Back from Panama

Sunday – 24 September

Our way back to Costa Rica focused on seeing a bit of Panama that most tourists don’t see. We wandered back along the pacific coast, spending one night on the beach just a few hours west of Panama City, and then spending two nights on the Azuero Peninsula, Panama’s oldest settled region. Our first night out from Panama City, we spent at a great little hotel right on the beach. The hotel had an open air restaurant that faced out onto the Pacific, where the tide brought the water right up to breaking against the sea wall at the edge of the
restaurant. We spent dinner watching surfers riding the sharp right hand break right along the sea wall! Niall was dying to go out on his inflatable boogie board, but we settled for watching the surfers and letting Niall swim around in the pool.

The next day, we headed farther north and west toward the Azuero. Along the way, we spent the afternoon wandering through mudflats near a place called Aguadulce. Aguadulce is home to Panama’s cultivated shrimp industry (which are grown in ponds on the tidal mudflats, and we visited mostly to see the thousands of waterbirds that congregate to feed in the rich tidal flats. We timed our visit perfectly for low tide, and saw a whole bunch of new birds we had never seen before, including (just for you Jeff!): Black Necked Stilts, Whimbrels, American Oystercatchers, Short-billed Dowitchers, Common Snipe, Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, Little Blue Herons, Chestnut-bellied Herons, Black Skimmers, and Magnificent Frigatebirds. There we quite a few others too, but we just couldn’t get a clear ID. Panama was a great place to bird, and Aguadulce was far from the only interesting place to birdwatch.

Eventually, after Niall reached his threshold of having his parents starring through binoculars at birds on the mudflats, we arrived at our hotel in Chitre. The next day, we spent driving down the peninsula to the small town of Pedasi, where we found a boat to take us out to Isla Iguana, a small national park noted for it’s great variety of marine life. We spent about 4 hours on the island snorkeling and exploring the tidal pools, where we had a great time discovering all kinds of things that you usually only seem to see on National Geographic or Animal Planet. The reefs around the island had a great variety of coral, which unfortunately was mostly dead (due to the bad el niño in 1982), but seemed to be slowly recovering none-the-less. The fish and other critters certainly didn’t seem to be affected at all thoughr, as there were zillions of brightly colored fish of all shapes and sizes, including yellow puffer-fish, iridescent blue parrotfish, and angelfish in black and yellow stripes. In the tidal pools there were filled bright orange crabs, little mud-skipper type fish, and brittle starfish up to the size of your hand. Just above the tide line were low shrubby mangroves that held an entire rookery of nesting frigate birds. We also saw sea-slugs and sea urchins, and the largest number of hermits crabs we’ve ever seen. In places it was almost creepy—there were so many the ground just seemed to be moving with thousands of hermit crabs scurrying along in the shells, ranging in size from about that of a dime up to big ones as big as your thumb or more.

After leaving Isla Iguana, we promised Niall we would take him to Playa Venado, home of big-time surfing in Panama. First however, we had to at least peak at some local real-estate, so on the way to Venado, a very nice real estate agent showed us some amazing properties with gorgeous ocean views that we could afford, but unfortunately just seem too far from anywhere! Cést la vie… Eventually, just before sunset, we arrived at Playa Venado, where Niall decided maybe the surf was just a little too big for him. Located on the tip of the Azuero Peninsula, this beach got huge waves off the Pacific that looked just fantastic, but were more than a bit large for us! After a long day, we were happy just to settle for a nice dinner on the drive back to our hotel, and look forward to a bit tamer ‘surfing’ back in Costa Rica.

The other reason we spent time in the Azuero Penin sula was for the areas cultural uniqueness. We had read that this area was little changed for much of the past 200 years, and our guidebooks regularly characterized the place as "looking much like rural Spain." I'll grant the guidebooks this, there are some great examples of Spanish colonial architecture, and the countryside was unquestionably picturesque, but I can't say it really looked much like Spain to me. I had to actually wonder if the folks who wrote that into the guidebooks had ever really been to Spain! It was sort of like saying New England looks like England-- you can see the influence, but it is a family resemblance, not at all the same thing. So if you go to the Azuero (and we would definitely reccomend it!)-- don't expect Spain-- expect Panama, with a strong Spanish influence and it's own unique twists. And don't miss the great tamales and roadside pipa (chilled coconut milk straight out of the coconut-- it's great!).

Before crossing back over the border to Costa Rica, however, we decided to spend one more night in Panama, in the community of Boquete on the southern slopes of Volcan Barú. This town is a very interesting mix of Panamanian and expatriate communities, with large numbers of European and North American retirees mixed in with the local farmers. Like Volcan and Guadalupe where we stayed on the northern slopes of the same volcano, Boquete is noted for it’s gardens and rich plant life, and we were not disappointed. In addition, the day we spent there was Norma’s birthday, so was appropriate that we managed to find one of the nicest restaurants of our trip for dinner. They had great food at very reasonable prices, and we had a wonderful window seat looking out over a garden with a fast running mountain stream just a few feet away.

Our border crossing back into Costa Rica was our most uneventful to date. Even though our car was stuffed to the gills with stuff we bought in Panama (boogie boards, a toaster oven, gifts & souvenirs, clothes, etc., the customs officers merely stamped our passports and sent us on our way. We were through in less than 10 minutes! While we the Costa Rican officer was filling in our paperwork, we discovered that the other person crossing the border was a Norwegian woman traveling alone and heading home to the same town we were planning on spending the night, Playa Dominical. Lynn asked if she might hitch a ride, and we decided why not—we could squeeze another backpack and a surf board in! so we gave her a lift for the 2.5 hour drive to Domincal. As it happens, it was nice we did—she was a wealth of local knowledge, and she actually worked (as a massage therapist) at the hotel we were planning to stay at. We stopped about a half an hour along and she called ahead and made reservations for us to make sure we would get a good room! She also brought us up to date on the state of some of the roads we were unsure about. We had avoided a section of road along the coast on our way down to Panama because on our map it was rated as “seasonal only.” As it happens, this section has been recently upgraded and paved, to the point where it is commonly referred to as the best road in Costa Rica by those that know it exists! If we hadn’t picked up Lynn, we never would have known and we would have missed some of the nicest ocean front in all of Coast Rica.

We spent the next two nights in Playa Dominical enjoying some relaxing time doing family beach stuff. Just south of Dominical was a great beach called Playa Hermosa that we all got to really try out our new boogie boards on, and we also snorkeled along the reefs at Punta Uvita. Other than the swimming and snorkeling, we hung around the hotel where we could walk the beach and Niall was constantly in and out of the pool. Along the beach we saw turtle tracks up to where they had laid their eggs the night before, and each time we walked, a very cute little dog kept wandering along for the walk. Well, you know where that was going. This time, it wasn’t me, however, who got hooked on the dog. After our last neurotic dog Lidi, Norma swore that she would never have another dog and I was never to bring one home. Wouldn’t you know, that by the time we were ready to check out of our hotel, she was asking all around town about the little black stray dog, etc. Welcome to the Shannon family, “Chispita!” As you’ve seen from the earlier photos, she is small (about 16 lbs), and short haired, and clearly mostly terrier, sort of like a dark colored Jack Russell. Unlike Jack Russell’s, however, this is the most mellow, mild mannered, amiable dog you’ve ever seen. Like many street dogs in Costa Rica (and there are a lot), she is very traffic savvy, and remarkably smart (after one week, she knows her name, comes when called, is house trained, and even sits on command most of the time…). But the real kicker for Norma is the typical little terrier beard and the ears that flop—she just cant resist that I’ve decided. So… we are now the owners of a dog in addition to our growing menagerie of lizards and other wilder critters.

Seeing as we had the dog with us now, we decided to cut our trip short by one day and drive straight back to Monteverde instead of spending another night in Manuel Antonio on the way home. As it happens, this was a fateful decision. We stopped for lunch at a place called the Pelican on a nice beach just outside Jaco, and in hurry, we parked a little ways farther from the restaurant than we usually would, and in the shade where we couldn’t see the car. While we were eating, someone used a ‘slim-jim’ to break into our car and stole my camera and Norma’s wallet. When we returned to the car, just the drivers’ side passenger door was unlocked, and we immediately noticed the missing stuff. After a hurried couple of phone calls to cancel Norma’s credit cards, we then headed out to Jaco to visit the local police and report the theft, on the slight chance that we might be able to make an insurance claim (alas, that failed, but I’m told at least we can claim the loss on our taxes…) On the way there, we noticed one of our tires going flat, and were lucky enough that it really started to go right in front of a gas station. As it turned out, the thief had not only stolen our stuff, but slashed one of our tires with a knife! Fortunately, the gas station managed to fix everything veryt quickly, and nothing else went wrong… We were later told this is a common ploy used by thieves in Costa Rica as a potential diversion should you get back to your car when they are inside—they explain that they we just trying to find something to write a note pointing out the flat tire! The police, though not terribly helpful, were very understanding and much more efficient than we expected. After getting a \ copy of the police report, we were on our way in about a half hour. Two ours after that, we finished the long climb up the windy dirt road to Monteverde and home, just as the sun set over the Gulf of Nicoya. While we did have a hiccup or two, it was still a great trip! Next week- back to work…