Panama Day 5 - Iguana Island

Wednesday October 3

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Official Itinerary:

After breakfast, you’ll depart for Iguana Island—a wildlife refuge famous for its white sand beach, crystal waters, mangrove forest, and coral reefs. Perhaps you will spot dolphins, frigate birds, iguanas, turtles, or humpback whales, depending on the time of year. You will explore a hiking trail and witness a variety of coral reefs while snorkeling or enjoy time swimming at the beach. After enjoying an included lunch, you will depart for the hotel.

Dinner will on your own this evening. 

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Every afternoon/evening before parting we get the itinerary for the next day. We leave with the bus at 8 am. We are supposed to always be 5 minutes early and even though this is a big group of 23 this time, everybody always is. This was an outing by the hotel so we had two more young men with us who brought lunchboxes, chairs, towels, drinks/water on ice etc.

The headline of today’s photos is “Golf de Panama” and when we finally arrived at 9:20 am it labels the photo “Los Santos”. Boats were waiting for us. I had invisioned one big one to bring us to the island so this little nutshells were more of an adventure. We all had to wear life vests.

We were 2 couples, Octavio and the driver in ours. No picture taking. The camera/phone was safely stashed away in the backpack in the covered boat hole. We all arrived about 10 am on the island. 

Looks like a lot of stuff on the beach but it is mostly drift wood. Octavio explains that is another problem of the clear cutting which had happened and not properly taken care of. It still comes to haunt.

Octavio took those who wanted on the trail to the other side of the island. Of course we could go by ourselves but James and I like to hear explanations here and there. Right in the beginning there was a nice overlook pavilion.

We saw lots of things. Hermit crabs were scurrying around like in a Hitchcock movie. The VIDEO!   (0:55) doesn’t really show it well enough.

Termite nests. The large national tree of Panama. Very thorny jungle. The beach was very very nice. There was a strip of masses of broken bits of coral though the tide had brought in.

The beach was lovely fine sand with occasional shells or coral pieces. Crabs everywhere. 

(shared by Octavio)

Continuing the walk across the island a different way back.

James is getting snorkel gear to go into the ocean. I just go for a swim which was very nice. James says the snorkeling was not very exciting anyway. But the water was clear as can be and the temperature lovely. Because of the sun we left our shirts on hoping they would dry.

Time to take a lunchbox. Plenty, actually too much, to eat including a fruit salad.

We had seen a few iguanas since we arrived but it seems they know lunchtime. One of the hotel men feeds them and then they really come out of the woods. None of us feed them because we were told not to since it is not good for them. The name of the island seems justified. We almost had decided that the name should be Crab Island.

VIDEO!   (0:34)

Octavio thinks we were lucky so far with our weather because it was overcast sometimes instead of the sun beating down on us but this time the cloud was very dark and we had a tropical downpour right after lunch.

Afterwards I go for a little walk along the beach. Even picked up some man made litter. Every little bit helps, right? But the sand is difficult to walk on with my bum knee. Your feet think in quite deep quite often. 

At 1:15 pm we packed up. Life jackets on. Backpacks into the hole. Same people into the same boat. It drizzled some of the way and our motor stalled three times. And the sea was rough. Yippee!  But it actually didn’t matter since our clothes never dried.

Our bus driver Daniel had to do some of the drive back to the hotel in more downpours.

Once at the hotel the weather was nice again. Of course first thing on the agenda was a shower and washing the salt out of the wet clothes. We spread them out on our little patio to dry (which they never did).

Then we got comfortable in the lobby with our gadgets. People watching is also fun/interesting. There was a party of a highly pregnant lady clothed so her very prominent belly totally uncovered but just a bra and pants, the expectant father and a photographer. The hotel chapel was being decorated so we all guessed that the future parents probably were getting married. I took a look into the (open air) chapel. Very nice.

There even was a bell tower but I could not get the photo I really wanted.

The look back to the lobby.

Dinner was on us tonight but Octavio offered to take who wanted to a certain restaurant. Be at 6:30 pm in the lobby. We decided to go.

We sat with Roseanne and Bob at a table of 4 and had a nice conversation. Roseanne had asked when our birthdays were (can't remember why) and James confessed it was Saturday. She immediately had an idea. About that later.
The menus were only in Spanish and we had only 2 menus between the 4 of us. James was helpful but then a waiter who spoke very good English came to take our order. He even told us about his ex Norwegian girl friend he went to Greece with, ha-ha.

James had beef on a sizzling hot metal rectangle. The rest of his meal was on a plate. I had pulpo the Spanish way. Very nice.

Back to the hotel. Roseanne and Bob sat in the bus behind us.

But it was only 8:30 pm and everybody disappeared. We went with Terry and Frank to the supermarket and bought ice cream.

James might look too stern in this photo because its all gone. Or it was the intense conversation.

Finally we fall into bed.

Checking the Fitbit: 9986 steps. James says we got extra steps from the boat bumping up and down on the water. We will never know.