PANAMA

Awake at 5 am, tucked away in the mountains surrounding Cooke City, I packed up my sleeping bag and skied the three miles out to the car. Twelve hours later I was aboard a flight... destination? Panama. Backcountry ski days at -12 degrees flipped to humid mid 80's overnight and with the sun barely cresting the horizon our tiny plane dropped low over Bocas Del Toro island: tiny surfers dotted the peeling waves and the jungle was bathed in golden sunlight. The airlines lost my only bag (see ya later DLSR camera), but we didn't have to wait for baggage to arrive at least... Skating to the hostel, we downed a quick smoothie breakfast and hastily layered on zinc sunscreen before grabbing our boards and running barefoot through the streets to the ocean's edge. Ramshackle huts in every color of the rainbow crowd the waterfront, suspended on crooked stilts. We ducked into a peeling turquoise one offering boat taxis and handed over two dollars each to hop into one of the thick fiberglass hulls. The driver idled to a stop at a reef break a kilometer out in the bay and we hucked both our boards and bodies out into the water as he took off. We surfed the glowing turquoise waves for three hours before whistling at the next boat taxi to motor us back to the town. We had to cram three people, surfboards and associated gear into two bunkbeds, the hostel overflowing with travelers from around the globe. There were melodic and guttural languages spilling out from every room, the open air kitchen full of a world's worth of cuisine, dogs running in off the streets and being chased out again, and sunburned people relaxing in hammocks. We surfed the temperate, waist-to-head high lefts the first four days straight, only stopping for food, naps, and sunscreen. Sea urchins were stepped on, coral was kicked, the sun burned us, and jellyfish wrapped their tentacles around us, but every day we fervently threw ourselves at the ocean, blind to everything but the fluid high of surfing. When the swell finally died down we borrowed leaky sea kayaks, walking down the streets with them balanced on our heads, and surfed the three foot breaks the once-firing lefts had become. Flying fish skipped across the ocean for hundreds of feet, pelicans skimmed the glassy surfaces of waves, and we capsized the huge yellow double kayak more than we stayed upright. A week in, we channeled our inner tourist and booked a boat tour for my buddy's birthday. Dolphins crested alongside the boat, sloths hung out on the tiny islands that explode with life, dotting the bays, and we followed the currents with snorkels for hours, captivated by the vibrant sponges and corals, and the vibrant, flashy fish. We ambled down the crooked wooden docks to grass thatched huts, peering through the cracks to watch the fish flow with the currents. Then we went deepboarding behind the boat, copying the twisting and flipping of the fish under the water, skimming inches above the coral bottom. At night we would rally all the friends we could, german, swiss, dutch, argentinian, and go dancing out at the bars. There's decks that span out over the ocean, packed with people grooving under the stars, with holes cut in the center for swimming in the sea. We would surf all day, nap for a few hours, go out and dance, and then sleep hard for a few hours before doing at all again. Toward the end of the trip my buddy ran into an old friend and we took him up on joining him on his 60' sailboat for a few days for more snorkleing, backflips off the deck, lounging in beanbags on deck, diving for conch and goring them open. We traded cans of juice for fish from the bored out canoe of a native woman and grilled them up. We waited until nightfall and went swimming in the bioluminescent plankton, glowing trails dotting our every movement until the ocean's depths mirrored the stars above. My last day in Bocas the swell finally kicked in again. We hopped on a boat taxi out to caraneros, a beautiful left point break. Shoulder high waves peeled again and again as we glided down the smooth turquiose faces one after the next for hours. The sun glinted off our wide grins as we fell deeper in love with surfing with every passing moment.




Since the lost bag never resurfaced with my DLSR camera, no photos for awhile...