The conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa, questing for gold in what would become Panama, once fed forty natives to his dogs. He later had his head lopped off by a political rival, but not before becoming the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the New World. For his bloodthirsty blend of greed, cunning and leadership, he is memorialized in Panama’s statues, currency, and even on cans of Balboa Premium Lager, served ice cold in buckets.
Five hundred years later, my own arrival at the Pacific was a touch less epic. Playa Gorgona is a long ribbon of black volcanic sand bleeding into the warm gray-green water. I strolled along the beach in the noontime heat, little diamond glints of sun in the grains, dull crash of foamy waves, just a few locals out. Stolid wooden barcos were returning with the day’s catch, the pescaderos heaving out plastic crates full of fish and prawns. Bare feet pressing into the sand, arms straining, they muscled their way up the beach, trailing the haul’s fresh sea-stink.
I walked on past an an outcrop of volcanic rock. The only excitement on Playa Punto Barco and Coronado was a cormorant struggling to chug a small mullet. A Tuesday, out-of-season, leaves the beachfront with more mansions, condos and hotels than people. I turned inland.
Coronado is a gated community for Panama’s wealthy and for winter-fleeing tourists. It would be inaccurate to say it was deserted. There were plenty of people working there, building new five-star resorts or tending to the golf course. Sweat and sunblock dripping freely, I trudged past the manicured, flower-garlanded haciendas – some pretty, some ostentatious – and headed for the white concrete 1980s Penthouse Coronado Bay. I gringoed past the guardhouse as if I belonged there, walked by the tennis courts, around the courtyard pool. I rested on the steps overlooking the ocean, gulping bottled energy drink, and wondered what it was about a sea shore that people find irresistible; having arrived? Or what was over the horizon?
