Sunrise greeted the few early-risers from our stern this morning while still underway to Granito de Oro, our morning exploration area located in Coiba National Marine Park. This large park is renowned for its forested islands but also includes sizeable extensions of fringing reefs and submerged seamounts and is recognized as a world biosphere reserve.
We shared the sun’s first rays with soaring laughing gulls and some very playful pantropical spotted dolphins. Besides the dolphins’ typical arching leaps from the bow waves, one particular individual gave us an extra acrobatic treat with several high perpendicular leaps. A bit later, another guest reported seeing a sea-snake, which after speaking with the guest and getting a description of its yellow and black long striped coloration and length estimate, gave me enough details to confirm it as a Pacific sea snake, a mostly pelagic (open water) species that spends most of its life far from the tropical coastlines.
After breakfast, we started our shuttles to Granito de Oro, a very small but quaint island which literally means “grain of gold,” and was purported to be a favorite hang-out place of former Panamanian strongman and military dictator Omar Torrijos. The dictator favored this unique little island for private parties with armed guards on the perimeter keeping out any uninvited onlookers.
With wonderful fair weather we spent our morning snorkeling, kayaking, paddle boarding or just plain lounging on our beach chairs. A few more determined guests opted to do a complete snorkel loop around “the little grain of gold.” We then returned to our ship for lunch and recharged our batteries while our ship repositioned to another interesting island – Coibita. This was our inaugural visit with the National Geographic Sea Lion, and we offered swimming, snorkeling and later in the afternoon, a birder’s walk and a faster paced general exploration hike to the upper part of this scientific marine research center, which is also administered by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The hike up the two-hundred foot cliffs was bit taxing since the humidity was very high, but worth it as we were treated to a scenic view over part of this magnificent island group and was a perfect way to end our day.
