Bona & Otoque Islands, Bay of Panama

After a calm night of navigation, we woke up inside the Gulf of Panama, several brown boobies decided to fly close to the Sea Voyager, displaying amazing flying skills and providing great opportunities for keen observation.

By mid morning, we reached Otoque, Bona and Estiva Islands under a beautiful blue sky. These islands are only 25 miles off of the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal and offer a fantastic chance for marine bird watching. The tall ledges of the rocky islets provide a perfect nesting site for brown and blue-footed boobies, and the tall trees host nests for magnificent frigatebirds and brown pelicans. We launched our Zodiacs for closer exploration of the islands and were able to get detailed views of thousands of seabirds living in this ecosystem.

We returned to the Sea Voyager for lunch and navigated towards the Bay of Panama, which provided a very impressive sky line. The colossal bridge of the Americas guards, at the southern entrance of the Panama Canal, was where we began our crossing. Overhead were the multicolor shades of our last sunset in the Pacific.