Isle Exploration 290109

When travelling to far-flung places we often forget the island gems on our doorsteps. A fortnight after touching down with a bump in a grey winter-veiled England SR and I headed for the Isle of Wight for more sea-faring adventure. The interlude of the ferry crossing on the 3 hour journey from Brighton to Ventnor is enough to feel the loosening of attitudes and conventions that exotic travel brings. With a spring in our step and a song in our hearts we arrived at the lodgings of the Isle's premier celebrity entertainment couple, our hosts for the weekend.

Having surfed the Isle's perfectly groomed 4ft azure walls of water all morning, with the sun beaming down and the offshore breeze tickling the faces of the waves, teasing them to stay vertical for a moment longer we retired to a local hostelry for refreshment and recuperation. It was here that the true prominence and renown of our hosts became apparent. Immediately upon sitting down staff rushed to cordon off the area with a burgundy velvet rope to keep the hordes from spilling our cider, skulking in dark corners of the tavern paparazzi disguised as common Isle-folk were poised, ready to strike when a front-page opportunity presented itself. The attention was flattering, yet oppressive so we retired to our hosts lodge for a private dinner-dance away from the baying throng.

The following day we sought respite in a secluded folly, and then, disguised as normal, unexceptional people we took lunch in a craft-village before boarding a vessel sailing for Englands wintery snow-bound shores.

It really is the Isle of Alright.

De Luz

My few remaining days in Panama have been filled with as much surf-time as my aching body will allow. I’ve surfed my biggest — but not necessarily best — couple of waves , having made the drop the wave’s were curling above and ahead of me well overhead. I’m never very good at judging wave heights, they always seem bigger to me than they probably are, but these were definitely 10ft+ faces and very nearly barreling (curling right over the surfer enclosing them within a tube of water). I took one smaller wave which curled began to curl over me and instinctively I ducked under the lip of the wave as it pitched out over me but it hit my head an knocked me head over heels. Next time eh?...

Spending so much time in the sea this last week I’ve observed some really spectacular light phenomenon. The brooding, stormy Caribbean weather has often been overcast but bright, and no wind the polished surface of the sea reflects the grey of the sky through it’s aqua lense creating a silvery green shimmer which makes it very difficult to distinguish between sea and sky, above and below air and liquid merging. One of the stormier days produced a light show that took me a few moments to comprehend it’s existence outside of the Photoshop realm. Off the northern tip of Isla Bastimentos on the waters horizon was what I can only describe as a setting rainbow, but rather than a ring-like rainbow this was a solid circular spectrum of light dipping below the skyline.

Another feature of surfing so much is the thinking time it affords between sets, in which time I’ve come up with a universal analogy between relationships and surfing. Both begin with a leap of faith, conviction, effort and determination to catch a ride on an inexorable wave of energy. Once aboard momentum takes over as an exhilarating freefall occurs but if you’re passive at this point then the freefall runs it’s course and it fizzles and dies or you tumble and crash. Once the initial buzz is under way you need to work to read and ride that energy to keep momentum going to stay ahead of the crumbling breaking wave, you need to use experience and intuition to understand and react to that energy, to flow with that energy and you have to keep opening up to the energy , to let yourself go in order to keep riding it for as long as possible.
Oh – here comes another wave…

Mi Nuevo Amor

After bumping down on Bocas runway I found a place to stay thirty minutes walk down a swampy road to Playa Punch, a shallow reef break with lefts and rights that I didn’t get to surf on my last visit. Staying in walking distance from my surf spot saves the $20 return trips water taxi fee and being out of town in Big Creek suits me just fine, I just want to surf, eat and sleep my way through these remaining days in Panama. Having orientated myself at El Alma I waded through the morass up to Playa Punch with the admittedly cumbersome GG under one arm — she’s definitely putting on weight. Keen to surf I innocently strode out across the reef until it was deep enough to paddle and stroked hard to clear the white water. The waves were fun, fast and head to head-and-a-half high so I had a fine old time of it despite the excessive crowds in the water. With my arms/shoulders burning and energetically bankrupt I began to look for my exit point, hoping to follow someone else back in — the reef was sharp and the tide had dropped exposing even more of it. Most folk were getting picked up in water taxis and taken back to Bocas so after half an hour of waiting my patience gave and I caught a wave in toward a randomly selected spot. I let it wash me in until it was too shallow to paddle and I slid off my board to walk the rest of the way in. The wave that had delivered me thus far washed out revealing a reef covered with more sea-urchins than I believed possible. There were urchins nestled in between the spikes of bigger urchins having a sea urchin jamboree, their spikes swaying in the water in anticipation of the fun to come.. A quick scan in all directions confirmed that the whole coral shelf was covered in the pesky blighters. I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t go forward. The scene resembled a WW2 minefield, in miniature, and I the ship’s captain had to negotiate safe passage back to shore. After a few minutes of physical and mental inactivity, standing there like a right ‘nana I figured I had to take what was coming to me and I stumbled onward through the calf deep water aiming my feet at light–coloured spots where possible. On examining my reef boots once on dry land they had absorbed most of the damage, but the more tenacious spikes had found their way through and I knew I had a fun packed evening ahead — just me, the iodine, the needle, the tweezers and a whole lot of wincing.

I have a terrible confession to make. After such a heady, whirlwind romance I have forsaken GG for a smaller, lighter, more petite model. The following morning I just couldn’t face carrying GG for thirty minutes across difficult terrain — water retention from the knocks and scrapes we’ve been through have left her bloated and heavy. The smaller board I have with me which I’ve only used sparingly until now — the smaller size and volume make it less forgiving to ride and I’d judged it a step too far for me in more challenging waves — took a walk with me up to Punch. GG has been in dry-dock ever since. My new love is fast, light, agile, nimble and her duck-dives are obscenely satisfying. She doesn’t quite have the looks of her rival but she makes up for it in performance, in these waves anyway. I’m not proud of the way I’ve behaved but to be honest things had been a bit tense between me and GG for a few days previously. We just weren’t having fun any more.

There’s a great Hotel up at Playa Punch called La Coralina run by a wonderful host called Stacey. I had initially tried to stay there when I got to Bocas this time but they were full, but I have been hanging out there between surf’s, eating, drinking and enjoying the antics of Edgar the monkey riding Sugar the dog around the place like a pony. Her dad was arriving a day later than expected freeing up one of the expensive suites for a night. She let me have it for the price of one of her budget rooms so I’ve just spent a day in the lap of luxury enjoying a deliciously comfortable bed and an amazing multi-directional mist spray shower room. La Coralina overlooks Punch so at dawn I paddled out — through the urchin-less key-hole in the reef that Mike from the hotel showed me —and had the waves to myself for an hour before the boat’s unloaded their town-dwelling cargo. Between sessions today I took the first surf pictures of the trip. A combination of difficult access to the waves, water taxis and breaks being too far out to sea to photograph has handicapped me until now. Better late than never.

Café con Leche

Back on my own again — they call me the lone wolf, the dark raven, the bringer of light, the wizard’s cup, the crab botherer…. Oh yes, the open road beckons and the sea whispers (one of) my name(s).

Two features consistently epitomise my various global wanderings. Coffee is the first. At home I don’t really do any caffeine so hot drinks tend to be pond-water derivatives. Yet once I leave the motherland’s shores letting my hair down and drinking coffee must act as some kind of emblem of freedom for me. I’ll only have one or two cups a day, mind. The second is The Age Game. I meet a lot of folk and they tend to be younger than me, typically early to late twenties. The meeting banter tends to take the following course at some point: What do you do? > How long have you done that for? > [a puzzled look crosses their faces] > Errr, so how old are you ? > What! > I thought you were in your late 20’s, 30 at most! > {I try to suppress a smug smile}. My decaying ego’s fire is fuelled once again and my account for eternal youth is put down to over two decades of hard slog at the coal-face of disco…. That or good genes. My sprightly 75 year old paragliding father is testament to that.

The car hire place at David airport cocked up once again, but this time in my favour. I got a top-end 4x4 for the price of the cheapest one they did and felt like the king of the road as I headed down the InterAmericana (Panama’s primary road and the one with the least potholes) looking for thrills and danger. A quick nose at Playa Las Lajas was disappointing so I hoofed it back down to Santa Catalina to catch the end of the swell. I surfed the point and the beach break at Estero until the swell had pretty much said farewell at which point I saddled up and headed for Los Santos province to 4 hours to the east. This state has been almost completely deforested yet the infinitely undulating verdant landscape is spectacular. I arrived at Playa Venao an hour before sundown and leapt into the sea for a surf before dark in this wide crescent shaped bay. It’s a really great beach-break with plenty of room and a range of peaks to choose from and the surfers I met over the following couple of days told me it holds size when the swell’s right and yet it’s almost completely undeveloped… thus far. There is so much surf potential in this region with beaches facing from due east to south west with points and reefs dissecting them and there’s even talk of an outer reef with 100ft monster waves for the foolhardy. Yet despite this there’s not much surf development, perhaps because the U.S. grey dollar invaded the area a while ago pushing land prices up. I really like it in this province yet the lack of challenging waves and my impending departure persuaded me to surf my remaining time out in the consistent Caribbean Bocas del Toro. A pre-dawn departure from Pedasi enabled me to catch the 10am land-hopper from David to Bocas. The Caribbean surf forecast predicts it to build and hold until my departure. Let’s hope I’ve got my surf pants on.

Hasta Lluego

We greeted New Years day watching the sunrise followed by a leisurely breakfast with the monkeys before a grueling eye-bleeding 10 hour drive East across Panama back to Santa Catalina — I like it there. The combination of a new swell pushing through to the Pacific coast lighting up the main point for the first time since I’d been in Panama with the end of the holiday season meant town was full. We found a room on the bluff between town and the point, ate at Viankas and slept, the sleep of a thousand monkeys. Having shown SR all the sights, the next morning I made the 20 minute paddle between the rocks to the main attraction and inadvertently found myself right in the takeoff spot and caught myself an overhead right which walled up ahead of me growing in size and getting hollower as I shot down the line. A few instinctive top to bottom S-turns and a cutback kept me in the game until my final top turn just happened too quickly for me to control and my board shot off without me… my best wave ever!... Again!

We wandered in to town with the vague notion of getting a fish for dinner and arranging a snorkeling trip to Isla Coiba, one of the world’s premier dive sites and a nature reserve who’s only rival in terms of diversity and species numbers is the Galapagos. On the way to Rolo’s to arrange the Coiba trip we bumped in to a man, still dripping from his dive, with a spear gun skewering all manner of sealife. Our eyes were drawn to the enormous Snapper which we secured for $2. You don’t even see Snapper that big in the UK but it must have been £30-40 worth of fish in our sweaty mitts. A makeshift barbeque from a tinfoil cooking tray and a metallic washing up drainer and SR’s preparation, care, attention and garlic & ginger marinade provided me with one of the best meals I’ve had.

Isla Coiba is home to all manner of wild beasts from anacondas to sharks to crocodiles to whales to rays to prisoners — this island was a former prison colony and an unknown number of prisoners still reside in this wild island. The discernibly raw and untouched flora and fauna of these islands prompted a feeling of regressing millions of years as we approached. As the boat passed between two outlying islands we could see the submarine topography with absolute clarity beneath the limpid sea. Our excitement was palpable.
On signing in with the park rangers we saw a saltwater crocodile hanging about waiting for breakfast to slip by and then headed off for a tiny postcard-based desert island for us to snorkel around. We saw a kaleidoscopic array of colourful fish and coral in these pristine waters but the appearance of a gang of 4ft white tip sharks had SR scrambling for the safety of the rocks. With a little acclimatisation to the grey suited presence we continued and saw 2ft wide head of an indeterminatebly large shark lurking beneath some rocks and another 6ft white tip alongside huge shoals of fish in their brightest attire. The sheer magnitude of life around these rocks was breathtaking. When a cruise ship anchored nearby about to unload it’s cargo of 100 passengers we scuttled off to another nearby island with the most pristine white sand beach imaginable, clear turquoise waters backed by dense, dense jungle. A set-designer would have trouble coming up with a more perfect tropical beach.

A dawn surf on Sunday provided even bigger, double overhead sets but it was chock-a-block with locals guys demonstrating their skill and intimate knowledge of their wave. I caught what I could on the inside sections which wasn’t much but it was worth getting wet before our drive back to the city of David for SR’s trek back to San Jose, Costa Rica to get her flight back home.. A cursory check of the tickets when we arrived at the hotel in the early evening struck panic among the troops, we’d erroneously thought her flight was 4pm on Monday, allowing enough time for the 9hr journey the next morning and a fond farewell for us that evening. Oh No! It’s only bloomin’ 7.45 am. It was late already, there are no buses from La frontera after 9pm, it takes 1-2hrs to get to the border and 1-2hrs to get through the red tape at the busiest Panama-Costa Rica crossing and about 6 hours bus ride from there to San Jose. A quick bit of mental arithmetic determined that SR was in the shit. We booked a taxi, clothes were flung in bags and a wide-eyed stressful hug later and she was gone. Three hours later I was startled by the room phone ringing. SR was clearly in distress. The border crossing was a confusing nightmare and the last bus refused her passage and she had to watch it disappear without her. Endorsed taxi’s were quoting $300 but she found someone willing to do it for $200. But of course the cashpoints weren’t working that evening in the wild-west-like no-mans-land! The vulnerability of SR’s position was made manifest when the unlicensed cab took her down unlit streets into the countryside. With no common language between them her fears were only alleviated when he took her back to his house, wife and kids and allowed her to use his phone to call me. A midnight dash in a taxi to the badlands, my pockets stuffed with filthy lucre enabled SR’s 30-hour home-bound journey to commence.