Contadora

As we continue to explore the Las Perlas islands in the Panama Gulf, we pulled anchor and motored as there was no wind and set anchor at beautiful Contadora Island (N08°38.076' W079°02.120') about 3.5 hours later on June 24th. We decided to treat ourselves and go out for a nice supper to celebrate my late birthday and Jordan's early birthday. Upon arriving to shore, we discovered the most beautiful beach that we have yet to set foot upon in all of Panama.

How to describe this fabulous golden sand???

We walked to a nice restaurant and discovered that lobster was listed for $40. What a difference from the fabulous lobster that I had at Boca Chica for only $7.45! But we each had a great meal and a very enjoyable evening out with a beautiful calm starry night, watching the bright fireflies flit around.

The following day, we went ashore once again to walk around the island, which we covered a great deal of. We found only a couple of grocery stores but lots of restaurants and hotels/resorts. We also saw a lot of high-end homes as this is where many folks from Panama City have a second home. We can see why as it's a very tranquil island plus it has an airplane runway with regular flights just up from the beach and ferry service from the City.

Sunday morning we had great snorkelling right off the boat. We saw white coral (kind of resembled brain coral) and regular reddish coral. Plus 1 very long needle-nose fish and so many coloured fish. A real bonus was spotting 2 rays swimming below us - 1 was quite large - and we noticed that they followed us for a bit as we swam around.

1 of 2 rays - Wow!

The wind really blew strongly all night. We kept checking to see if our anchor was holding and it seemed to be doing great.