Since moving into Buffer's place post Panama Fred's, time
has flown by. It's been almost three weeks
since we've moved into our new pad and it has been a great place for us. The house itself is extremely comfortable and
located close to Paunch one of the breaks we've been surfing frequently. The kids have a large yard that they can go
down and explore in and the sounds of howler monkeys or exotic birds are a
running sound track here. We're closer
to the ground here and not elevated 20 feet in the air so it's much easier to
spot wild life. Jordan on the porch
yesterday shouted at us in the kitchen to come check out a Parrot in the yard. What it turned out to be was a Toucan which
is a rare sighting considering they're pretty much endangered on the
island. We were lucky to have it fly
around our yard for 20 minutes for us to check out before he flew off. It's probably been one of the best places
we've stayed on this journey so far.
Jungle Hide Away - Rare Bird Sighting:
We celebrated Jordan's birthday on March 1st by waking up
early so he could open his gifts which we had brought from the states when we
were living in Nicaragua by our friend Tom.
Jordan was very excited to get a Rescue Bot and an old school Optimums
Prime transformer. Pretty cool to see
him so excited over classic toys.
Transformers:
After a quick breakfast, we headed over to Starfish beach
early to enjoy a couple hours of Starfish hunting and snorkeling. Starfish beach was a slight disappointment
considering the online world paints it to be a beach that is littered with the
magical little sea creatures. The
reality is we only saw a few. One of the
best ones we saw, pictured here, was about the size of a dinner plate. We were able to kick around in snorkel gear and
take photos with the GoPro while Melissa actually swam down to touch him.
Bday Boy with Mom - Starfish Sighting:
Our opportunity to explore
in Panama is considerably better than it was in Nicaragua with the rental of the "Red
Dragon". The Jeep is a great
vehicle to get around Bocas and the kids love it. No doors, no kid seats, a plastic bag for gas
cap and only one break light but you can take it in the mud or sand without
worry. The folks at Flying Pirates who
we rent from have really taken care of us checking out some small issues we've
had quickly. The Jeep also comes with
access to a gated private property at the north end of the island which we went
out to explore this week. It's kind of a
hassle getting out there on the rutted single trek road which is designed more
for the ATV's Flying Pirates rents than the Jeep we have. Once out there, you can explore La Pacina
(the pool in Spanish - which is a shallow cove for swimming), the blue lagoon,
monkey trails, the bat caves or a smaller island dubbed Bird Island. On our initial journey out there we checked
out La Pacina and the monkey trails. We
were delighted to see many howler monkeys who were eager to check us out and
howl back as we tried to speak their language.
Red Dragon - Monkeys:
The surf has been small but fun here this last week and not
at all like the first two weeks where it was consistently 5-6 feet or larger for
almost 10 consecutive days. Caranero
reef hasn't liked this most recent round of small swell leaving us to surf
Paunch reef more frequently. We prefer
the set up at Caranero due to it being a longer more user friendly wave. Paunch is faster and has more high
performance characteristics, but the trade off is a sketch entry and exit over
a cheese grater of a reef that is filled with hundreds upon hundreds of urchins
that are visible as you wade across it.
Unidentified Lining One Up at Paunch - Drug Across the Reef - Urchins on the Reef:
Our photos, simply can't do the surf here justice. It's super heavy at times. Check out this feature that a local
photographer shot on Magicseaweed of Silverbacks if you want to see what one of
the most insane breaks here is like:
We're gearing up for another run of 7 consecutive days of big
swell which is nice because the Panama leg of our journey might end our trip. I've been interviewing with a company back in
the states that might have us returning at the end of March for a job. We've also got a couple of contingency plans
in place that include Costa Rica and then back to Mexico through June should
the opportunity I've been pursuing not come to fruition. End of the line for the endless summer? We'll see.....
Parting Shots Bluff Beach:
