Pearls Islands, Panama Bay
Our third day in Panama and it just keeps getting better. Today we spent the entire day in the Pearl Islands, owing their name to the numerous pearls that Spaniards harvested during colonial times. These islands were very important for the Crown, because it was here that they kept account of all of the gold and silver that came from the Inca Empire and the Potosi mines. But the times of gold and pearls are long gone - the name is the only thing left. The gold and pearls must be at a museum in Europe or who knows where? But the islands are still rich from other perspectives and today we saw some of this richness.
First we went on a Zodiac cruise around two of these islands to look at sea birds and what a cruise this turned out to be! We saw thousands of frigatebirds, brown pelicans, Neotropical cormorants, brown boobys, and even a few blue footed boobys, yellow-crowned night-herons, a bare-throated tiger-heron, American oystercatchers and even a spotted eagle ray. Believe me, today we saw as many sea birds as you can imagine. There is a good reason – the Bay of Panama where these islands are located, is one of the few low passes in the mountain ranges of Central America. The trade winds are able to cross from the Caribbean and reach the Pacific with enough strength to blow the warm, relatively sterile surface water out of the bay and let it be replaced by cold, nutrient-rich water drawn up from the bottom. Mixed with the sun, this creates an explosion of plankton that attracts small fish and in turn larger fish to feed and so on. At one of the ends of this food chain we have the many different sea birds taking their share of this booming biological brew. This only takes place during the months of the dry season because these are the months in which the trade winds increase their strength and are able to trigger this up welling.
By the afternoon, we had our last chance to snorkel and to drink in the beautiful beach of Bartolomé Island, watching as the incoming tide took over the sandy beach.
Our third day in Panama and it just keeps getting better. Today we spent the entire day in the Pearl Islands, owing their name to the numerous pearls that Spaniards harvested during colonial times. These islands were very important for the Crown, because it was here that they kept account of all of the gold and silver that came from the Inca Empire and the Potosi mines. But the times of gold and pearls are long gone - the name is the only thing left. The gold and pearls must be at a museum in Europe or who knows where? But the islands are still rich from other perspectives and today we saw some of this richness.
First we went on a Zodiac cruise around two of these islands to look at sea birds and what a cruise this turned out to be! We saw thousands of frigatebirds, brown pelicans, Neotropical cormorants, brown boobys, and even a few blue footed boobys, yellow-crowned night-herons, a bare-throated tiger-heron, American oystercatchers and even a spotted eagle ray. Believe me, today we saw as many sea birds as you can imagine. There is a good reason – the Bay of Panama where these islands are located, is one of the few low passes in the mountain ranges of Central America. The trade winds are able to cross from the Caribbean and reach the Pacific with enough strength to blow the warm, relatively sterile surface water out of the bay and let it be replaced by cold, nutrient-rich water drawn up from the bottom. Mixed with the sun, this creates an explosion of plankton that attracts small fish and in turn larger fish to feed and so on. At one of the ends of this food chain we have the many different sea birds taking their share of this booming biological brew. This only takes place during the months of the dry season because these are the months in which the trade winds increase their strength and are able to trigger this up welling.
By the afternoon, we had our last chance to snorkel and to drink in the beautiful beach of Bartolomé Island, watching as the incoming tide took over the sandy beach.
