Coiba Marine National Park, Panama
Our first day in Panama after all the wonders of Costa Rica couldn’t have been better. As the sun came up announcing the new day we found ourselves in front of the Coiba Island ranger station ready to disembark for an early birding outing.
Crimson-backed tanagers, streaked saltators, red-legged honeycreepers and red-lored amazon parrots were part of a list of species that we were able to see in the outing. Back to Sea Voyager for a delicious breakfast and out again to another adventure, this time we snorkeled, swam and kayaked around a little island named Granito de Oro. What a place, as we submerged under the warm waters of Coiba we discovered a underworld full of gorgeous surprises, king angelfish, barbet fish, bicolor parrotfish, a white-tipped reef shark and even an elusive hawks billed sea turtle.
We can encounter all this biodiversity under and above here at Coiba Marine National Park, which is the home to the second largest coral reef in the eastern pacific and part of an important marine corridor that unites islands like Cocos Island in Costa Rica, Coiba Island in Panama, Malpelos in Colombia and Galápagos in Ecuador. Just imagine a busy highway full of life that allows some of the smallest organisms like coral spores to travel from one place to the other, and also used by some of the largest mammals on the planet, the whales.
Coiba Marine National Park was declared a UNESCO world heritage site, the fifth one in Panama. The main island of this MNP Coiba Island is a practically uninhabited island.
As the sun sets on the horizon the Sea Voyager continues toward our next destinations, Otoque, Bona and the Panama Canal.
Our first day in Panama after all the wonders of Costa Rica couldn’t have been better. As the sun came up announcing the new day we found ourselves in front of the Coiba Island ranger station ready to disembark for an early birding outing.
Crimson-backed tanagers, streaked saltators, red-legged honeycreepers and red-lored amazon parrots were part of a list of species that we were able to see in the outing. Back to Sea Voyager for a delicious breakfast and out again to another adventure, this time we snorkeled, swam and kayaked around a little island named Granito de Oro. What a place, as we submerged under the warm waters of Coiba we discovered a underworld full of gorgeous surprises, king angelfish, barbet fish, bicolor parrotfish, a white-tipped reef shark and even an elusive hawks billed sea turtle.
We can encounter all this biodiversity under and above here at Coiba Marine National Park, which is the home to the second largest coral reef in the eastern pacific and part of an important marine corridor that unites islands like Cocos Island in Costa Rica, Coiba Island in Panama, Malpelos in Colombia and Galápagos in Ecuador. Just imagine a busy highway full of life that allows some of the smallest organisms like coral spores to travel from one place to the other, and also used by some of the largest mammals on the planet, the whales.
Coiba Marine National Park was declared a UNESCO world heritage site, the fifth one in Panama. The main island of this MNP Coiba Island is a practically uninhabited island.
As the sun sets on the horizon the Sea Voyager continues toward our next destinations, Otoque, Bona and the Panama Canal.
