Playa Uverita

It was another overcast day starting with a wicked low tide. Our stay here at Villa Marina is coming to a close so we wanted to explore possible options for alternative places to stay. I’d heard people talk about Playa Uverita near Las Tablas which is close to the customs building and the fairgrounds where we will get our next shot. PJ was up for a drive, so she slid behind the wheel and we drove through the green forests and ranch lands of the Azuero peninsula.

It took a little over an hour passing through small pueblos with names like Pocri, Paraiso and San Jose. The road was a little rough after exiting the main highway. The waters of the bahia are a kind of slab gray. There were a few locals wandering around the beach but the ocean looked particularly uninviting on this gloomy afternoon. The changing tides had deposited lines of trash along the sand which nobody in the pueblo exhibited much interest in picking up, plastics mostly.

The houses were a little rundown and the few restaurants and beachfront bars that might have provided a little uplift to the drab scene had been long closed due to the pandemic. It reminded more of Guatemalan beach towns than anything else I’ve seen in Panama. We walked along the beach at the rivermouth picking at shells and driftwood for a while then decided to head towards home keeping an eye out for a place to eat.

The road out made a side turn following he coast, so we explored it until it came to an end at Puerto Mensabe, a harbor for a small fishing fleet. The pier provided an excellent point to have a look at the inlet where the boats were anchored. There were fish vendors in the nearby neighborhood but we weren’t sure how long we’d be running around so we passed on picking some up.

It was an easy drive home. We took a slightly longer route out going through the outskirts of Las Tablas to avoid the potholed road we came in on. In Pedasi, we stopped for lunch at Smiley’s and did a couple of errands in town before returning to the condo.