After a few fun days in El Valle de Anton with Saz’s sister and her boyfriend, Nicola & Chad, we headed back to Panama City to meet up with their brother, Adam. His flight had been delayed, so he didn’t arrive at the Airbnb until 9:30 pm. We spent a few hours catching up, and then surprised Sazzie with her birthday gift: a day on the water with a private boat charter to the Pearl Islands the next day. We made a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up some food and drinks for our boat day, and went to bed early.
The next morning we hopped in an Uber to the marina, about 15 minutes away, to board our boat. The boat had a cooler stocked full of beer and drinks, and we met crew members, Oscar and Moses. We put on some music, cracked open some beers, and enjoyed the beautiful 2 hour drive to the Pearl Islands. Along the way, a playful pod of dolphins surfed the wake behind our boat, and we saw flying fish gliding across the surface.
Around 11 am, we arrived at our first anchorage right off the Pearl Islands. The water was absolutely gorgeous, and just what we needed to cool off after our long boat ride. We put on our snorkelling gear and went for a swim at the nearby reef. Unfortunately, a lot of the coral was bleached (and we are a bit spoiled after spending so much time with the unreal snorkelling in Southeast Asia) but we still saw some cool fish and underwater creatures.
Saz & I decided to head back to the boat a bit early to start preparing lunch, while the other 3 continued on down the reef. We had marinated some chicken breasts to grill some chicken tacos, and Oscar and Moses helped to set up the onboard grill. They grilled our chicken breasts to absolutely perfection and siblings arrived back at the boat just in time for a delicious lunch.
Right after lunch, Oscar and Moses pointed out some dark shapes moving in the water. They kept calling them “manta rays” but they were clearly stingrays with huge long stingers. “Are you sure they’re not stingrays?” I asked Oscar. “No, stingrays have big long stingers and mantas don’t”, he responded, as I was literally staring at a big long stinger. Gaslighting much??
Oscar and Moses navigated us to our next anchorage, another snorkel spot. We did some more snorkelling and hung out on the white sand beach. Chad found a huge conch shell that he was excited to take home as a souvenir.
Our last activity of the day was fishing. The type of fishing the boat was set up to do was called “trolling”, where the crew set up the fishing poles and towed them as we drove around. Disappointingly, we did not catch any fish (Chad said he was cursed because he loves fishing but never is successful on the ocean).
Our boat pulled back into the harbour around 5 pm, after a beautiful drive back to the marina. Nicola and Adam were both extremely sunburnt, with Adam’s back being especially bad. We had dinner at a local Panamanian restaurant and went on a mission to find a big bottle of aloe.
The next morning was Sazzie’s birthday!! We had a delicious birthday brunch at a local cafe called Mahalo Cafe, where I had the yummiest chicken and waffles I’ve ever had! Unfortuantely, Nic and Chad had an afternoon flight back to Panama, so we had to head back to the Airbnb and say our goodbyes. It was an amazing few days with Nicola and Chad exploring Panama, and we were already looking forward to our next trip together.
Adam, Saz and I would be sticking around Panama City for a few more days before embarking on a 4 day 3 night boat trip through the San Blas Islands to Colombia.
That afternoon, we decided we couldn’t leave Panama City without seeing the Panama Canal, so we called an Uber to take us there. When we arrived, we realised they were charging 17 USD PER PERSON for an entry fee just to see the canal. That entrance fee was too expensive for something that we were only mildly interested in, so we tried to find a different vantage point to see a big cargo ship passing through the canal.
We walked out and headed back towards the main road, but a hill caught our eye. There were stairs leading up to a fenced building, but the stairs themselves had nothing blocking them and no signs to tell us to stay away, so we walked up and really could see a good view. We saw a huge cargo ship passing through the locks. It might’ve been trespassing, but that’s on them for not having any signage.
There was also a big sign warning about crocodiles in the area, and sure enough when we looked down into the water we actually spotted one down there!
We walked back towards the main road to call an Uber home. Our driver evidently saw my camera and asked us something in Spanish. We didn’t really know what he was asking but said yes? He took it upon himself to give us the best driving tour of Panama City – taking us to multiple vantage points to see the canal, as well as a lookout point called Mirador de las Americas right at sunset, where we had a crystal clear view of the huge ships passing through the canal. Our driver also pointed out a little monkey that was hiding in a hollowed out telephone pole.
After our little city tour, he drove us home and we gave him a big tip and a big thank you for the unreal experience.
The next day, we checked out of our Airbnb and checked into Hostel Mamallena in Panama City, which was the starting point for our San Blas Islands boat trip. The hostel itself had a nice common area with a pool, bar, and some picnic tables. In the afternoon, we visited the Panama Metropolitan Park, a nice nature area right in the middle of the city with tons of wildlife and birds. There was also a nice hike up to a viewpoint overlooking the city. It was crazy to think that this serene nature park was right in the centre of the hustle and bustle of the big city.
The next morning we had the briefing meeting for our boat trip, where we met the other guests on our trip as well as our guides. They gave us a brief rundown of what to expect, what to pack, and what documents were needed to cross the border. Our guides warned us that there was a high probability that our stuff would get very wet, so we needed to be diligent about wrapping all of our stuff in watertight garbage bags. We were each allowed 1 “day bag” that would be accessible daily, and everything else was going to be wrapped away in garbage bags for the next 4 days, and we wouldn’t be able to open those until we arrived in Colombia.
We got our documents printed and did a big grocery haul to pick up snacks, booze, sunscreen and garbage bags for the trip, and came home to organise our bags. Adam had packed annoyingly light (classic boy), so he was done in about 5 minutes. It took me and Saz ages to decide what to pack, get our essentials sorted, wrapped in plastic, and feel ready for the trip.
Our pickup time for the trip was at 5 am, so we went to bed early, ready for the next adventure, the San Blas Islands!