Bocas del Toro: surfing & diving

Life in Bocas is tough! Aside the daily Spanish studying, and every-night partying offer, you can also pack your days / afternoons with various activities, more or less relaxing. I have done 5 afternoons of surfing and 2 dives :-)

Mono Loco surf school in Bocas

Surfing the Caribbean's
Surprisingly (to me up to 1 month ago), there are good waves to surf here! A regular swell is created in the Caribbean sea, and then head on the Panama & Costa Rica shores creating good waves on various spots.

So after the short New-Zealand surfing experience, I decided to take few lessons here. With Mono Loco Surf, I go on the "black rock" spot which has reef waves, i.e. waves breaking few hundreds meters from the shore, with a rip tide on the sides, perfect to easily paddle up to the waves start and try again!

The "black-rock" reef spot, between 2 islands

Me & Luis, my instructor

Great place to learn in a 29C warm water, I am happy to have improve over 2 weeks my beginner skills, as I can now better paddle, but mostly succeed (sometimes!) to pick waves before they break, which enables a much better surf than once they have broken and you "just" surf on the white-water pushing you forward.

Could also reduced the board size from 8.2ft down to 7.7ft, still big but already more feelings. A lot more to learn and practice, the art of reading the waves/swell is really important, in order to chose the right ones to spend efforts on, otherwise you get exhausted very quickly! And clearly, I don't have this art yet ;-)

Paki point waves & surfers

Around Bocas, you can spot surfers on various spots, as here at Paki point, and of course you see many in town around the surf shops or just walking around with boards. I like this atmosphere.

Surfer at paki point

Bocas is a good spot to know, particularly if you want to begin with this sport. The reef waves are more gentles as you can use rip tides to help paddling up the waves on their sides. Very big advantage vs. beach waves, as I verified it a bit later in Costa Rica!

a big starfish

Diving in Bocas

Here it's the reverse... I was clearly expecting great diving as being in the Caribbean's, and finally, while it has just been good, I thought it could be more amazing. Ok, just did 2 dives during a cloudy afternoon, so cannot really speak for truth... and I was in Thailand or the Great Barrier Reef few weeks before, being spoilt as a RTW-traveler may increase my expectations! 

The 1st dive happened around a wreck, and although we could not enter this sunk-boat, it was nice seeing how the corals and all the fish invaded the space in few dozen years. 

Me in front of the wreck

All around, the corals were quite developed I found, with quite some colors. Also saw few nice fishes, as those 3 lion-fishes together... I completely failed the picture so I cannot show them, but was great to observe them.

I've heard later than there few other great spots to dive around, with much more fishes and colorful corals to do, so if you are here, check well the diving school and daily destinations before you go! (Red Frog is said to be much nicer)