Farewell Pedasi – Next Time, We’ll Bring a Car!
Our month-long stay in Pedasi, Panama is officially over. And to be honest, we are looking forward to moving on.
It isn’t that Pedasi was a bad place!
The locals and expats were lovely. Among the nicest people we have encountered in Latin America.
The restaurants and grocery options were fine. Although we had to change our buying habits and our pricing expectations.
Pedasi was super safe. Honestly, no worries about crime at all! Going out on long late-night beach hikes was part of our regular routine and we had not even a whiff of danger.
Pedasi had all the day-to-day things you need to live life. Really, there was no need to go shopping elsewhere.
The beaches were beautiful and fun to visit. Aside from the tidal trash that sometimes washes up on shore from Panama City, they were lovely. And we really enjoyed finding new (to us) marine wildlife!
So What Was The Problem?
One problem was transportation.
It was surprisingly hard to access the areas around Pedasi to explore!
Yes, there was public transportation.
But the well-publicized bus routes only took you to places where there were more shopping opportunities, as opposed to doing more outdoor exploration or seeing cultural things.
That, and the bus back to Pedasi (from Las Tablas) stops running at around 5 pm, which really limited the things we could do in other towns at night.
And taxis were expensive relative to every other country we have visited in Latin America.
Granted this was primarily due to the distances between areas of interest, but paying $25 USD for a one-way trip to the next closest town lacks appeal. And that assumes you can find a ride back!
A second problem was the oppressive heat.
Of course, Panama is hot. No kidding.
We knew this before we came. That said, it was unseasonably warm, even for Pedasi.
But what we didn’t anticipate was the lack of places to shelter from the heat and sun if you went out during the day.
Remember, we did everything on foot or with limited public transportation.
If we weren’t completely prepared, our local 7-mile beach hike loop could quickly devolve into a heat stroke, sunburn, and dehydration death march.
There are zero amenities of any kind on the Pedasi beaches.
And we would even start at 8 am to escape the worst heat of the day! Speaking for myself, I would always come back from these hikes a few pounds lighter from water loss.
I’m sure my kidneys were less than pleased.
The big exception to the inescapable heat and sun problem was our beach trips to the Playa Venao area, where shade and amenities were within easy reach.
Total bliss!
So What Would Have Been The Solution?
Honestly, renting a car for 1 month.
Not only would we have solved our transportation woes, but we would have been better able to protect ourselves from dangerous heat situations.
But sadly, renting a car would have been a budget buster (and potential liability minefield) that we were simply not willing to absorb.
Pedasi is walkable, and there are expats that live here who don’t own a car.
But generally, these same people pretty much stay in their houses all day and don’t engage in outdoor activities we prefer to do.
We became somewhat famous around town as the foreign couple who walked everywhere! Apparently, that is not normal expat behavior.
Now that we spent a month in Pedasi, we see how having a car opens up all sorts of opportunities for living the good life on the Azuero Peninsula.
But if you don’t have one, you better enjoy laying low and reading!
But sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, no matter how much research you put into learning about a place in advance.
We wanted to experience the slow beach life…we certainly got it.
Lesson learned.
So Are We Anti-Beach People?
Sort of, but not really.
Our month-long beach stays in Pedasi and Taganga, Colombia have certainly taught us a few things about what we like and don’t like about beach life.
Our happiness seems to all come down to whether or not we have easy access to shade, hydration, and fun things to do that won’t give us heat stroke, or skin cancer, or bust our budget.
We’ll test this theory when we arrive in Bocas del Toro, Panama in a couple of months. We’ll be living in a coastal jungle with ocean access to snorkeling, kayaking, swimming, and shade about 100 feet from our Airbnb!
That should be an interesting comparison.
Farewell Pedasi
When this post drops, we will be playing public transportation hopscotch to our next destination – Boquete, Panama!
Boquete is up in the cool mountains of northern Panama, so the contrast with Pedasi should be stark.
To be honest, we are really looking forward to cooler temperatures.
There are no less than 4 (!) bus transfers we will need to make to reach Boquete. But each bus route has MANY departures each day, so even if we just miss one of our transfer buses, the next one should leave within 30 minutes.
So the word of the day is “tranquilo“.
Despite the hectic bus schedule, we will absolutely get to Boquete in one piece.
We just need to be patient and let things happen.
Sage advice for anyone traveling in Latin America!
Until next time…
Thanks for reading!
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