Coiba National Park, Panama

After having some beautiful days in Costa Rica enjoying the flora and fauna, today we visited our first destination in Panama, the famous Coiba Island.

Coiba is known for its extensive tropical forests, beautiful unexplored beaches, variety of flora and fauna, and beautiful coral reefs.

Coiba was formerly a maximum security prison, where for many years its visitors were prisoners, and was famous during the 70s and 80s when the military controlled the political system as dictators and used the island as a prison for their opponents.

The Coiba Island Marine Biological corridor belongs to the American Pacific and is its second-largest island. Other islands in the corridor include Costa Rica’s Coco, Colombia's Malpelo and Gorgona, and the famous Galapagos Islands. This corridor attracts a variety of whales and dolphins and also provides income to many people engaged in fishing,

This archipelago has a great variety of islands and we had the opportunity to visit one today, where we snorkeled and appreciated the variety of fish and coral that inhabit the park. Among the fish we saw were white-tipped reef sharks, reef eel tiger, zebra moray, Panamanian silverside, California flying fish, reef cornetfish, stone fish, Panamic graysby, banded serrano, creolefish, Pacific, rainbow runner, yellowtail snapper, grunt cortez , greybar grunt, grunt spottail, Mexican goatfish and more.

After this experience we departed Coiba Island; it’s been a beautiful day.