same ferry a week later, when they arrived almost three hours early and were at the back of a long, long line. Luckily they were directed to a non-tourist backup ferry.
This truck pulled on the ferry last, and as you can see, he was having some overheating issues.
Maybe a radiator cap would help?
Or maybe, just maybe, if he cleaned all of the mud out of the radiator?
Anyway, it ran long enough to get off the ferry so we could all disembark.
At the ferry port on Bocas you can watch hundreds of water taxis (small pangas) zipping at breakneck speed between the islands of Bocas and Carenero a few hundred yards apart, and Bastimentos a mile or two further out.
Bocas Del Toro is the classic Caribbean/Latin American town (Island). The colorful architecture, with the wraparound covered patios and open plans, are the norm, and create naturally-cooled, comfortable living spaces.
I am still not sure how we always manage to find all these rusted out cars, but, well, here’s another one. Overall, we really enjoyed Bocas town. It feels pretty clean, safe, really lively, and the people are friendly.
It feels very Caribbean.
It’s pretty tough to beat those classic shores and the Caribbean blue.
And, of course, the surf here.
We were far too busy surfing here to get any pictures of us surfing, so you will just have to take me at my word… The surf here is really good. We found a bunch of crowded breaks that looked like they could be good, but weren’t really working while we were there. We also found a break called Black Rock, that turned out to be where we surfed for five days. We surfed it mostly by ourselves, or with just a few other folks each morning, until the surf schools arrived and clogged up the inside of the takeoff after ten o’clock. The waves were at Tam’s limit for size and strength, but still fun for an intermediate surfer like me. it was a deep-reef A-frame with fun lefts and rights, with a few rides on either side connecting through two to three hundred meters long at times. It was a slow wave, so tons of playful turns and sections to connect. I watched Tam take off on a few nice head-high set waves and ride them really well!
She is surfing great!
Wind, Water, Waves, Wander 