Peninsular de Azuero - diving and tradition

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From Bocas del Toro I headed to the Peninsular de Azuero on 23rd May, a more remote part of Panama although not as untouristy as the guidebooks would leave you to believe. I reached the main town of Chitre to encounter Payless Shoe Source and everyone practicing their english on me.

Beautiful local churches revealed out-of-tune singers practising for sunday services, wood and gold, enormous statues of saints, the Virgen and depictions of bloody suffering, not to mention one which contained the most effeminate camera crew ever filming a television programme locally - quite a contrast! Visited Los Santos where Panama signed its independence from Spain in 1821 and the men there still wore the traditional upturned brimmed hats. However, there wasn´t a huge amount of evidence of the traditional dress the region is supposed to be famous for... a sort of flouncy lace bollero dress with a pearl headdress.

Discovered the beautiful Pacific beach town of Santa Catalina, consisting of two roads, a dive shop and several restaurants. Known for its surfing, it also has incredible diving, and is one of the best places to get to Isla de Coiba, said to be another Galapagos because there is so much land and marine life as it was previously a prison colony island. I didn´t make it to the island as no-one else wanted to spend the money to get there but I had the most INCREDIBLE two dives offshore. There were fish EVERYWHERE - snapper, shoals of every kind of fish, a nurse shark as we started, lots of moray eels, life all over. We had our surface interval seated on a black sand beach and travelled back by a shoreline almost entirely unpopulated... long may it stay that way.

I also had the most idyllic hut on the beach to stay in, shared with the crabs and a lovely Panamanian host family. I would go to their house and eat breakfast watching the green lorikeets pecking at mango stones in front of me. The weather was glorious, balmy temperatures and

The people of Panama are lovely though - always issuing a greeting when they get on the minibuses, going out of their way to show you something. I had a great trip back to David on a coach where I sat on the step at the front since there was no room inside. The driver gave me a complete run down of traditional Panamanian food as I said I was struggling to find anything other than Chow Mein noodles. He even stopped the bus twice for me - to get cashew nuts from the indigenas selling at the side of the road and to grab a local fruit from a tree to show me.

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