Mike & Gail's Travels: FIRST WEEK IN PANAMA - THE BEACHES ALONG THE SOUTH EAST COAST

Flew into Panama on wednesday April 1, picked up a car at the airport and then proceeded to get lost in rush hour traffic trying to find our hotel for the first night - what should have taken half an hour or so, landed taking nearly 4 hours! Thursday is a public holiday here and it seemed like the whole of panama city was leaving for the easter weekend. We eventually got to our hotel and had a really nice evening at the Bilbao yacht club - a really laid back, open air bar & restaurant on the edge of the canal.
The following morning, it was another 4 hour trip crawling along with the easter weekend traffic - should have taken us an hour to get to our self-catering unit in playa corona, where I'm writing this from. It's okay - no view and you can hear the pan-am highway all the time, but there's a nice beach down the road and Coronado, which has almost everything you need is about a 10 minute drive away.

Playa Corona - the beach down the road from us

On friday, we drove to playa (spanish for beach) farallon and playa santa clara about 20 mins down the highway. Both Gail and I love this little beach town - only 1 or 2 small shops, but the properties are wonderful - the most amazing trees growing on most of them and beach access is close by. There's a great little restaurant on the beach which has small cabanas for rent - we'll definitely go back here towards the end of our stay in Panama.