Where to Spend the Apocalypse: Sunset Coast of the Azuero Peninsula

While the rest of the world was going crazy about the coronavirus, Bob and I were walking along deserted beaches, resting in hammocks, and taking in beautiful scenery and sunsets. The west, or Sunset Coast, of the Azuero Peninsula in Panama is not a populated place even when the world isn’t going crazy. Without tourism, it’s nigh-on empty. So, we kicked back with our cervezas, read the news out of the United States, and determined that if this really was the end of the world as we know it, we’d found a good place to ride it out.

Getting to the coast, though, is not easy. From Santiago, a big, cross-roads, farming town that’s a few hours outside of Panama City, the highway goes south. We needed to drive 72 km (44.7 miles) to our hotel, and it took over two hours. The road is truly the worst road we have ever driven. (The road to San Blas, http://heathers6wadventures.com/having-a-blast-in-san-blas/, doesn’t count because we didn’t drive that one—we had a driver—and because that road is really part of the “San Blas experience.”) The Sunset Coast road is full of huge potholes, short sections of broken asphalt, and then really, really huge potholes that can’t be avoided no matter what the size of the vehicle’s track. Towns along the way are small. Signs are old and faded or non-existent. Google Maps needs some serious work in Panama, but it’s hard to get lost since there’s only one road. We did, just after sunset, make it to our hotel, El Sol, which calls itself a surfer hotel but is much more than that (https://www.facebook.com/hotelecoelsol/).

The hotel consists of three areas, a big building built on top of the hill with the common area/restaurant and some rooms, a palm-leaf covered cabana at the pool, and the building with the rest of the guest rooms, all hung with hammocks and with fantastic views down the steep hillside to the ocean. It’s nicely decorated in Caribbean colors and driftwood furniture, comfortable and spacious. Toucans, monkeys, and other exotic creatures visit from time to time, and the resident dogs and geese are great fun.

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Our host and hotel owner is Michael Roberts, one of those “citizens of the world” who found his happy spot away from everyone else on this isolated yet stunning beautiful coastline with fabulous sunsets. Michael’s mother is Malaysian and his father British. He grew up speaking Chinese and then was thrown into an English Roman Catholic school to sink or swim. He did swim, literally, and he and Bob had some good conversations about competitive swimming, often as they worked together to get the hotel pool into tip-top shape. Michael eventually became an engineer and worked in the telecom industry, traveling all over the world and eating great food.

As a result, his passion is cooking, and he’s very good at it! He really has the hotel to support his restaurant, which, even in the middle of nowhere, does a pretty steady business with visitors and local expats. If you are in the area, even if you aren’t staying at El Sol, you really must eat there. One night, Bob had duck and I had a homemade ramen noodles with exotic mushrooms. It was like having our own personal chef for an excellent meal. Michael is into food science and understanding how ingredients and flavors go together. He experiments and teaches and makes great stuff along the way.

Another excellent spot for a meal is the Morrillo Beach Eco Resort, run by Ryan and Cari Mackey (https://www.morrillobeachresort.com/). They are a really neat couple, originally from Colorado, who have a beautiful place that includes surfing and sea kayaking among the fun things to do. After meeting two of their guests on the beach one day, we on-purposely stumbled upon their place, had a home-brewed beer, and a delicious meal. It was a delightful time with delightful people.

We also had a great meal with Katy and Scott at Taco Tuesday in the small community of Torio. All the expats in the area, and they include Germans, Columbians, Dutch, Americans, and others, seem to show up to enjoy tacos, buy locally grown produce, drink a cocktail, and visit. The tacos, beef or vegetarian, were good, and it was fun to see this slice of life among the locals.

We also took an excursion to the end of the road to near the end of the peninsula. On the way, we stopped by Los Islotas (https://www.losislotes.com/), a development we’ve been reading about through Live and Invest Overseas (https://www.liveandinvestoverseas.com/) for years and thought we’d check out “while we were in the neighborhood.” It’s gorgeous, a series of hills overlooking two beaches (one surfer, one swimming), with a jungle and an estuary on the property. Many lots with beautiful views are still for sale. Infrastructure, from underground electricity to good roads to a good water system and, eventually, a wastewater treatment system (you know that’s important to my husband, the water engineer), are all being worked on. Peg, the sales consultant for the property, is a wonderful host, and we enjoyed seeing everything. It’s far from anywhere, but we’ll see how it develops. The Sunset Coast may be what Northern California was prior to World War II, beautiful, unsettled, and ripe for development. It may also just stay one of those wild, untamed places in Panama. It remains on our list of possibilities for the future.

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As for other activities along the Sunset Coast, surfing is the main thing. The tidal surge is about 18 feet, and some of the beaches have huge waves and rip tides. Kayaking through the mangroves, learning about sea turtles, and hiking in the wildly undeveloped Cerro Hoya National Park are all also available. (We were told if you go into the park, which has no roads or trails, without a guide that you don’t come out! Even to see great green macaws I wasn’t willing to risk that.) We didn’t get to do any of these activities because of weird timing issues. That, and more meals with Michael and Cari, are why we have to go back.

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To get back, though, we have to take that road. We were told multiple times that it is going to be fixed—soon. The road has, in fact, been surveyed for repairs and repaving. However, in Panama, road building and fixing usually means many delays and many greased palms. We’ll see how long it actually takes.

As for spending the end of the world on the Sunset Coast, which is kind of the end of the world? The area is easily self-sustaining. Fish, rice, beef, and corn are abundant. Fresh water is easy to find. Even the mini-super—what convenience stores are called in Panama—at the very end of the road had toilet paper. We think we could make it.