Pedasi

Hi guys. As promised here is the second post of the week! Currently writing this in the Atlanta airport on the way back to Boston. There's a part of me that is very sad and confused to leave, but I also am really looking forward to being home (at least for a few days...) seeing my noodle-dog and my parents and friends again.

Without any ado - this post is about A.A and my trip to Pedasi, which is a small fishing town about 5 hours from Panama City. We decided to travel here primarily as a scouting-mission, the intention being that in the future this would be a good place for us to study whale behavior as well as survey whale-watching tourists. Pedasi is closer to the western shores of the country, where the islands of Coiba are located, which is still a relatively undisturbed part of the country (due to its remote location). In other words, the whale watching/tourism industry are still in their relatively nascent stages and Coiba could potentially represent the "control" part of our study; where we could examine whales in non-stressful environments where they are not being heavily bothered by tourists. This is disregarding for the moment the fact that the same population of whales travels to both locations throughout the breeding season, so we have no way of knowing if a sampled "control" whale has not already experienced stress from whale watching boats in the Las Perlas region...but that's a challenge for future-me..

It was fun for A.A and I to get a chance to travel to a new part of the country and take a little break from the stress of trying to collect social surveys. Pedasi has a rumor of being a "surfer" town, so we anticipated that things would be fairly laid back. We arranged to stay in a cute hotel that was run by a couple of Canadians. They had moved here a few years ago and fallen in love with the country and decided to start their own business.

Welcome to Pedasi!

Mostly just peaceful small town life

View of Hotel Lajagua 

My office for the weekend  😎

Not the worst view 

After settling into our beautiful little hotel room, we asked the hosts about activities to do. They told us they could arrange for a whale watch the following day with one of the local fishermen. They would also provide us with a cooler with lunch, beach chairs, snorkel equipment and an umbrella. The beach visit would take place on the nearby Isla Iguana, after we had spent time looking for las ballenas. 🐳 Everyone told us that this time of years the whales were extremely active and guaranteed that we would see them. In addition, there was also a major three-day fishing tournament going on (that the hosts were participating in), so there was bound to be a lot of activity down by the beach.

At 10AM the next day, the host drove us down to the beach where she located one of the fishermen to take us out on his boat for the day. It seems like in every place there is a different technique used to get the boats into the water. This method I dubbed the "why pull when you can use a car..."

After about 20 minutes of standing around like helpless fools while the men got the boat loaded, we finally headed off. The locals weren't kidding - we did get to see lots of whales. And even cooler, we finally got to witness breaching! (For those readers who are unfamiliar with whale behavior, breaching is when the whales jump out of the water, usually backwards. It is one of the most exciting (and often rare) behaviors  to witness, as most adults only do it infrequently. When there are babies and youngsters around you will see if more often. The exact reason for breaching is unclear and still being questioned by scientists. Some people argue that it just an expression of joy for the whales, hence why the young ones do it more often when they are playing). 

Apologies about the icky dark gray color of the photos. Unfortunately we did not consult the weather almanac when we decided to book our trip as the whole weekend was VERY WET. By the time we got to the beach on Isla Iguana for the snorkle portion of the excursion, the rain was fully coming down. We decided that rain or not we wanted to head out to see the reef surrounding the island (and hey, we were going to be wet anyway!) However, we had to wait a couple of hours for the tide to come in enough to cover the top of the reef and we were thankful for the big beach umbrella as we were able to keep our things relatively dry.

A.A and I got to experience two of the great local restaurants, including an amazing place called Bohemia which makes some pretty spectacular pizza. I'm no pizza connoisseur, but I would highly recommend this joint to anyone who visits Pedasi. 

We got to see a bit of the fishing competition as well. I only got a single photo of one of the competitors as there were always a huge crowd of people trying to get photos each time there was a weighing.

Impressive weights! 

Pictures of the contenders. Featuring a random pretty girl they kept bringing up to
pose with the fishermen and the fish. I kept wondering what she thought of having
to pose next to all the dead fish....

That pretty much sums up the weekend. Getting to and from Pedasi was relatively simple, but also draining. We had to take a four hour bus ride from Panama City to a town called Las Tablas. We then got a nice taxi driver who took us across the town to the "other" bus station, where we caught another smaller shuttle bus about 45 minutes away to Pedasi. Most of the other passengers were locals who knew the bus driver so he drove all over the town dropping them off at their homes and other locations. The whole thing only costs about $12/way so it is definitely an affordable way to travel, if you can navigate the different buses and routes.

Next time: updates on the visit from the rest of my research team and academic advisor, plus more exciting whale sightings!

Peace, love and big fish 🐟