We left Panama City at 6pm on a beautiful evening cruising overnight, North for 20 hours to the province known as 'Veraguas'. The capital of the area is Santiago. This province is the only one that spans across the isthmus from the Caribbean to the Pacific.
We anchor between the islands, 'Isla Cebaco' and the town on the mainland
'Santa Catalina'. There has been a lot of rain and a huge 4 metre tide, making the sea brown with lots of debris that has been washed down the nearby rivers.
We launch the tender to reconnoitre the area looking for surf as this is meant to be one of the top surf spots along the coast of Central America. We found a break that has about 10 surfers, and decide as it was late, to go early next morning.
Wednesday. Paul suggests we get to the surf about 7am, however, there are already about 15 surfers there when we arrive at the break. Mostly they are very nice people including about 5 being Aussies. The surf is good with some head high with left and right long rides.
We are told that this break only works on high tide and virtually shuts off 3 hours into the tide. With such big tides rocks appear quiet quickly. We have a good session.
After breakfast we decide to visit the town of Santa Catalina. There is only one main colourful street. The permanent population is about 200, catering mainly for surfing tourism. There are lots of bars and restaurants. We visit a surf shop run by an ex Californian 'Bobby',a nice friendly guy.
We then take a long walk to locate the pro-surf photographer that MB met in the surf today. We find 'Sergi' living in a two room shack.We ask him for the photos he took in the morning but he he asks us to supply our own USB stick which we don't have on us. Paul returns later with this.
We try to organise a fishing trip for that afternoon, which was available but we had no way of communicating with the charterer as they had no working phones. There are no ATM's in town, and the whole town reminded us of Bali 30 years ago.
We come across a fisherman selling fresh fish out of a wheelbarrow in the
street.
Back on board we relax and read while sam organises fishing with Ricardo who has a phone, for tomorrow.
Thursday. We are up at 6am for a surf, but we go to the wrong break. MB got some good waves but had to be back for fishing.
Ricardo turns out to be Richard arriving in his 'Panga' boat, with his driver a local named Joel. They said they have all the fishing gear but on inspection it was pretty ordinary.
Richard is another ex USA surfer who fell in love with the place 13 years ago and stayed. Joel appeared to be a native Central American Indian, who knew the area well. However, we trolled for 3 hours without a strike. We then got several hook-up's, but due to the poor gear we have several bust-off's.
We caught a Bonito, which gave Tom his first Pelagic fish, and MB decided to keep for a Tahitian Cervice. With 10 minuets of our charter remaining we finally hook a nice spanish Mackerel.
While the boys fished, JB and Jeanette spend a morning on the beautiful beach of the island.The water has cleared up so they swim and walk.
We have decided to head North West to a large archipelago with the main island of 'Coiba' a national park of Panama.
JB and Mick