Panama City, especially the area around Luna’s Castle hostel, is not particularly fun, attractive or safe. Generally these are three things one looks for in a travel destination. And so, after a few nights there, we were all ready to move on. We felt that a day or two of sun and surf on Pacific coast beaches would be lovely.
Our destination of choice was Santa Clara. We were told the beach is lovely, and it wasn’t terribly far away. So off we went on our $3 bus, and about 2 hours later, we were dropped off on the side of the highway.
When we got to the beach, we noticed a few things: the beach was chock full (today was Independence Day, and the celebrations go all week… tourists ain’t the only ones at the beach), there were absolutely no waves (surfing not an option), it cost money to enter the beach, and it had started to rain. Bad signs all.
We thought things might be better if we put our gear down and got settled. Unfortunately, the few places nearby were well outside our price range.
So here we were, with a suboptimal beach, overpriced accomodations, awful beach weather and no chance of surfing. It was starting to look like a lost trip.
At this point I had an epiphany: with more travellers comes less planning. Alone, I’d have studied and searched my guidebook and seen that there wasn’t any kind of budget accomodations in Santa Clara. But with four of us going together, we all assumed someone else had done the due dilligence.
After some deliberation, the consensus was to head up to Colon (first needing to get a bus transfer back in Panama City – d’oh! More backtracking!), where the ships to Colombia generally leave from. We figured it might give us a chance to get to see a boat and meet the captain in person before signing up. But first, not wanting the journey to Santa Clara to be a total waste, we decided to have lunch at a roadside restaurant. It actually turned out to be one of the better meals any of us had had on our respective trips, so indeed we did regain a bit of value from our journey.
During the bus ride, in a wild stroke of genius, Anna looked up Colon in her guidebook. She immediately found a number of red flags and warnings about safety in the area. It seems muggings, even in daylight are common there.
A quick change of plans was put in effect. In Panama City, we headed to Mamallena’s hostel, where they have the best information on the sailing trips to Colombia. We were able to
finalize a reservation for a Friday departure on the Winfly, a small but comfortable vessel. It turns out that our messed up day and improvised non-planning worked in our favor. We got the final four spots on the boat just in time, as the captain had four other interested people that we just beat out.
Mamallena was also able to arrange our travel to the San Blas islands where we’ll spend two nights and meet the boat on Friday (no need to even go to Colon at all). That means a 5am shuttle tomorrow, and a quiet night inside tonight.
It may be a while before I post again, so just assume I’m on a boat with good friends, drinking rum, fishing, singing along to guitar, snorkeling, eating, and generally having the time of my life as I make the switch from Central to South America.