Coiba National Park, Panama
After navigating around 120 nautical miles the Sea Voyager dropped anchor in front of the largest island on the Pacific shore of Central America. Coiba was for several years the “Alcatraz” of Panama and for that particular reason it was protected from deforestation, overpopulation and massive tourism.
Lindblad has been one of the first travel companies to incorporate Coiba into its itinerary, giving us the great honor to be some of the few people in the world that have had the chance to explore its waters and land. And to follow the Lindblad-National Geographic exploring tradition, a group of guests decided to leave around 6:40am to do some birdwatching on the main island. Birdwatching is quite interesting here because it offers several bird species that we don’t have in Costa Rica, like the crimson-backed tanager and the Ssreak-saltator as well species whose normal habitat is much higher in elevation and here are located at sea level. Why is that? Well, Coiba, like many other islands in Central America, was connected to the mainland during the last glaciation epoch, from 19,000 to 10,000 years ago, so many animals traveled to this area. And as the sea level rose around 8,000 years ago they got “trapped” and started to develop into different species, like the Coiba howler monkey and began occupying different niches or roles in the forest.
Birdwatching wasn’t the only activity of the day; after we repositioned the ship to a true “Gilligan’s Island” on the perimeter of Coiba, everyone got geared up with snorkels and flippers and dove into the magical underwater world. Different schools of sergeant majors, surgeon fish and damsel fish, among many others, decorated this rocky reef. Reef formations are complex ecosystems which have been compared to a rain forest because of the great biodiversity that they present.
While all this was taking place, the crew started the preparations for a fabulous beach barbeque for us with hamburgers, delicious ribs and chewy brownies for desert. After all this we came back on board to start sailing toward the Bay of Panama with a shiny warm sunset upon us. For our first day in Panamanian waters we can definitely say “Life is Good!”
After navigating around 120 nautical miles the Sea Voyager dropped anchor in front of the largest island on the Pacific shore of Central America. Coiba was for several years the “Alcatraz” of Panama and for that particular reason it was protected from deforestation, overpopulation and massive tourism.
Lindblad has been one of the first travel companies to incorporate Coiba into its itinerary, giving us the great honor to be some of the few people in the world that have had the chance to explore its waters and land. And to follow the Lindblad-National Geographic exploring tradition, a group of guests decided to leave around 6:40am to do some birdwatching on the main island. Birdwatching is quite interesting here because it offers several bird species that we don’t have in Costa Rica, like the crimson-backed tanager and the Ssreak-saltator as well species whose normal habitat is much higher in elevation and here are located at sea level. Why is that? Well, Coiba, like many other islands in Central America, was connected to the mainland during the last glaciation epoch, from 19,000 to 10,000 years ago, so many animals traveled to this area. And as the sea level rose around 8,000 years ago they got “trapped” and started to develop into different species, like the Coiba howler monkey and began occupying different niches or roles in the forest.
Birdwatching wasn’t the only activity of the day; after we repositioned the ship to a true “Gilligan’s Island” on the perimeter of Coiba, everyone got geared up with snorkels and flippers and dove into the magical underwater world. Different schools of sergeant majors, surgeon fish and damsel fish, among many others, decorated this rocky reef. Reef formations are complex ecosystems which have been compared to a rain forest because of the great biodiversity that they present.
While all this was taking place, the crew started the preparations for a fabulous beach barbeque for us with hamburgers, delicious ribs and chewy brownies for desert. After all this we came back on board to start sailing toward the Bay of Panama with a shiny warm sunset upon us. For our first day in Panamanian waters we can definitely say “Life is Good!”
