Playa Santa Clara

Our latest beach adventure was Playa Santa Clara last weekend.  We headed out along the Pacific Coast with some friends on Saturday morning and didn't really know where we would end up.  We drove for about an hour and a half and after passing many options, decided to turn off and found Santa Clara.  It turned out to be a great spot!  We asked if they had any rooms available and they took us up to the little cabins.  We were able to rent a 6 person cabin for $86 for the night....not too bad! We unpacked the car and headed to the beach. 

The boats were covered with pelicans.  We watched them fly over the water and dive in for sardines.  Very cool!

 

 

 

These cabanas cost $10 to rent for the day and comes with chairs and the hammocks.  On Sundays, though, they cost $20.  Seems like a total rip off, but it's better than sitting on the super hot sand and getting fried by the sun. 

 

 

 

 

Everyone started packing up and leaving right when the sun started setting.  We didn't understand because it was so beautiful!  We hung out for a bit then decided to grab some dinner at the little restaurant on the beach.  We went back to the beach after dinner and joined in on a bon fire full of Panamanians.  Only one of them spoke English and it was very limited, so we just sat down and started enjoying their fire.  We had also met a big group of Peace Corps people earlier that day, so they came over and joined us as well.  All was great until we ran out of beverages.  It was getting pretty late anyway, so we all decided to go for a night swim and then headed in to bed.  Once we got into our cabin and had some light, we realized we had all been eaten alive by sandflies.  Of course, I was the one who got it the worst, and I mean EATEN alive.  I took a picture but it doesn't even come close to showing the severity of the bites.  My feet and ankles got it the worst, but then also had them all over my legs and arms as well.  You don't ever even seen the little bastards but they live in the sand and come out at night (hence, the reason why all the locals packed up at sunset).  I was pretty miserable the first couple nights when I was trying to sleep, but they are starting to go away now.  Alex had a totally of 5 bites....lame. Definitely a lesson learned!

San Blas Islands

This past weekend Alex and I went on a little getaway to San Blas Islands, which is on the Caribbean side.  It’s about a 3 hour adventure, door to door, so we planned to leave early Saturday morning.  We had a nice dinner party with some friends on Friday night, which led to drinking too much wine, which inevitably led to a late departure.  No worries, we still made it out of our place by 7:15am…pretty impressive I think. It was a pretty easy, straight drive for the first hour, so I decided to sleep and let Alex handle it with our Waze navigation, who we call “Esperanza.” After an hour, things got very windy and full of pot-holes.  After 30 minutes of that (longest 30 minutes ever, considering my physical state at the time), we hit our first checkpoint/road block before entering into the Kuna Yala territory.  All of the San Blas area and islands are owned and operated by the Kuna indigenous Indians, and you are only allowed to visit with permission.  So, we were stopped at the checkpoint and the guy started talking to us.  We had what I thought was a humorous and friendly conversation in what my limited Spanish would allow.  I thought for sure we could get away with not paying the fee to get in, but no.  I guess our convo was not as awesome as I thought.  $9.  Damn. We continued along the road for another 30-40 minutes, and the road became even more windy and steep.  At some point I made Alex stop the car for a moment, but all was good after that.  We reached the second checkpoint and with a quick glance at our faces and passports, we were on our way.  We parked at one of the three dock areas and managed to get on a little boat right away to Franklin Island. Success!

The boat ride was about 40 minutes and it was amazing! San Blas has over 300 islands, ranging in size, and only about 50 of them are inhabited.  On our boat ride we rode past some bigger islands with many houses stacked next to each other and some very small islands with just a tiny sand bar and nothing on it.  Then we rode up to our island for the weekend:

 

 

 

 



This place is total paradise!! It was so beautiful and relaxing.  The island is very small (only took us 5 minutes to walk around the whole thing, including some time to snap some pics) and there were about 30 other people or so.  All of them spoke different languages, some Spanish, Dutch, Arabic, and others I'm sure.  The Kuna staff was pretty friendly and cooked our meals for us.  They have 3 meals offered daily and they tell you when it's ready by blowing the conch shell.  Tours are offered every afternoon as well, and take you to some of the other uninhabited islands, but unfortunately we didn't realize this until after. We managed to enjoy ourselves without the tour :)

 



 This was our cabana, just a bed and a light that didn't work :)
 

 

 

We did some snorkeling, enjoyed the super clear, warm ocean water, and slept on the beach.  Pretty sweet life :)

 

 

  

The island is also covered in coconuts so we decided to have one.  But, you can't just pick one up and break it open.  You have to pay $1 and have the Kuna's open it for you.  Alex didn't like this idea, so after we paid for one, he decided to just try to get our own.  It proved to be worth the dollar....not an easy task to open up those suckers! And, of course, he cut himself :)

 

 

 

 

As you could have guessed, the sunset was amazing.  No explanation needed, really.