Early in the morning, National Geographic Sea Lion dropped anchor in front of the ranger station at Coiba Island National Park. We had navigated 120 nautical miles from Costa Rica during the night. A lovely full moon witnessed our navigation and now she was ready to say goodbye as the sun began to show its first rays.
It was our first day in Panama, and the best way to start it was getting ashore for some early-morning activities. The stretching class was held on the white sand of the shore. While some guests enjoyed this class, another group went to look for birds and mammals. One of the sightings was the endemic species of agouti. It is considered an endemic species since the island is so distant from the mainland. What a delightful start!
We returned back on board for breakfast and in the meantime, our captain repositioned the ship in front of a little islet. The islet is known as Granito de Oro, which means “Little Grain of Gold.” As though extracted from a cartoon, it has a couple of coconut palms, white sand and a big army of hermit crabs curious to see if our guests left something unattended to nibble on. Surrounding the islet, a huge coral reef was waiting for our guests to explore.
In this park, which has an extension of around 271,000 hectares, we have the second biggest coral reef of the Eastern Pacific. Only 51,000 hectares is land and the rest is marine area. Its water is part of a very important marine corridor that goes from Cocos Island in Costa Rica down to Galápagos in Ecuador.
Once ashore, our guests went snorkeling and kayaking around the islet. There was no doubt that this was a little idyllic paradise. The sunlight was perfect; the beauty of the reef with all its inhabitants was clearly exposed to us. Different aggregations of reef fishes were seen.
Our desire was to stay forever on this peaceful islet but we had to return to the ship, and continue our journey. Several pods of pantropical spotted dolphins escorted National Geographic Sea Lion as we made our way to the limit of the park. Several green sea turtles popped their heads out from the water, giving us the farewell. Our next destination for the trip is the Panama Canal.
