During three days of exploration in Costa Rica, we saw the fauna and flora of this wonderful country. It’s now time to explore Panama. Our first stop was one of the most important marine national parks known as a Coiba.
In the year 1924, the ex-president of Panama, Belisario Porras created a jail to isolate the tough people who used to live in Panama City and towns nearby. The prisoners had to plant crops in order to survive, making it a sustainable jail.
The island had 21 different prison camps that all shared different crops and expanded during the eighties when the famous dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega had the control in Panama. He kept sending more Panamanians who were opposing him, this jail ended up protecting the area of Coiba.
Coiba today is considered the jewel of the Pacific Ocean of Panama. It’s part of a very important marine corridor that we shared with Costa Rica, Colombia and Galapagos Island in Ecuador.
This national park has big extension of rainforest, coral reef and white sand waiting for us.
Onboard National Geographic Sea Lion, we anchored close to a small island known as Granito de Oro. We had the opportunity to snorkel and spotted many species of tropical fish like: parrot fish, white tipped reef shark, undulated moray eel, reef cornetfish, flag cabrilla and many others. Some of our guest also saw a hawksbill turtle swimming on the reef.
We also had the opportunity to kayak and paddleboard. In the afternoon we started our departure to the Bay of Panama to start on a very important part of our journey: the crossing of the Panama Canal.
