Coiba Paradise

The weekend before last (I'm a shamefully slow poster), I took my first real trip outside of the canal zone, to a cute little beach town called Santa Catalina. Santa Catalina is widely renowned for being a great surfing spot, and it consists almost entirely of hotels, boat tour companies, and surf shacks. Of course, I was there because of the town's proximity to Coiba Island and its surrounding marine national park, home to a variety of creatures (including endemic species of howler monkeys and agoutis) as well as a small visitors' station and an ex-prison converted into a naval station.

The trip over was notable for its stop at a migración office, where an officer got on board the bus and checked everybody's ID cards and passports. It's the first time I've ever been asked to show documentation other than at customs and I was really glad I'd brought my original passport, not just a copy. The other thing that happened on the way over was that I encountered a nice American gal on the last leg of the bus and we decided to get a hostel room together. Yay new friends!

I made it to Catalina on Friday afternoon, but there are no boats to Coiba other than around 8 AM, so we spent the rest of the day noodling around town and trying to figure out how to get to the island in the morning. Unfortunately, in such a small town, trips to Coiba are all cut into the same package deal at every tour company and they all cost $50, plus the $20 park entrance fee. $70 was a bit much for a day trip, but fortunately, come Saturday morning, a stroke of luck got me on a boat with some French travel magazine writers. They didn't do as much hiking as I would have liked, but going with them and with a guide who was also from the Smithsonian Institute knocked the cost down to $30. (I got the park entrance fee waived with my Smithsonian ID, thanks to our guide who sweet-talked the park rangers.)

On the boat out, we got a great surprise as we were surrounded by a pod of spotted dolphins. There were a ton of them, including several babies, and they leapt out of the water in a variety of acrobatics. I didn't get any super exciting shots, but here's a back.

Our first stop was on the island of Coiba itself, where we hiked a short trail called Sendero de los Monos. We had arrived a little later than we were hoping to and our guide mentioned that due to the time we probably wouldn't see much wildlife, but after only a few minutes she spotted a male howler monkey alone in a tree. She began making a squelchy kissing sound with the palm of her hand and pretty soon, he was hooting and calling at us. Her speculation was that he might have been alone due to illness or injury, but later we heard the rest of the group of howlers not far off. Later in the hike, we stumbled across a white-faced capuchin monkey which was also a little ways off from the rest of its troop. Unfortunately, I couldn't get photos of either of them because they moved away from us too quickly and were too hidden by the dense canopy.

After the hike, we went to a few other small islands to swim, snorkel, and take glossy magazine-quality photos of places seemingly untouched by human activity. The snorkeling was great, with sharks, huge schools of fish, fish almost as long as me, giant sun starfish, pufferfish in crazy colors and patterns, all sorts of stuff... At one of our stops, there was even another STRI station, way out there, in the middle of the cluster of islands. Here's their front yard:

They get forest AND beach? What am I doing in Gamboa??

After the island hopping, we went back to Isla Coiba to pay our park fees and check out the facilities, but we left fairly soon after, for one more island and then the trip back to the mainland.

Here's the guesthouses on Coiba:

And the beach:

And a fasciated tiger-heron:

There was also a weirdly large number of large black vultures hanging around the station.

On our way back, we saw couple of ships stopped in the water and our guide knew they were up to something. Upon checking out the scene, we found two adult humpback whales and a calf, all of whom were very calm and swam quite close to our boat--maybe within 15 ft at times. The adults were huge and surfaced repeatedly. I don't think I had ever seen whales before, so I was pretty exhilarated to see them and took as many photos as I could.

Here's a snout:

Here's a shot with part of the boat frame in it because the whale was so close at that point:

After we got back, we all got dinner at an overpriced beachfront restaurant. I wish I could have had more time on Coiba itself, but I had to leave early the next morning to make it back in time for work Sunday night.