Part Of The Process
So far, we’ve posted several photos and sequences of us both surfing in various places. What we haven’t shown you are the photos of us wiping out. For every great ride we get, there are many wipeouts. But that’s all part of the process, right?
About to wipe out:
Wiping out proper:
Maybe one of our funniest videos:
It
How to buy a car in Peru
We received a few emails and messages through online forums from fellow travellers, asking what the process was to buy our car in Peru. I’ve posted a list of what we had to do to acquire La Berenjenita, in our “Resources” section.
If you’re interested in the reading the explicit details, head over here. Who knows — maybe you’ll be the one buying La Berenjenita when she’s up for sale in September!
Hitting the surfing jackpot
The waves in Punta de Lobos were among the biggest I’ve surfed in my life.
The power behind all that moving water, the rocks and the giant seaweed, the currents, even the way you paddle out — by swimming across a churning channel of water with waves battering the rocks that serve to protect you from the whitewater, using the kelp to pull yourself up onto a flat bed of rock between two stone giants, and waiting for a good long lull between waves before paddling as fast as you can to make it out past where they break — is intimidating. Some waves ended up tumbling every single surfer duckdiving in the lineup, they were that powerful.
Someone about to undertake the rock jump
We stayed at Punta de Lobos for a little over two weeks before driving south to explore the many breaks that we had heard of through word of mouth. The surfers in Chile are very friendly, generously sharing waves with us, as well as giving us detailed directions on how to get to some of the best waves in the country. We weren’t sure what to expect, since we had never heard of most of the waves south of Punta de Lobos before arriving in Chile, but so many locals had told us that we had to check out this or that spot. It was the best kind of travel: we headed out with some directions we’d scratched out while talking to different locals, a map, and no expectations.
What we found blew our minds: point break after point break, with waves that ranged from head high to double overhead, and all of them so perfect that they made us feel like we were surfing at the highest level we’d ever surfed before.
We couldn’t believe this wave was empty!
We boondocked sometimes in oceanfront parking lots on the outskirts of towns, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, but always in view of incredible point breaks. We lucked out with the weather, not getting one day of rain, although the rainy season down south was supposed to have been starting. We got a few cold, cloudy days, but many more warm, sunny ones. We got lots and lots of perfect waves. I still can’t believe how many amazing point breaks there are, and so close together. The locals were few and friendly. We kept pinching ourselves, marvelling at how lucky we were the whole time.
We spent several weeks exploring up and down the coast, surfing until our arms hurt so much it was sometimes difficult to fall asleep, and stopping to look at some natural wonders, such as the Iglesia de Piedra, a cathedral-like formation of caves:
We also visited some old, atmospheric hot springs baths that were built in 1876, the Termas de Cauquenes, for a relaxing soak.
We were sleeping in our van outside the hot springs, when we felt a gentle but persistent shaking of the entire vehicle. Michael thought I was moving around in my sleep, but then realized it was an earthquake. It was a 6.7 magnitude earthquake that had been centered near Valparaiso. Luckily, we were far enough away that it wasn’t dangerous for us at all. We were happy to later hear that there were no immediately related deaths close to the epicenter.
On our way north again, we passed back through Pichilemu for a short stay, to surf Punta de Lobos one last time, and eat our favorite oven-baked empanadas at El Quincho del Ross. Most empanadas in Chile are fried, and oven-baked ones are slightly healthier version that are harder to find:
After gorging ourselves on all those perfect point break waves along the coast around Pichilemu, we stopped in Valparaiso for a couple of days, a beautiful, bohemian port city with colorful houses and mansions perched atop several hills. We saw La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda’s house with breathtaking views down onto the city:
And countless walls filled with interesting graffiti:
Of course, since Valpo is a good-sized city, our ice cream radars led us to a cafe that serves some of Chile’s best ice cream, Emporio La Rosa. Among their tasty and creative flavors are Chocolate-Chili Pepper, Raspberry-Mint, and Orange-Ginger.
We also happened upon one of the most delicious and best-value menu del dia lunches of our whole trip so far, at a restaurant called Sabor Color. It was a three-course gourmet meal that was impeccably done, from the presentation to the flavors. We couldn’t have found better for the equivalent of $9 per person.
We drove further north, back to La Serena, where we got to surf a long, fun head-high beachbreak for one afternoon before discovering that La Berenjenita needed some work. She was leaking and burning oil. We took her to Manuel, a mechanic in La Serena that a friend from Pichilemu had recommended. Manuel’s been working on old VW beetles and vans for 20 years. He took La Berenjenita’s engine apart, cleaning and checking each area, and found that we needed to replace the piston rings in the cylinders, which requires ordering parts from Santiago.
Berenjenita’s engine, after being cleaned and painted to look like new
Manuel invited us to stay at his house for the three days it will take to order and receive the parts. We’re sleeping in our van outside his house, and he and his wife Boli cook us a big lunch every day. He treats us like his kids, and it’s pretty cool getting a genuine Chilean homestay experience, not to mention the fact that Manuel takes the time to explain every detail of what he sees and what needs fixing. We’re learning a lot about our little purple eggplant van.
The new parts should arrive tomorrow, and with luck, we will drive out of La Serena with La Berenjenita feeling better than ever, and ready to brave the roads towards our next destination, which is off the coast and at altitude: San Pedro de Atacama.
On The Road
We haven’t posted anything in such a long time, although there’s been no shortage of adventures to write about. Following are just a few of the places, things and people we’ve seen over the past month. One month on road, and so far so great!
Two days before leaving Lima in our newly built-out van, we met up with Kaori, a friend from New York, with whom I used to work at my last job. By coincidence, Kaori’s taking some time off from her New York life and career to do some extended travelling right now in Peru and Chile. It was a treat to meet up with her and hang out with a familiar friend. She came to the beach with us while we did a surf session, and we later went for lunch at an amazing restaurant that specializes in the Peruvian dish causa.
Causa is made by layering mashed potatoes (traditionally, the Peruvian yellow potato) with fillings such as crab meat, chicken salad or vegetables, and it’s normally served cold. The restaurant we visited, Cesar, has over twenty different varieties of causa on the menu, and we shared three different ones. They were all delicious.
Cesar Ugarte, the owner, used to play basketball for the Peruvian Olympic team, before going on to become a fashion accessories designer in Switzerland, and later moved on to opening restaurants in Lima.
Cesar at a fashion trade show in his designer days
Cesar’s almost as tall as Michael!
We ended up having more errands to run in Lima than originally estimated before heading south, so we stayed an extra day, and that gave us one more free evening to check out the attraction we’d most wanted to see: the Magic Water Circuit in Parque De La Reserva. It’s a huge park filled with more than a dozen different water fountains, some of them interactive, and there’s a laser projection musical show that occurs every night. We went there with Lacey and Luis from Lost World Expedition, and had a blast running through the arcs of water and watching the over-the-top laser light show. It was like something you’d see in Las Vegas.
The next day, we finally took to the road. We only had to drive about 45 minutes south to get to our first destination, Punta Hermosa. There are so many quality surf breaks within 200 km south of Lima! We stayed outside of Bravo Surf Camp, owned by a laid-back guy named Abraham Bravo, and surfed the breaks called Senoritas, Caballeros and La Isla while we were there.
Peruvian pro surfer Sofia Mulanovich has a home at Punta Hermosa, and apparently La Isla is one of her favorite surf breaks in the world.
We were on a leisurely daily driving schedule to meet a friend further south in Chile. Ivan grew up in the Chilean beach town of La Serena but now lives in New York, and he’s one of our surfing friends from Rockaway. We had 18 days to make it from Lima down to La Serena, a journey of 3000 kms (1800 miles). We had mapped out a route that allowed us to stop and surf along the way, driving no more than 300 kms per day. La Berenjenita, our kombi, likes to take it slow.
We spent two days in Punta Hermosa, and then headed a little further south to Puerto Viejo. Puerto Viejo is just a bay with a long row of simple beachfront restaurants serving local food.
We ate at one of the restaurants, and they allowed us to park and camp under their awning for a couple of days. The restaurants have primitive showers and bathrooms that you can pay to use. The wave was waist to chest high when we stopped there, but it’s an incredibly long and fun left point break. There were tons of dolphins swimming around both days that we surfed.
Our next stop was Cerro Azul, a bigger beach resort with another long left point break.
We camped in a parking lot in front of the beach and stayed there for three days. A nice swell came in while we were there. It’s a slower wave, with a lot of room for turns.
Going south of Cerro Azul, we stopped in a few places that didn’t have waves. We spent one night in Nazca, a city off the coast, in order to take a look at the Nazca lines: giant, ancient, mysterious geoglyphs that were drawn on the ground by the Incans, in an area of plains. The different shapes such as a lizard, a frog and a hand are only distinguishable when seen from above.
What was the purpose of these huge drawings that the Incans meant to be seen from on high?
A pretty stop on the coast, but without surfable waves, was a hotel called Puerto Inka, a few kilometers outside of a town called Chala, that had spaces to camp in front of their private bay.
The waves were big shorebreak closeouts, so we hiked over to the ancient ruins that were on the hill above the hotel and checked out the place where the Incans used to dry fish before sending a runner to deliver it to the rulers in Cuzco. That’s a run of 450 miles!
Ruins at Puerto Inka
Driving through southern Peru along the coast reveals mile after mile of desolate desert. Some stretches of coast look a little like Big Sur, in California, but with much less plants and wildlife.
The roads are curvy and steep at times, often with no guard rails to provide any semblance of protection from plummeting down the steep cliff sides. Luckily, Michael is an excellent defensive driver, and La Berenjenita can’t go above 80 km per hour.
Getting across the border between Chile and Peru was easy. We saw two roadrunners while our car was being X-rayed for contraband goods.
I suggested that Michael chase one in order to see how fast they could run, but the border guard waiting with us commented that the area is full of live land mines from conflicts between Peru and Chile in the 80’s and 90’s, so we only got to see the birds in their stationary form.
Our first stop in Chile was camping on the beach at Playa Las Machas, a beachbreak in Arica that can sometimes get surfable but seems to be most popular with boogie boarders because the rides were short.
While we surfed there one morning, a pod of dolphins swam within five feet of us and jumped playfully through the backs of the waves right in front of us! It was the closest I’ve ever been to dolphins in the wild, and such a wondrous sight to see them so clearly having fun.
Our next stop was Iquique, another Chilean surf town. We camped out on the beach right across from a Holiday Inn. It was funny to think that we were getting a better beachfront spot with great views for so much less than we would have paid at the hotel.
The next evening, the view was even better: we pulled off the highway at a rocky, isolated oceanfront spot and had a delicious glass of Chilean wine in front of a gorgeous sunset.
Sunrise over the best boondocking site we've camped at so far
A rocky outcropping 100 meters in front of us held a colony of elephant seals, pelicans, cormorants, and upon closer inspection, Humboldt penguins! Those kinds of wild camping spots are priceles, and there are so many of them along the coast.
We lost our rusted-out muffler somewhere along the way after the penguin spot while we were driving, so we stopped in the next big city, Antofagasta, to see if we could have it replaced. We were returning to our car right after lunch, about to ask around for a muffler shop, when a VW enthusiast came up to us and asked us about our kombi. He turned out to be the owner of a Beetle and a member of the Antofagasta Volkswagen fan club, and he gave us directions to a cheap shop that was able to weld up a new muffler and attach it to the kombi within a couple of hours. We couldn’t believe our luck! There’s something about old Volkswagens that makes their owners part of a cult.
We camped at Parque Nacional Pan de Azucar next, at a beachfront campground. We took a 1-hour hike the next morning to spot guanacos, which are wild llamas, and got lucky with a small herd sighting.
When we finally made it to La Serena, we hooked up with our friend Ivan and his girlfriend Kat, and surfed one of his home breaks, Punta Teatino, several days in a row. We met some of his family and friends, and they fed us two of the best meals we’ve eaten on this entire trip so far. Ivan’s friend Felipe prepared a true Chilean parillada for us on his barbecue: a slew of amazingly tasty grilled meat and sausage. The next day, we went over to Ivan’s aunt’s house where she served us a sumptuous three-course meal of avocado-and-shrimp salad, baked conger eel with a fresh tomato salsa, and poached papayas in syrup with whipped cream and ice cream. We were living like kings!
We drove from La Serena further south with Ivan and Kat, to surf Punta de Lobos. It’s located in a small town called Pichilemu, full of pine trees and fog, and it feels much like Oregon or Northern California.
It’s autumn down here right now, so the weather is getting cold. We have to wear 4/3 wetsuits with boots in the water, and sometimes a hood, if it’s windy and cloudy. The waves are pretty epic.
The question here isn’t whether there will be waves today; it’s whether the waves will be too big for mere mortals to surf. There were a couple of days when the waves were 15 to 20 feet, and we watched the trials for the Punta de Lobos Invitational big wave contest.
We’ve been on the road for one month now and love it. We’ve paid to camp only a handful of times, mostly just parking for free beachfront in the middle of nowhere or on the outskirts of town. We cook most of our meals on our small gas 2-burner stove, and spend our time surfing, watching the waves from our camping chairs, chatting with people we meet, looking around the small towns, reading and knitting. I got some yarn and needles back in Quito and knitted us both a couple of hats, which are totally necessary at night here. I also knitted a fat scarf out of some nice Chiloe Peninsula wool that’s sold quite cheaply in the shops in Pichilemu.
Often, at night in bed, we’ll watch a movie or an episode of a TV show that we’ve picked up for the equivalent of $1 at bootleg DVD shops in Peru. Our latest obsession is HBO’s Game of Thrones – we just finished watching the first season and can’t wait to find out what will happen this coming second season.
We’ve heard of some good surf breaks further south of here, and will leave Pichilemu in the next week to check them out: Constitucion, Curanipe, Tregualemu, Pullay, Buchupureo. The weather will be getting colder the further south we go and the longer we stay down here. Getting into and out of our cold, wet wetsuits takes a little courage, but the waves are always worth it. And when we bed down at night under our warm feather comforter in the cozy little Eggplant, we sleep so well.
It’s a girl!
We are now the proud owners of a purple 1996 Brazilian-made Volkswagen Transporter 2 that we’ve named La Berenjenita, meaning “little eggplant” (her previous name was Doña Volks).
The vehicle transfer at the notary took a total of 30 minutes and was very quick and painless. However, figuring out what we needed to do in order to buy a car took a little legwork.
It’s not difficult to buy a car as a foreigner, but there isn’t much detailed information out there about how to do it. Basically, we just had to get a stamp in our passport from the immigration office, DIGEMIN, that gives us permission to sign contracts as tourists here in Peru. In my next post, I’ll go through the basic process of buying a car in Lima as a tourist.
We still have yet to drive the car outside of Lima, but driving in Lima is hairy enough. No one stops at street intersections if there are no traffic lights. It’s basically a constant game of chicken, where you just have to start inching forward and force the others at the inersection allow you to keep going.
Even before we actually got our van, we met some cool overlanders who were staying at our hostel, Hitchhikers Backpackers, which is the only hostel in Miraflores that has secure, gated parking for cars. All the folks travelling overland that we’ve met have been on the road for a long time; many of them for several years. Hearing their stories of adventure, the unbelievable places they’ve been, their lifestyles, and how they got here has been so incredibly inspiring. It’s honestly like having a whole new world of possibilities open up in front of your eyes.
One of the interesting things about taking this kind of extended trip is that you meet so many other travellers who are taking a year or more off to travel. Back at home, in the time leading up to this journey, the idea can seem so crazy and at times difficult and downright impossible. But once you’re on the road, you meet so many others doing the same thing and having arrived there by so many different methods, that you realize anything really is possible. Below are some stories to inspire and amaze you.
Above, from left to right are Dirk and Maria of 2 Nomads, Luis and Lacey of Lost World Expedition, us, Alice and doggie Kaos, Martin (his partner Martina took the picture) of Amerika En Kombi, and Alice’s partner Flo, and their visiting friend.
Dirk and Maria have been travelling in their Toyota Landcruiser with trailer and solar panels, for 7 years. They plan to keep travelling forever. The list of places through which they’ve driven is impressive, to say the least, and includes a recreational drive of the original Paris-Dakar Rally route.
Luis and Lacey started travelling 2 years and 9 months ago, in their Toyota Landcruiser with roof tent. They originally set out for one year on the road, but found that they enjoyed travelling more slowly than they expected. They’ve driven from northern California through Mexico and Central America, shipped their car from Panama to Colombia, and are making their way down to Ushuaia, Argentina.
Alice and Flo, and their dog Kaos, have been driving for 2 years in their RV that they bought in California for a song. The RV is old, though, and requires a lot of upkeep. When we met them, they had to crawl under the RV and fiddle with the starter motor every time they wanted to start it up. How did they ever figure out by themselves which doodad to fiddle with to get it to start? This baffled me. They both make a mean Pisco Sour.
Martin (bright green t-shirt) and Martina (light blue tank top) have been travelling Central and South America for 3 years in their little red kombi, on a route from Argentina to Mexico and back. They are two schoolteachers who left home with $600, and have been making beautiful jewellery, cool t-shirts and tank tops, and postcards that they sell along the way to fund their travels. They are the ultimate personification of “if there’s a will, there’s a way”. Not only are Martin and Martina wonderfully open, friendly and creative, but they’re generous with their time, too: they’ve been stopping at schools in small towns along the way with their van full of children’s books, and organizing activities in classrooms to get kids interested in reading. They’re a few months away from reaching home again, and are already contemplating where to go next — Africa maybe?
We’ve also been inaugurated into the community of Volkswagen kombi and Westfalia fans. The week before we purchased La Berenjenita, we were walking around Miraflores and spotted a guy inside his Westfalia camper van. We walked over to talk to him, and ended up making a great new friend. Miguel is part of the Lima Westfalia and Kombi Club, and he introduced us to one of his friends and fellow club members who is a mechanic and knows kombis well. His friend checked La Berenjenita out for us before we bought her. Miguel has been instrumental in helping us locate all the little stores and workshops here in Lima with things we’ve needed to get our van ready for the long drive ahead.
Of course, one of the most important things was a bed long enough for Michael’s legs. We designed and built a storage box to place under our custom-ordered foam mattress, with a door that props up to serve as an extension for the bed.
Two nights ago, we had the honor of attending a meeting of the Westfalia and Kombi Club with Miguel. It was our first time at a car club meetup. We drove La Berenjenita over to the parking lot that serves as the clubhouse, and were delighted to find not only beautiful, mint-condition, fully restored Westfalias, but also other VW clubs having their meetups, with gorgeous antique and souped-up Volkswagens. It was a super fun night.
We didn’t start this trip with any notion of buying a car, but somehow La Berenjenita worked her way into our life, and we’re happy and excited to start this new chapter of surf travel. We’ve been surfing every morning, and then we get down to kitting out the van every afternoon. As soon as we finish building it out and we get our tarjeta de propriedad, we’ll be heading south to surf the coast all the way down to middle Chile, and then hopefully meeting up with some friends to surf in Pichilemu.
Through The Looking Glass
Lima is a like a mirror image of San Francisco, a southern hemisphere version minus the hills: the waves, the water temperature, the joggers, the climate, the fog, the tendency towards earthquakes. We really like it here so far. It’s large (population: 9 million), cosmopolitan and the people are very relaxed, although their driving isn’t. Pedestrians definitely don’t get the right of way in this city.
We’re staying in the Miraflores neighborhood, which is a pretty tony place. The houses are spacious and attractive, and there are many modern glass-and-steel luxury apartment buildings interspersed between beautiful old homes like these:
Miraflores has a lot of great vegetarian restaurants as well, which we’ve been appreciating after an assault of carnivorous dishes in Quito. We found a cute little organic farmers’ market that operates on Saturdays, selling all kinds of things from wooden handmade toys to produce to dried herbs and teas:
Miraflores is set on cliffs above the ocean, and the clifftops above the ocean have parks built all along them, perfect for a sunset stroll. The fog rolls in around 4 pm every day and cools things down. It’s summertime here, but it never gets too hot.
The waves have been pumping, although the ones at the breaks closest to us don’t have a great shape — they’re pretty crumbly and slow, which is probably why two of the breaks are named Waikiki and Makaha. We’re happy to get in the water, but are really looking forward to seeing better spots we’ve heard about, like Lobitos, Chicama, Huanchaco and Pacasmayo.
As we mentioned previously, our mission in Lima was to find a van to tool around Peru, Ecuador and Chile…and we’ve found one!!! We are about to close on a purple ’96 Volkswagen Transporter 2 on Monday, so we will post pics soon. The contract signing takes about 30 minutes, but then we’ll have to wait up to 10 days to get the registration changed into our name, so we’ll be sticking around Lima for that long. We’ll be using the time to set the van up with a bed, a 2-burner stove, and some kind of storage system for our clothes and boards. We’ve been feeling like this is the beginning of a whole new voyage, a trip-within-a-trip!
It’s taken much research to figure out how to go about buying a VW van in Peru, although the process itself seems pretty easy. We’ve been getting a lot of email help from the guy behind the blog Kombi And Me, which we found by googling. Thanks, Will! If you’re interested in finding out how to buy a vehicle in Peru as a tourist, check back soon, as we will have a detailed post on it in the next week or so.
In the meantime, we’ve been taking photos of other VW vans we see around the city. Once you start looking, they seem to be everywhere. Here’s one to tide you over until we get ours on Monday, along with a few other random Lima pics.
The search begins in Quito
We’ve been in Quito for 12 days now – a very long time for us to be away from the coast, with no hope of surfing so far inland. What have we been doing here all this time? And why have we voluntarily been depriving ourselves of waves for so long? We’ll answer the former question first…
Quito is a well-developed city on the slopes of the Andes, with nearly 3 million inhabitants. It’s 9200 feet above sea level, which took a few days to get used to. Locals say that drinking coca tea or chewing the leaves helps you adjust to the altitude faster.
It’s currently winter here, so we’ve been wearing our down jackets and jeans at night. There’s lots to see and do, with scores of museums, churches, plazas and parks, and a good bus system to get around.
There are many city-sponsored photo exhibitions in parks and plazas around town.
We rode the TeleferiQo cable car up to the east side of the Volcan Pichincha. The ride was a little scary, and the top was cold and shrouded in clouds. It was so atmospheric and beautiful, like the moors of Scotland.
There’s an area called the Old Town, where buildings have been left the way they were for hundreds of years.
We visited a few museums, including the Museo de la Ciudad, which has artifacts and exhibits about the way Quito inhabitants lived in previous centuries.
The Panecillo (meaning “small bread”) is one of Quito’s famous landmarks; it’s a hill with a statue of the madonna, visible from many areas of the city.
The Parque Carolina is kind of like Central Park in the middle of Quito. It has a huge skate park, a small lake where we rented a pedal boat, and it’s also home to the Jardin Botanico de Quito.
The botanical garden was one of our favorites in the whole world. It’s medium-sized, but wonderfully designed and contains a wealth of beautiful flowers, plants, and herbs.
We’re staying at the nicest hostel we’ve been to so far, called La Casona De Mario. It’s in a beautiful old Spanish-style mansion in a nice neighborhood called La Floresta. It feels like home — a much nicer version of home.
Every Friday there’s a farmer’s market that sets up in the street beside the hostel. The variety and quality of fruit here in Quito is amazing; Ecuador has very fertile growing areas.
There’s a great little french pastry joint called Cyril’s that we’ve taken to visiting almost every day. Apparently, our bodies work a lot harder at higher altitudes, so the extra calories are totally justified.
Finally, we come to why we’ve been hanging out so far from the waves for such a long time: we’ve decided to try and buy a little VW campervan (also called a kombi), to travel around South America. Something like this:
We’d like to stay in Peru and Chile longer than the original 3 months, extending it to something like 2 months in Chile and 3 or 4 months in Peru. A campervan would give us the freedom to access uncrowded and hard-to-reach surf spots, and give us a lot of independence.
So we started our search for a van in Quito, and spent quite a lot of time running around to different government agencies trying to figure out what it takes to buy a car and drive through borders as foreigners. In the process, we’ve discovered that VW kombis are few and far between here in Ecuador, and thus, they’re also pretty expensive. We’ve found a lot more kombis for sale and at better prices, advertised in Lima, Peru, so we’re hopping a bus to Lima tomorrow. The great thing about Lima is that we’ll be able to surf right in the city while we’re looking around for a van, and going through the paperwork once we buy it. The wave forecast is for 6 feet at 16 seconds. We can’t wait!
Panama City
We bused it from Santa Catalina to Panama City a couple of days before our flight to Ecuador on Jan. 18, and the intense heat and humidity, buildings and traffic were a big change for us. Panama s a sprawling city that does pretty well because of all the trade done through the canal.
We stayed in an area called the Casco Viejo, which is full of old, colonial style buildings that are completely falling apart. The area is undergoing renovation, with a lot of building restoration and nice hotels and restaurants moving in. There are still a lot of tenements in the neighborhood, though, so the very poor and the very rich (locals as well as tourists) are living cheek by jowl. It reminded us of the Lower East Side in NYC, but with older buildings and more atmosphere.
Our ice cream radar sought out artisanal gelato near our hostel. We went to Granclement both days we were in Panama City. They have an impressive collection of antique ice cream scoops (and the ice cream was delicious!).
To escape the heat, we hopped a cab to the Parque Natural Metropolitano, a 230-hectare stretch of protected forest in the city.
The trees gave some wonderful shade, we got some exercise hiking 6 km, and we saw some really cool animals.
Squirrel monkeys
Agoutis:
We’ve realized our favorite things to do when travelling – besides surfing – are visiting local restaurants, food markets, eating locally made artisanal ice cream, and going to botanical gardens or protected parklands.
We caught our plane to Quito on Jan. 18. And what have we been doing here since then? So many things that it will have to fill up a whole other post. Back with another post soon!
A Close Second
Before leaving Bocas Del Toro, we biked part of the main island of Colon, a 30 km return trip to a beach called Boca Del Drago, where there are tons of starfish in the water. The water was clear and calm, and the beach looked like a stereotype of paradise.
One last sloth photo from Bocas. This little guy was a great example of the definition of sloth!
We’ve found our second favorite town so far (our first favorite was Barra De La Cruz, Mexico): Santa Catalina, Panama. It’s a tiny village of 250 residents on the Pacific coast of Panama, but with a paved road in excellent condition and a good number of businesses catering to travelers, such as hostels, restaurants and diving/fishing/snorkeling/surfing boat charters. Twenty kilometers off this coast lies Isla Coiba, a purportedly wonderful Scuba diving locale, with guaranteed whale shark sightings.
The rocky reef break at Santa Catalina is also renowned as being one of the most consistent surf spots in Panama. It gets pretty crowded. We’ve been here for 12 days, and the best we caught was a 3-day swell that was about 1 to 2 feet overhead. The rest of the time, it’s been waist to head high.
Every day after surfing, we head to the lone surf shop in town, which also doubles as a fruit shake counter. I always order the banana-chocolate shake, and Michael gets the banana-chocolate-ginger. We’ve already filled up one buy-10-and-get-1-free card and are halfway to filling up another!
Local fishermen fish with handnets and spearguns. Here’s a fisherman showing off his catch several days ago.
In Santa Catalina, even the lawyer surfs.
There’s no grocery store here, just a small convenience store with some canned vegetables, chips, candy, juice and milk. The nearest town and actual grocery store is a 90-minute bus ride from here. Instead of selling produce at the store, pickup trucks drive through town with fruits and vegetables in the back, announcing their wares via megaphone.
The local kids are amazing surfers, and over this weekend there was a surf contest in a town about one hour away by boat. Here are the owner of the place where we’re staying, Rolo, and his son, Rolito, with a couple of other local boys getting ready to head over to the contest.
The family pet at Rolo’s is a parrot called Lola. She’s good at saying her name and imitating children whining.
We’re both big bookworms, so of course we found the local library the first day we were here, and each took a few books out. It was handbuilt and is run by an ex-pat from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
It came time to move on, despite our affection for the small town. Here are a few parting shots, and then it’s on to Ecuador, via Panama City and Quito, for us.
Adventures in Bodysurfing
Besides surfing, we’ve been bodysurfing, especially when the wind turns onshore and messes up the waves too much for surfing, or when we don’t feel like going too far and just want to play in the beachbreak near our hostel, that mostly closes out.
Bodysurfing is tons of fun; it’s also a great cardio workout — after only half an hour, I often feel like I’ve just run 3 miles. We do it with short fins on our feet (I like Da Fins), and the handplanes made and gifted to us by our friend Jon Wagner.
The fns give us extra kicking power to get into the waves earlier, and the handplanes create lift for our bodies once we get going on the wave face, so we can ride higher, longer and faster. They’re so much fun!!!
Here are a couple of poor videos we took on our GoPro camera while we were bodysurfing the other day.
This past fall, we were lucky enough to be in New York for the premiere of the bodysurfing film Come Hell Or High Water by Keith Malloy:
Get out there and try bodysurfing. You’ll feel like a kid again!
