Santa Catalina

I felt like writing since there isn’t much to do in between tides while waiting for the surfing conditions to be optimal.

I am in a sleepy little fishing village called Santa Catalina on the south west coast of Panama. There are no phones, no internet, no mobile phone signal and I am worried power is going to be disrupted at any moment.

However, I did learn to use a phone card today.

The town is also home to some of the best surfing in Central America with reef breaks and two estuary breaks within walking distance.

How did I get here?

Seven days ago I was studying the weather satellite imagery when I noticed a storm in the southern Pacific Ocean stretching from the south tip of South America to almost the northern tip of New Zealand. That meant one thing…waves would be hitting Central America in seven days.

I logged onto Copa Air and booked a flight out the following Friday to coincide with hitting the swell on Saturday night in Playa Venao. Then the plan was to go to Santa Catalina for the next storm surge a few days later. So, after a day’s drive from Playa Venao where this morning I surfed the dawn patrol, here I am waiting for the sunset high tide.

Have I done this sort of thing before? Yea…it’s becoming a bad habit ever since I left Vancouver.

One of the other things I am doing on this trip is scoping out places to take people on surf tours. My friend Joe owns a big hotel/surf school in Tamarindo, and he wants to do more tours outside of Costa Rica, so it made sense for me to snap lots of pics and hang with the locals to find the best breaks…the ‘secret locals-only’ spots.