I spent nine days in Santa Catalina in Panama and I could have spent a lot more. It is insanely tranquil, incredibly beautiful, has the best beginner-intermediate surf I’ve seen in Mexico and Central America, and has the nearby excellent diving at Coiba Island.
There is one main road and almost no traffic. There are just a few restaurants, one primary store, and not even one ATM in town. The loudest sounds I heard in my time here were the haunting, alien sounding serenading of the cicadas each morning and evening. What was really interesting about Santa Catalina was that most of the expats and visitors were Europeans: mostly Germans and Dutch travelers, and Italian, French, Spanish and German expats. There were very few Americans living or traveling there.
The famous surf break is La Punta; an insanely consistent, world famous right point break that can only be surfed at high tide (otherwise the rocks will chew you up). The best surfing is at Playa Estero, which is a wide, sandy beach break that is great for beginners in the white water and fantastic for aspiring intermediate surfers at the main high tide outer breaks. It was some of the best surfing I’ve been able to experience in my short time trying to learn this difficult sport. Many people who have lived here for a while started at Estero and graduated to La Punta.
Coiba Island is about a 90 minute boat ride from Santa Catalina. It’s actually part of the same underwater mountain chain as the Galapagos Islands. It doesn’t have much coral, it can have very strong currents, and the visibility can be a lot less than the calmer diving in the Caribbean, but it has a ton of sealife. With the mixed visibility the videos below don’t do the diving justice. But we saw large schools of fish and a ton of black and white tipped reef sharks. Unfortunately, this was turning out to be a bad year for whale sharks, and one of the highlights of diving at Coiba wasn’t available for us.
Between the three dives we had snacks and then lunch at two incredibly beautiful beaches on Coiba Island.
I had a small, comfortable, simple Airbnb in a very tranquil setting.
For my future reference, my surfing notes: The first two days had high tide in the early afternoon. It was windy and a strong current meant I needed to consistently paddle to hold my spot. I caught 3 great 2-3 foot waves each day. There were 5-6 foot clean up sets that most people passed up and required more paddling. My shoulder was really sore afterwards from the constant paddling. On my third day I tried low tide. Waves were small, steep and hard for me to catch. I got shut out the first hour and there was a huge lull most of my second hour.
My fourth day was a jewel. I caught 5 waves in my first 30 minutes, 3 of which were over 50 meters. My shoulder got really sore. I caught a beautiful 6th wave at the end of my shortened 75 minute session. They were all soft, long 3-4 foot waves. My shoulder was really sore on day 5 and there was very little surf, so I sat it out. I did a descending high tide morning session on day 6 and caught 3 nice, short fast waves. There was no current that day, and I didn’t need to do much paddling. Multiple locals told me the currents aren’t constant at Playa Estero (which is good news if I ever come back). I had been riding an 8 foot soft top, but all the shop had that day was a 7 foot hard top. It was by far the smallest board I’ve ridden and I could barely sit on it at first. But I got used to it pretty quickly 🙂
I couldn’t surf my first two days at Santa Catalina; I got an ear infection right after my time in Santa Teresa and had to stay out of the water until my third day at Santa Catalina.