Santa Catalina

Santa Catalina has resisted becoming anything more than what it is, and I mean that as the highest compliment I can pay a surf town. The main road is unpaved for most of its length, the electricity has only been reliable for about two decades, and the entire settlement seems to organize itself around a single fact: the point break at the end of the road is world-class, a long, punchy right that has been drawing serious surfers here since the 1980s without ever quite tipping the town into the kind of development that ruins a place like this.

I don’t surf well, which I discovered publicly and at length on my first morning out. The wave is faster and more powerful than it looks from the beach, breaking over a rocky reef that punishes hesitation. I spent most of that session getting worked and swallowing seawater while actual surfers around me carved lines that looked choreographed. But the failure didn’t sour the experience — watching from the point afterward, beer in hand, as the evening session filled with local kids who’d clearly been riding this wave since before they could walk, was its own kind of pleasure.

The other reason to come is the boat launch at the edge of town, which is the main gateway to Coiba National Park, ninety minutes offshore. We left before six one morning, the water still flat and pewter-colored, and the town’s fishing fleet was already out ahead of us, small wooden pangas silhouetted against the sunrise. Santa Catalina runs on this rhythm — surfers up early for the dawn session, fishermen out earlier still, dive boats loading gear on the same stretch of sand.

When to go: April through October brings the biggest, most consistent swell for experienced surfers. December through March is calmer and gentler, better suited to beginners and to those of us who mostly want the boat to Coiba.