Let me be brutally blunt, we put up with so much shit as normal joe air travellers, and are often treated (one way or another) so very poorly, that flying with Copa Airlines and Air Panama was a series of little wow moments. Check-in counters? Properly staffed, the net result is that you don’t wait THREE FRICKIN’ HOURS in line among a horde of pissed off people standing around like cattle and nearly miss your flight for Europe. I’m looking at you Air Transat. Yes you, don’t turn away, you want to save on costs, I get it, but sometimes you go too far. Check-in at Montreal with Copa? Maybe ten minutes tops, even faster in Panama City.Read more
Bocas Del Toro is a very chill town, and Bocas Diving Pirates is a very chill dive shop. Chill but professional, don’t let the laid back vibe fool you, these guys are good, real good and they work hard. You don’t have to touch your gear unless you want to. The instruction quality is also excellent. I was listening to el jefe Alex instruct new divers before a DSD and everything was on point, precise, yet humorous. This is not the kind of shop where they “forget” to ask for your certification card or where the DMs dive by intuition rather than by decompression tables. Oxygen rescue kit on every dive, not something we’ve seen very often on our travels. The crew was super nice and quickly made us feel like part of the team, besides Alex, we got to know Omar, our DM Charlie and our groovin’ dancin’ boat stearin’ captain Bernardino. That’s one reason I prefer smaller dive shops, you get to make connections with people (provided you’re not a jackass to start with), and that takes the diving to a different level. You get to know the DM(s) and they get to know you and how you dive.Read more
After three days in Coiba we came back a little bit crusty, bug bitten (in my case), and very pleased with the whole adventure. Back at the dive shop we fulfilled the age old ritual of drinking a few beers and stamping log books, our DM Cory (from Calgary) spent some time with us generally chatting, which was very nice. A tropical downpour started unannounced and a white horse galloped by. The image was a little surreal. Then a white truck from our hotel that night showed up, also unannounced, so we did not have to walk in the rain. Now that is service. We passed however, since, you know, beers and divers. Then we ate pizza at the topless mermaid place and it was very good. We spoke with our new dive buddy Bonne who was also eating there (granted the amount of places to eat in Santa Catalina pretty much insures you will run into people you have already met) and we met an Australian surfer dude pretty much traveling around the world surfing and working odd jobs here and there. That guy was on to something. We meet quite a few of those travelers that seem to be on an extended walkabout, Europeans and Australians, not a bad way to spend your days, not at all, my North American mind wonders at the financials of it though. My repressed surfer self is more like meh, they’ll figure something out. It seems a very different world to me than when I backpacked across Europe in the late 80’s… When most of the people we have met so far would not be born for almost a decade…Read more
It might happen, through the vagarities of life, that you are stuck in a situation, where, you need to order only one Panamanian beer to quench your thirst, impress a client, or seduce a really hot human (we don’t judge). You might be at a loss but I got you covered. My pleasure.Read more
We got to Santa Catalina, on the Pacific coast, late at night. Too late for supper or a last drink. Which was too bad because we were both bone tired and some sustenance would have been welcome. Next morning was go go go, we woke up to a great view but we had to get going pronto. The dive shop was expecting us at eight.Read more
Scuba diving, quality cocktails, taking it easy and other treasure maps.
