BLACKBOOK ISLAND IDYLL All guest casitas at Islas Secas are on Isla Cavada, the only developed island in the archipelago small main lodge hides a kitchen and showcases a handsomely appointed bar and library. Nine guest casitas facing the undeveloped mainland house a maximum of 18 guests. High season corresponds with a rainless spell known in Panama as “summer” even though it occurs in astronomical winter. Each casita has a modest air-conditioner (solar-powered, as is the entire property) but also louvred walls that capitalise on the natural cooling effects of air in motion. Guest buildings are outfitted with finely honed tropical hardwoods, copper gutters and excellent sheets. After unpacking my bags, I walked down a crunchy path to the main lodge for lunch. The open-air palapa where most meals are served was built on the scale of a parish church and overlooked a secluded beach and a pretty bay flanked by centurion islets. But what caught my eye was the beach itself: dirty blond rather than luminous gold, and intruded upon at both ends by thuggish mangroves that trapped muck and leaves among their roots. Instead of sterile sand for Bain de Soleil tourists, here was undisturbed habitat: the triumph of mangroves over mai tais. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to explore the island. A black seabird, attenuated and sharp like flung scissors, sliced past the boat. As I followed it with my eyes, I caught Rob watching me, watching it. “It’s a frigate bird,” he said. “The magnificent frigate, Fregata magnificens.” The epithet suited. With a wingspan of 2.5m, its silhouette evoked the elegant menace of a black-sailed pirate ship. And yet mariners once hoped to spot the magnificent birds because they brought the promise of land. The one Rob and I watched swiftly disappear (its red throat indicated a mature male) probably belonged to the noisy nesting colony on Isla Coco. When we visited the colony after lunch the first day, it proved to be – oddly, for someone who takes only a passing interest in birds – a highlight of my trip. Something about the teeming numbers was awesome to see: the fecundity of nature uninterrupted. On another afternoon, during an hour-long boat ride to Coiba Island National Park, a Unesco World Heritage site, we seemed to be travelling a sea turtle highway, so often did we see their armoured shells, like porcelain figurines cast at heroic size, bob to the surface. One morning at dawn I walked to the north end of Isla Cavada to see the Bufadora, a “blowhole” on the rocky coast that spews mist as waves roll in. Fleet iguanas raced away, scattering dried leaves with the racket of a New Year’s Eve noisemaker. Past the Bufadora, Canales Beach emerged at low tide as a spit of sand connected to a jungle-like islet where, in 1961, Smithsonian archaeologists surveyed an ancient ceremonial complex. (Other unexcavated sites dot Isla Cavada; in the wet season, stone axes and clay pots wash down the creeks.) Nearly every sheltered beach crawled with uncountable hermit crabs that minced and cowered along the sand. Underwater, coral reefs shimmered and flashed with shoals of fish. In fact, Panama means “fish aplenty”, explained angling guru and Outdoor Channel TV star Carter Andrews, director of the Islas Secas fishing programme. “This is one of the fishing destinations in the world,” he told me over a predinner snack in the bar. “Our inshore fishing has cubera snapper, grouper, big roosterfish. PHOTOS IAN ALLEN 28 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
From left: at Islas Secas, guests can visit untouched coves and beaches, like Canales; the simple but richly appointed casitas are solar-powered Offshore there’s the Hannibal Bank, legendary water. Hemingway fished here.” Another guest at the bar overheard us. “The writer Hemingway?” she asked. “Was Hemingway a fisher?” Carter squinted. “Was Hemingway a writer?” he said, holding the woman’s eyes until she realised he was teasing her. “He was a fisherman before he was a writer.” Carter returned to his theme: what sets Islas Secas apart is the marine diversity and the proximity to big-game fisheries at Coiba, Montuosa and Hannibal Bank. “Nobody else has the access we have to those pristine places,” he added. “That’s what makes this unique.” Panama has long been a point of convergence and a place of transport. There’s the canal, of course, and before that was the overland passage of export goods, from New World silver bound for Spain to brimmed straw hats woven in Ecuador and mistakenly named for their point of passage. Ecologically, the 2.8-million-year-old isthmus forms both a recent barrier between two oceans and an active bridge between two continents, making it epically bio diverse. From the marine perspective, the Gulf of Chiriquí draws migratory humpback whales from two hemispheres. “It’s the only place in the world where both the southern and the northern hemisphere population come,” explained Daniel Palacios, a marine biologist at Oregon State University, whose whale research with Kristin Rasmussen, president of the US branch of Panacetacea, is supported by the privately funded Islas Secas Foundation. “In August there are so many whales it’s unbelievable.” Dinner on my last night was a cookout at the casitas. Chef Katie Thurgood kept sending out platters of taro chips alongside poke made with local fish. The mood was full and light, like the shared happiness after your team wins. Kristin and Daniel had spent the afternoon using underwater microphones to track a male humpback as it sang. I had been out with Rob and Jairo to snorkel among eagle rays and whitetip reef sharks. In our various ways, we all had felt the thrill of being a human interloper in a wild environment grandly indifferent to our presence. “I was just telling Kristin that we should lobby for a Unesco designation for this place,” said Daniel with a glance at the surrounding Gulf of Chiriquí. “We’ve been to a lot of places, but not many that are so pristine,” she added. At that moment, a common black hawk, Buteogallus anthracinus, dropped down and perched on a post across the grass, as austere and imperious as a Habsburg prince. It was a reminder that we were intruders in its demesne. We froze with admiration. Then Daniel realised what had drawn it in. “Hey!” he shouted at the hawk, as I caught on to its cunning. “Get away from the poke!” Islas Secas opens in January; islassecas.com CONTACT CENTURION SERVICE FOR BOOKINGS CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 29
