Early in the morning, we had our first day in Panama, coming from a pleasant trip in Costa Rica. There were many yoga exercisers and the stretching class started with the beautiful landscapes of the Pacific Coast of Panama.
Today National Geographic Sea Lion eagerly dropped anchor in Coiba National Park, one of the largest parks in the country that covers nearly 270,000 hectares. Our guests arrived to the pristine beach called Canal de Afuera and they felt like they were in another world. The weather was perfect and the beach delightful. We set up the boogie boards, kayaks, paddles, chairs, etc., and we made the ideal location for our water activities. The guests went to snorkel through the different coral formations that the island offered. They spotted many schools of fish such as panamic sergeant major, Moorish idols, king angelfish, and many more. Also they spotted bicolor parrot fish and the big surprise of the day was a hawk billed turtle swimming close to us. It put a great show for our guests that were close enough to see it.
Other guests paddled around in the clear water of the beach and were hugely fascinated with the beautiful views of the surroundings. The soft sand was lovely just to lie down and read a good book or get a tan.
The tide was coming up and we had great timing with the activities until we gathered the group and headed back to the ship for lunch aboard.
After lunch we lifted anchor and sailed toward the Bay of Panama and on our way we were joined by pantropical spotted dolphins bow riding. It felt like the time was flying by.
