Panama - Beach day!

 Feb 15

We drove most of the day, and mostly Adam drove. We ran into quite a lot of traffic, probably people heading out of the city for the long weekend of Carnavale. The police were everywhere on Highway 1, the Pan American Highway; one thing they did was open a third lane for Westbound traffic (us) by taking one lane away from Eastbound and shunting cars over to that side. It was very strange for us to see, and we did not go on that side, but it really made sense from a traffic mitigation standpoint. 

 

 

 

We finally got to Santa Catalina, which is basically one small road running along the sea, with hotels and restaurants and houses along either side.  We looked on google maps, found a nice-looking hotel on the beach, and drove up. The person at the front desk said they were 'super full' but suggested we try a place up the hill called Surfer's Paradise. We drove up there and found a fairly humble, hostel-style place on a cliff overlooking the sea. They had a room for us! We took it, mostly because I did not have the energy to keep driving around town looking for somewhere better. 

 

 

Just the view from our doorway at Surfer's Paradise, no big deal

 

The owner showed us the room and checked that the door worked (barely), the water worked (yes, no problem), and the AC worked (not very well, turns out). We set down our things, freshened up, and walked to the beach. This was the most rustic place we stayed, but it was totally fine for us. 

 

Evening at the beach

 

It was about a 15 minutes walk to the beach via roads, or we could go down the cliff and walk around the next cliff over to get to the beach, at low tide. We took the roads, because I wanted to check out the town. We got to the beach and walked along it for a while. The tide was out, and the beach was looooooooooong and wide. It was a really pleasant beach, very nice ocean. We went to a restaurant with a patio overlooking the beach for dinner and got cold drinks and seafood dishes.  And fries. 

 

 

 

We walked back to Surfer's Paradise and sat out on their big terrace and worked on a crossword puzzle, read our books, and tried not to fall asleep before 9pm. We're so tired!! We also listened to the young nomadic people on the other part of the terrace have young, nomadic conversations. 

 

Feb 16

We had a slow morning, and walked to a nearby fancy hotel to get breakfast. We had our breakfast on a terrace overlooking the sea. Then we walked through town again back to the beach. We spent some time in waves. I spent most of my time sitting in this glorious little creek that ran down from the jungle to the ocean- it was only about 3 inches deep, and the water was bathtub warm, and flowing gently down to the sea. I really liked sitting in that creek, I spent a long time there. Adam explored the rocky tide pools nearby. Then we dried off and walked back to Surfer's Paradise over the rocks, which was quite a short walk! We showered and changed, got in the car, and headed to David. 

 

Gorgeous. We are standing on the beach, about where the waves were breaking. That building way off on the top left is where we had dinner. There was this huge expanse of shallow water and beach.

 

David

Our next stop was really Boquete, a cool mountain town towards Costa Rica, but I was worried about driving up in the mountains in the dark, so I booked us a place in a nearby city called David. This was really only a place to sleep for the night. 

 

The hotel was actually really lovely, if you ever find yourself in David, I would recommend it. Patampa Hotel Boutique, run by a Swiss ex-pat probably named Pascal. Our room was quite nice and we were very hot so we both took showers and rested for a bit. Turns out, I had severely sunburned my legs at the beach, and they hurt a lot. 

 

We looked up a restaurant about a 20 minute walk away (we weren't interested in driving around any more than we had to), and I found a pharmacy nearby that was still open where hopefully I could buy aloe.

 

I successfully purchased the aloe. On leaving the store, I turned around to tell Adam something and stepped backwards into a giant hole in the sidewalk that was full of water and trash. I cussed in English. A woman nearby said "Dios mio!" to which I heartily agreed.  

 

I was pretty unhappy at this moment. I had severely sunburned legs. I had one wet foot (sock and shoe). I was hungry, and I couldn't walk 20 minutes back, change my shoes, and walk 20 minutes back again. We were carrying on to dinner. I think everyone reading this blog would be surprised at what a positive attitude I  maintained, all things considered. We also had trouble reading the map on our phone because we couldn't connect to any wi-fi or cell service so we were getting a teensy bit lost as well. 

 

But we made it to dinner! And the restaurant was good. We had seafood. We watched Hawaii 5-0 with Spanish subtitles on a TV above the table. Then we walked back and I took another shower. 

 

So many good seafood options!!

 

 

In the morning, we both took showers again. Which means in the 18 hours we stayed there, we took a total of 5 showers. Good thing they have plenty of water there. 

 

Pascal made us breakfast and we sat out on the terrace and enjoyed eggs, fresh fruit, and toast. Then we hit the road for Boquete! 

 

Lessons learned: 

• Driving is actually not as scary as we expected on the Pan American Highway.  
• Put sunscreen on your legs, even if you 'never get burnt' on your legs 
• Aloe in Spanish is Aloe.  
• Watch where you're walking so you don't step into a trash hole full of water. 
• Bring more socks in case you step into a trash hole full of water. Or better yet, bring your dang hiking sandals!

For next time: 

• Seriously, put on sunscreen. 
• We didn't need to stay in David. We would have been fine driving straight to Boquete, even as it got dark.