La Playita

We were slow rolling hobos this morning. It was close to ten when we walked over to the restaurant for some coffee and breakfast. It was Panamanian typical fare, eggs and their version of corn tortillas, thick corn cakes fried in oil. The guacamayas came flying in for their breakfast, all scarlett, blues and yellows. We sat watching them come and go, amazingly beautiful in flight.

As we finished our meal, a troop of howlers came to visit in the tree over the kitchen area. I suspect they find the stray banana or two around the back of the cookhouse. We played a while with the chihuahua puppies before heading to the room to gather our snorkeling gear.

There is some coral reef inside the cove at La Playita. The tide was extremely low when we masked up and hit the water. There were lots of areas with barely enough water to float above the bottom without touching. We soon came upon schools of colorful wrasses and sergeant majors. PJ headed over to the far side and waded out of the bay onto the island to look into the tide pools.

I skimmed carefully above the rocks and when I looked down I was almost on top of a venomous stone fish. There was only about two feet of water so I did the wide handed swim stroke to get out of there.

We came upon some more stands of coral on the way in with box fish, damsels and a crazy looking yellow pupfish. It was a fun excursion and we spent maybe an hour and a half scouting the cove for sea life. We found a comfortable spot in the shade and watched the hermit crabs parade past under the scented branches of giant plumeria trees.

The rest of the afternoon was given to relaxing in hammocks and reading in the shade of our lanai. An awesome location in the jungle, just watch out for the bullhorn acacia ants. They pack a mean bite.