In Costa Rica we saw the fauna and flora of a wonderful country and now we´re exploring Panama, where we´ll see an extremely important marine National Park called Coiba. In 1924 the Ex-President of Panama, Belisario Porras, created a jail here to isolate the problematic people who used to live in Panama City. The prisoners planted crops to survive and the island had 21 different prison camps at one time.
The prisons expanded during the 1980´s when Noriega had control of Panama. Ironically as Noriega kept sending Panamanian prisoners to Coiba, they ended up protecting this park. Coiba today is considered the jewel of Panama´s Pacific Ocean and it is part of an important marine corridor shared with Costa Rica, Colombia, and the Galapagos. Eighty percent of Coiba National Park is rain forest and 20% is white sand beach.
Today in the morning, National Geographic Sea Lion stopped at Canal de Afuera Island where we had the opportunity to snorkel, paddleboard and kayak on the most beautiful blue-green waters.
After enjoying our morning outing, we repositioned our vessel to a magical place known as Granito de Oro. This little island seen from above looks like a grain of gold. We did the most amazing snorkeling and saw fish such as: white tipped-shark, parrotfish, angelfish and pufferfish.
Regretfully, an hour after on our departure, we encountered an illegal fishing line adhered to our propeller. Our Chief Mate and Chief Engineer dived below the National Geographic Sea Lion and removed the offending line from us! We are happy to continue to our next destination which is the Panama Canal.
