The rain stopped at dawn, and the village took a breath.
For three days Santa Catalina had been all noise. The ALAS surf contest crowd, the 246 surfers, the board racks outside every hotel. Horns on the one main street. Saturday beach parties that ran late into the night. But today the swell dropped, the judges' tower came down, and the place remembered what it actually is. A fishing village. A small one.
I walked the Calle Principal before the tiendas opened. A man was hosing down the pavement in front of Restaurante Donde Vianca. A dog slept in the middle of the road, and nobody honked. That is how you know the contest is over.
I stopped at Café Bex for a coffee. Strong, dark, the way they make it here. About B/.3 for a cup, which is more than you would pay in the city, but you are not in the city. You are at the end of a road. The woman behind the counter knew my order by now. Day four does that. It turns a stranger into a regular.
I sat on the porch and watched the village wake up. Two guys carried a cooler of fish past. A family rolled a cart of plantains toward a restaurant kitchen. The humidity was already building, that clingy wet-season heat that makes you move slow whether you want to or not.
Today was the day I had planned for Playa El Estero. The east end. The surf beach. The contest had been centred there, at Punta Brava, but that was done. I wanted the break in its ordinary rhythm, the one locals get when the tourists leave.
Estero is different from the main beach. The sand is black, volcanic, and it holds the heat. The wave at Punta Brava is fast and hollow, a proper left-and-right that barrels when the swell is up. The contest had run there for a reason. But on a dropping swell, with the breeze coming off the land, it softens. It becomes almost kind.
I met a local instructor on the sand. Not from one of the big camps, just a guy with a board and a patient voice. He sized me up, asked if I had surfed before. I told him I was a beginner who had taken a few lessons in Panama City, at a beach break near the city that barely counts as a wave.
He laughed and handed me a soft-top board. Big, buoyant, forgiving. The kind of board that makes you look better than you are. He quoted me B/.25 for the lesson and the board, which is about what you would pay anywhere on this coast. We walked into the water together.
The Pacific in August is not gentle. Even on a small day, the push and pull is constant. The water is warm, maybe 28 degrees, but the current has opinions. You paddle out and you feel the ocean testing you, deciding if you have earned the right to sit in its lineup.
I got worked on the first wave. Completely. The white water caught me, spun me, and I came up gasping and grinning with salt water burning my nose. The instructor did not laugh. He just said, 'Again.'
The second wave was better. I caught it, wobbled to my feet, rode for maybe six seconds before I pitched off the side. Six seconds. It felt like a lifetime. I paddled back out with my arms already shaking, and I understood why people spend their whole lives doing this.
We stayed in the water for two hours. The rain came and went, a drizzle that blurred the horizon and then stopped, the way August rain does here. By the end, I had caught four waves cleanly. Not well, but cleanly. I sat on the beach with my board across my knees and watched the water, and I finally got what the fuss is about.
Surfing is not a sport. It is a negotiation. You and the ocean, working out an arrangement. Some days you win. Most days the ocean just lets you think you did.
I walked back along the beach toward the village, past Oasis Surf Camp, past the Saturday-party debris that was already being swept away. The tide was coming in, and the black sand squeaked under my feet. That sound. That loose, gritty squeak. It is specific to volcanic sand, and it is one of those small details you do not expect.
I was starving. I stopped at Sugar Mamas Cafe, which I had passed twice but never entered. Small place, a few tables, a menu that leans gringo but does it honestly. I ordered a burrito and a fresh juice. The burrito was good, properly stuffed, and the whole thing came to about B/.12. Not cheap by village standards, but fair for what it was.
A guy at the next table was on his phone, talking loudly about property prices. He was a foreigner, mid-fifties, wearing a hat that had never seen real sun. I gathered he was looking at land near the new road. The paved access road. The one that is changing everything here.
I listened while I ate. He was saying the price per hectare had tripled in two years. Tripled. And he was annoyed he had not bought sooner. That is the story of Santa Catalina right now. It is riding a boom, and the boom is reshaping the village while everyone watches.
The politics of this place are the politics of everywhere coastal and beautiful. The fishermen still launch from the main beach, but the land around the village is being bought up. The new road makes it easier to get here, and easier is a double-edged sword.
I paid and walked toward the main beach. The fishermen's dock was busy. A panga had just come in, and men were hauling coolers of yellowfin and snapper up the ramp. The catch goes to the restaurants, to the ceviche stands, to the family kitchens. It is the same rhythm as a hundred years ago, just with fibreglass boats instead of wooden ones.
I sat on a low wall and watched them work. A woman was cleaning fish at a table nearby, her knife moving in quick, practiced arcs. She looked up, nodded at me, kept working. Nobody asked me to buy anything. Nobody tried to sell me a tour. The village was just being itself, and I was lucky enough to be watching.
That evening, I climbed the short hill to the upper road, the strip they call Catalina Farms. There is a cluster of newer places up there. Panachocolat is the chocolate and coffee spot, and I wanted to check it out, but it was closing. Caricaco Coffee was still open, so I went in.
I ordered a coffee and sat by the window. The view from up here is everything. The ocean, the point, the swell lines rolling in from the Pacific. The sun was going down, and the light turned the water to copper.
I thought about the cost of this life. Not the money, though that is part of it. The rent on a modest room here runs about B/.200 to B/.400 a month. A night in a guesthouse, if you are visiting, is more like B/.89 to B/.120 for something mid-range. A hostel dorm bed is B/.10 to B/.13. The Coiba day trip, which I did the day before, set me back about B/.75 for the boat, the park fee and the snorkel gear.
But the real cost is the remoteness. There is no bank in Santa Catalina. The one ATM by the Farmacia is famously unreliable, and it runs dry. The nearest real town is Soná, and the nearest proper city is Santiago de Veraguas, where you can find a Banco General or a Banistmo branch. The bus from Soná to Santa Catalina takes about two hours and costs around B/.4.65. You have to plan your cash, or you are stuck.
I finished my coffee and walked back down to the beach road. The bars were closing. It is a quiet village, even in high season. The police enforce the 10pm closing time for bars, and the public drinking rules are real. The party people go to Oasis for the Saturday sessions, and the rest of the week the village sleeps.
I stopped at the water's edge one last time. The stars were coming out, and the moon was a thin slice over the water. The swell had dropped, but I could still hear it. A low, constant rumble. The ocean working, always working.
That is the thing about Santa Catalina. It looks like a postcard, but it is a working town. Fishermen and surfers, old ways and new money, a village caught between what it was and what it is becoming. And I am just here, for eight days, trying to understand it.
Tomorrow I will surf Estero again, if the swell stays down. And in a few days, I will get back in a van and head west, toward Chiriqui and the mountains. But tonight, I am here. The moon is over the water, the village is quiet, and the Pacific is telling its old story. Hasta mañana, Santa Catalina. Same time tomorrow.
This is Javier, talking to you from the black sand of Playa El Estero. If you are thinking about coming here, come when the swell is down. Come when the contest crowd is gone. Come for the quiet days, the fisherman mornings, the coffee that tastes like the long road that brought you here. That is the real Santa Catalina. The one that does not need a contest to be alive.
I will be back with another episode from the road. But for now, the waves are calling, and I have a date with a soft-top board and a patient voice. Que le vaya bien.