Playa El Palmar - Week 17

5th - 7th January

After the morning in La Pintada we got back on the coach on the interamericana highway and stopped 45 mins down the road in San Carlos. From here we took a 2 min taxi down to the coast at Playa El Palmar and stumbled on a great place to stay, El Refugio:

This was Russ's family home which he has opened as a B&B and is run by his son Jay, Jay's girlfriend Marlene (who, incidentally, is the number 4 female surfer in Panama!) and Phil & Parker, two Candians escaping the rat-race. The whole family (and all friends, we met tons of people coming and going all the time!) were so welcoming and helpful and the house so lovely that we had a fantastic time.

Ally, Katie, Phil, Russ, Parker and James

We were right on the beach which was great for swimming and the house had a lovely pool in the garden. Five minutes after arriving we had all kicked off our shoes, had a beer in hand and felt like we'd been there 3 weeks!

So we basically mooched around for 3 days, swimming, reading, chatting late into the night and eating great food (one day a fisherman turned up with enormous shrimps for sale that he'd just caught that morning - delicious on the barby!).

On our last day, Ally and Katie managed to drag themselves out of El Palmar and caught the bus an hour up into the mountains to El Valle, a little village set in the crator of an extinct volcano. The air was fresh, the surroundings stunning and the shops full of bargain Panamanian things that Ally just HAD to buy ;)

Books we read: Spycatcher, Peter Wright