A return to Panama

Panama City welcomed us back for the start of our 2025-2026 Winter Escape on November 18 with a party in the streets that went all night.  Our apartment was on the 49th floor, with floor to ceiling glass, and the windows were shaking from enormous speakers playing a bass line somewhere.  Our noise-canceling headphones worn over 32 decibel earplugs were no match for the party.  We didn’t sleep, and neither did anyone else in the city.  Horns were blaring constantly, the streets were parking lots until well past the witching hour, and there were people in the streets as far as we could see.  We googled “what is happening right now in Panama City” at 2:00 a.m. to no avail.  Around 3:00, it dawned on Peter that it could have had something to do with a soccer match playing in the pizza restaurant where we had dinner earlier that evening.  Everyone was watching the match between Panama and Ecuador, which isn’t unusual in and of itself, but a few people wore the national kit and were behaving like it was an important game.  He wondered during dinner whether it was a World Cup qualifying match, but we didn’t give it a thought after leaving the restaurant.  The next day we found out that by beating Ecuador 3-0 that evening, Panama qualified for the World Cup for the second time ever.  What a thing to witness!

We stayed in Panama until mid-January.  We worked remotely, avoided the extra sloppy weather back home, and both caught the flu over Christmas week.  Nothing too exciting to report from the city.  And, we didn’t do a ton outside the city this time around, in part due to being laid up for nearly 2 weeks with the flu, and in part due to the fact that we saw a lot last year.  We decided to not do quite as much and just go back to our favorites, plus the one place we weren’t able to get to last year.

For the repeats, we stayed on an island within the Bocas del Toro archipelago over Thanksgiving weekend (where it rained every day, the highlight being taking an 8’ Hobie Cat out a few times).  After recovering from the flu, we were going completely stir crazy and really needed to get out of the apartment, so we went to Gamboa for a weekend to look for and listen to birds and howler monkeys in the jungle only 45 minutes from Panama City.  Wow, did we need that escape!

Yellow throated toucan in Gamboa

We also spent 5 days/nights in the sailing/snorkeling paradise that is the San Blas Islands, where we stayed on the same sailboat with the same Italian female captain as we did last year around this time. And, as some of you know, we bought a new (used) sailboat over the summer, which was inspired by this San Blas boat, so this time beyond the sun and fun, we were in investigative mode on how Mira, the captain, did things on her boat.

The San Blas islands remain a rare paradise.  Controlled by the indigenous Guna Yala people, only the Gunas are allowed to own and build on the islands, and they are not building hotels.  They don’t allow scuba diving, which we heard is because some dive operators left the local people some dive equipment years ago to use in their spearfishing, but astonishingly didn’t train them how to use it, and tragically some people died.  That ended diving here, but snorkeling is allowed.  The coral is in very good condition overall, and there are many huge soft corals.  We snorkeled four different reefs, all of which were great.  There was only one other snorkeler from another boat one day, otherwise we had the entire reefs completely to ourselves.  The most memorable snorkel occurred on a day when there were probably 30 pelicans hanging around and diving constantly quite near our boat, right over the reef.  We watched the birds for several minutes, assuming the obvious:  there was some kind of school of fish down there.  We donned our snorkel gear and immediately started swimming toward the reef.  Soon after entering the water we found ourselves swimming right into what felt like a National Geographic film.  There were what looked like a million small fish swimming in a big ball!  We couldn’t see two feet in front of our face at times, the fish were so thick.  And we couldn’t seem to swim out of it, so we knew it was huge but also knew from observing the pelicans earlier that it was moving a bit, but which direction was impossible to tell from the middle of it.  It was really cool and all, until it got scary when, thanks to those National Geographic films, we remembered that the birds are not the only larger animals following these baitballs to get their dinner, some of them swim.  Maybe it’s not the wisest decision to be in the middle of a huge baitball when you can barely see each other, much less what is lurking outside the baitball.  We finally exited the ball, and saw some small schools of larger fish like jacks, but no larger predators than that.

Our set up on the beach for a picnic

Denise’s birthday lunch, grilled local lobster

There was one destination we just couldn’t get to last year because it’s a six-hour drive from Panama City and we didn’t really have time.  We were determined to get there this year to dive:  Coiba National Park on the Pacific side.  We had heard the diving was great, and very different underwater compared to the San Blas, which are in the Caribbean.  Coiba is known for the abundant marine life, not corals.  Whale sharks, which we’ve never seen, are frequently spotted in Coiba “between January and March,” so we put this trip off to our very last few days in mid-January to give ourselves the best chance to see a whale shark.  No such luck, they had not yet arrived for the season, but we saw pretty incredible marine life and would definitely recommend Coiba to anyone who likes to dive.  We’ve posted a few videos here, including a much smaller fishball than we swam into in the San Blas, but with bigger fish.  The frogfish in the video, incidentally, was bright, golden yellow underwater – not greenish.  If you aren’t familiar with them, you never see one move or swim; they sit plastered on the reef/rock.  Then, you look back, and sometimes they are gone!

And with that, we were off to our next destination:  Sao Paulo, Brazil!  Some of you may know that we were slated to move to Sao Paulo for my job at Stripe a few years ago. We were going through the visa application process, etc., and then it all came to a screeching halt when Covid closed the borders.  We have never been to Brazil, and look forward to seeing a city we may have called home for 1-2 years!

Apartment this year

Mola vendor in Panama City

Huge, perfectly safe banana spider on Bastimentos Island

A stinkhorn mushroom on its last day on Bastimentos Island in Bocas del Toro

San Blas anchorage – lots of catamarans this year

San Blas sunset

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