At 5 hours by road from Panama City at Veraguas Province you find Santa Catalina, a fishing village on the Pacific Coast, a beach paradise where families from the area enjoy eternal sunsets and surfers ride waves all day.
In Santa Catalina you will find several hotels, bars, restaurants and diving schools, as well as tourism agencies that make “tours” to the natural treasures of Coiba, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Beaches to Enjoy
Santa Catalina has two beaches, one is at the end of the road that connects this town with Sona. It is wide, excellent for bathing and from there the boats sail towards Coiba. A couple of kilometers down the main street of this own you reach Playa Estero, it is prettier and where “surfers” gather to run the best waves. Santa Catalina is considered one of the 50 most important points in the world to practice surfing. For this reason there are several schools for beginners and places that rent surfboards throughout the town. You can also enjoy places to practice yoga and receive relaxing massages. Likewise, you can find delicious meals for all tastes and budgets.
Coiba Marine National Park
After surfing, it is time to venture into one of the most important natural treasures of the continent: Coiba. It is at 1 hour and a half by speedboat from Santa Catalina, and is composed of the great Coiba Island and 38 other islands and islets. It also hosts the second largest coral reef in the Pacific Ocean, accompanied by impressive fauna and flora. In fact, its rainforests have one of the most varied ecosystems on the planet and is the country’s main ecological destination.
Marine adventure
One of the main activities carried out is “snorkeling” and diving around the Granito de Oro island, Canales island and Coco Island, full of corals, marine fauna and crystal clear waters. But if you only want to spend the day on a beach Paradise in the middle of the ocean Rancheria Island is the ideal destination, you can also find dolphins, humpback whales (between June and October), whale sharks, stingrays, barracudas,, three types of marlin and much more.
Virgin Nature
Once you reach the island of Coiba there are 493 km2 full of ecological paths, rich natural fauna and a history that helped the island keep its virgin nature. And it was that until 2004 Coiba was a prison colony and today it is a mandatory place to visit when visiting the island. In Coiba you will find large mangroves, three species of sea turtles and the best preserved coral reefs of the Panamanian Pacific.
The Coiba National Park and Santa Catalina are two inseparable destinations. Enjoying one means visiting the other, two treasures with a unique personality that every local and foreign visitor must live at least once.
