The thunder doesn't creep in. It lands. One second the room is dark and thick with the sound of rain on the roof, and the next there's a crack so loud the windows rattle in their frames. I lie there for a minute, listening to the storm roll over the hills. It's 5:30 in the morning, the wet season is doing its thing, and I am very, very awake.
I'm Javier, this is Panama Travel Podcast, and this is day two in Santa Catalina.
Here's the thing about this village. It runs on surf and fish and rain. The electricity flickers when the wind picks up. The one ATM in town is a small machine tucked next to the Farmacia, and I've been warned it runs dry more often than not. I checked it yesterday when I arrived, and sure enough, it was out of service. The nearest reliable bank is in Santiago, a couple of hours up the road. So when I say you need to bring cash, I mean it. There's no bank branch here, no carrier store for your phone, no hospital. If you get badly hurt, you're looking at a trip to Soná or all the way to Santiago.
That sounds rough. It isn't. It's just real. And it's part of why I'm loving it. The village is squeezed between a black-sand beach and a forested hillside, and the main street is, well, one street. Calle Principal. It's got a few tiendas, a couple of family restaurants like Donde Vianca and Mama Nivia, and a bus stop where a little local bus chugs in from Soná a few times a day. That ride, by the way, will set you back about four or five balboas and takes a couple of hours. From Panama City, you're looking at a full day and somewhere around fifteen to thirty balboas for the bus. It's the only real transit link, so plan around it.
But I'm not planning bus schedules today. Today is about the water. I pull on my boardshorts, grab my board, and step outside. The rain has softened to a light drizzle, and the air smells like wet earth and salt. The village is waking up. A dog is barking somewhere near the dock. A fisherman is loading his boat for the day. I walk the short stretch from my guesthouse down to Playa Santa Catalina, the wide black-sand beach where the locals launch their pangas and where the sunsets are supposed to be something else.
The sand here is dark, almost charcoal, and it squeaks underfoot. I'm told the black sand comes from volcanic material washed down from the hills. It's beautiful in a moody, wet-season way. The surf at the main break, Punta Brava, is already showing some life. That's the powerful, hollow left-and-right break that hosts the big surf contests. It's powerful, and it's not for beginners. I watch a couple of local kids take off on a wave and just absolutely shred it, and I feel a pang of envy. My style is more, shall we say, enthusiastic than graceful.
For me, the more manageable option is La Punta, the iconic rocky point at the other end. That's the world-class right-hand break that put Santa Catalina on the map back in the seventies and eighties when the first international surfers showed up. It's a longer paddle out, but the wave is more forgiving, and it barrels over a shallow reef. I paddle out, and for the next two hours, it's just me and the ocean and the occasional shout from another surfer dropping in. The water is bathwater warm. The sky stays grey and moody. It's perfect.
Around nine, I paddle in. I'm hungry. And thirsty. The kind of hungry that makes your hands shake a little. I walk back up the beach and head toward the upper road strip, the area known as Catalina Farms. It's a cluster of newer spots, and it's where I find a little slice of caffeine and sugar. I stop at Café Panachocolat. It's a small place, all wood and plants, and it smells like chocolate and fresh coffee. I order a hot chocolate, and it is, without exaggeration, the best hot chocolate I've had in Panama. Rich, dark, and thick. It comes with a stack of pancakes, and that costs me about eight balboas. Worth every centimo.
The thunder starts up again while I'm eating. That's the wet-season rhythm here. It builds up in the mountains, rolls over the coast, dumps everything it has for half an hour, and then moves on. I watch the rain hammer the street outside the cafe window. It's loud. It turns the unpaved bits of road into rivers. A couple of dogs trot past, looking miserable. A motorbike with two people on it, one holding a big bunch of bananas, splashes through a puddle. This, right here, is what the green season is all about.
Because here's a secret about Santa Catalina. The wet season isn't a deterrent. It's the point. This is the time when the biggest Pacific swells of the year roll through, making the surf at La Punta and Punta Brava genuinely world-class. This is also the window when the humpback whales are working the waters around Coiba National Park. July through October, you've got a real shot at seeing them. A friend of mine here, a diver, told me he saw a mother and calf last week, just off the island. The rain brings the swells. The swells bring the energy. The energy brings people like me, sitting in a cafe, eating pancakes in a downpour and feeling absolutely fine about it.
After my coffee, I figure it's time to get serious. I've got a dive day planned, and I want to get the details sorted. The main operator in town is Scuba Coiba, the oldest dive shop in the village, run by an expat named Herbie Sunk. He's a character, a total legend of the place. I walk over to his shop, which is basically a beach shack full of tanks and wetsuits and old dive flags. I ask about the day trip to Coiba National Park.
Now, here's the thing. The dive and the park, they're the main event. A full day trip out there runs about sixty to a hundred balboas, depending on what you do. The park is a UNESCO World Heritage site, a huge marine reserve with over five hundred species of fish. It used to be a penal colony, from 1919 until 2004. That's wild. What a place to be in prison. But now it's one of the premier dive destinations in the Eastern Pacific. Hammerheads at Roca Partida. Whale sharks. Manta rays. Hawksbill turtles. And this time of year, the humpbacks are all over it.
But the weather. The swell. The wind. Herbie is straight with me. He looks at the sky, looks at the reading on his phone, and shakes his head. The sea state is going to be marginal tomorrow. The twenty-meter boat ride out to Coiba can be rough even on good days. On bad days, it's a washing machine. He says it's a maybe, that the forecast could shift, and I should call in the morning. He takes my number and says he'll text me by six a.m.
I appreciate the honesty. It's better than losing a day to a cancelled trip after you're already on the boat. And it leaves my afternoon wide open. So I decide to make the most of it. I rent a kayak from Fluid Adventures. It's a small operation, but they're friendly, and a half-day rental is reasonable. The plan is to paddle out to Isla Santa Catalina, the small uninhabited island just off the coast. I'm told it's about an hour's paddle, a nice little workout.
The clouds crack open again as I push off the beach. Yes, it's raining. No, I don't care. I'm in a kayak in the ocean, in the middle of the wet season, and the water is spitting all around me. The paddle is hard work, pushing into a slight headwind, but it feels good. My arms burn. The sea is a deep, dark grey-green. I see a sea turtle surface a few meters away, take a breath, and sink back under. It's over in seconds, but it stays with me.
Isla Santa Catalina is undeveloped. Just a small scrap of white sand and some trees, a world away from the rocky, black-sand mainland. I beach the kayak and just sit there for a while. The rain has stopped, and the sun is threatening to break through. The air is still and quiet, except for the sound of waves and some distant bird calls. The mainland looks lush and intensely green from here, the hillsides covered in forest. I think about the Ngöbe-Buglé comarca, the region this land is part of. This is their home. That history is layered under everything here, and it's important to remember that.
I paddle back, my shoulders tired and my stomach rumbling again. Time for round two of the food tour. Tonight, I want something classic. I head to Restaurante Donde Vianca, a little family place right on the main street. It's the kind of spot where the menu is written on a whiteboard and the owner is also the cook and probably the person who caught the fish. I order the fried fish with patacones and a cold beer. The fish is fresh, crispy, and salty. The patacones are thick and greasy in the best way. The whole meal, with the beer, comes to about fifteen balboas. That's pretty typical for a proper dinner here. And it was worth every balboa.
As the sun starts to think about setting, the storm clears completely. I take a walk out to La Punta, just to watch the light change over the ocean. The surf is still going off. A few locals are out for a sunset session. The sky turns pink and gold, then a deep indigo as the light goes. The air is cool and clean after the days of rain. This is the payoff. The wet season makes you wait for it. It makes you sit through the thunderstorms and the humidity and the muddy roads. But when it clears, when the light hits that ocean just right, there's nowhere on earth quite like the Pacific coast of Panama.
The village settles down early. The bars close around ten, and the streets are quiet. A few places still have music playing, a distant bass thump from the Oasis Beach Bar where they do salsa on Wednesdays. I walk back to my room, the sound of the ocean following me all the way. I know tomorrow is a coin flip on Coiba. But it doesn't matter. I came for the swells, for the whales, for the rain. And Santa Catalina is giving me everything. It's giving me exactly what the wet season promised.
I'll be back tomorrow with an update. If the ocean cooperates, I'm diving. If not, I'm surfing. Either way, I'm right where I'm supposed to be. Hasta luego. And thanks for listening.
One last thing on the practical side. If you're planning a trip here, the entry is easy for most visitors, with many nationalities getting stamped in for up to 180 days. Just make sure your passport is valid for six months and you have proof of onward travel. And if you're thinking of staying longer, look into the Friendly Nations visa, but start the process in the city. There are no government offices in the surf town. That's for the city. Here, it's just you, the ocean, and the rain. And honestly, that's more than enough.