Jicarita & Granito de Oro, Coiba Marine National Park, Panama
This day of our expedition we had the opportunity to explore the mysteries of one of the islands less visited in the entire park, Jicarita. Usually surrounded by schools of tuna and reef fish, this area has an abundance of corals, sponges and marine life which is occasionally visited by scalloped hammerheads.
The morning swells made us reposition the ship behind the beautiful pinnacles and cliffs of the island looking for a shelter beach to land. Once found, we navigated with the Zodiacs through a rocky channel to get to a nameless beach, that among the staff we decided to call Playa Mauritius, since it was me who set foot first on land. After some rough landings we started exploratory beach walks around the premises, the landscape was just breathtaking. As we walked we saw pairs of American oystercatchers looking for something to feed on around the rocky coast, together with common black hawks and green kingfishers.
The park covers around 270,125 hectares, of which 216,543 are sea. The largest of the islands is Coiba which we could see in the distance, which is around 50,314 hectares making it the largest island in Panama and the entire tropical eastern Pacific in Central America. The total area of all the islands including Jicarita, is 53,582 hectares. What we found here, was a wide diversity of flora and fauna set in untouched scenery. The pristine state of conservation of this archipelago is due primarily to the fact that Coiba Island has been a penal colony since 1919. Shut down in 2004, it has once again been opened as a preventive penal colony for the national coast guard of Panama. One of our goals in the morning was to visit the main buildings of this penal colony which is found north from Jicarita on the island of Coiba, a place where in Panama it is still possible to see flocks of the threatened scarlet macaws. But once again, strong winds had us re-schedule and head straight up to our third destination, Granito de Oro.
In Granito de Oro, we had the chance to use our snorkeling gear in order to discover the underwater specialties that this archipelago has to offer. As we snorkeled, some of the fishes that we spotted included morish idols, barber fishes, king angel fishes, bicolor parrot fishes, panamic sergeant majors, rainbow wrasses, white tip reef sharks and a hawk’s bill turtle. It is truly a unique environment linked by the underwater cordillera mountain chain to Coco's and the Galápagos Islands.
It was a great way to say goodbye to Panama’s wonderful nature and its unique composition blend with the Panama Canal. Now we are heading to Costa Rica where more wonders await.
