Santa Catalina and Isla de Coiba, Panama 18 - 21 Dec 2005

World class scuba diving at an unspoilt tropical island

Later, I gave diving a last try, and did some more exercises with Rachel from the beach. I panicked again when doing the clearing the mask exercise and finally decided that diving was not for me. The next day I happily went snorkelling from the boat while the others dived and I saw even more than they did: eagle rays, a turtle, a couple of white tipped reef sharks and a zebra moray eel, in addition to the more common scorpion fish, rock fish, puffer fish, parrot fish and butterfly fish.
Back at Santa Catalina, Karin showed us the video she'd made of us. It was excellent so we bought a DVD copy from her. In particular, the scene where a frog fish sucks in a small fish with lightening speed is spectacular.

Then we booked into one of the most recently built rooms at the Sol y Mar, which was a great improvement on the room we'd had on the first two nights. We returned to the pizzeria for our last dinner there and breakfasted the next morning at the best breakfast place in Santa Catalina that we had discovered our second morning there. We left Santa Catalina with a slightly improved impression compared with the night of our arrival.

Thanks to:

Karin Pointner

Rachel Fulton