Day 6 - 2/13/2026 - Isla Parida
- sridgway38
- Feb 13
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 16
Today we are anchored off of Isla Parida. Isla Parida is the largest island within Panama's Gulf of Chiriquí National Marine Park, offering a protected, tropical destination known for pristine white-sand beaches, lush jungles, and diverse wildlife. It is located in the Pacific Ocean. It's made up of 25 mostly uninhabited islands.
We took an excursion called Dolphin and Monkey Watch. Our excursion boat picked us up right from the ship and we headed out to do a hike on one of the islands looking for monkeys. We passed a small island that the called Window Island for obvious reasons
Next we headed to the island where the Monkeys would be seen, it was called Angry Mouth island. These islands are inside of a protected Marine park but some of them are also privately owned or inhabited since before the park was created in 1994.
When we got to Angry Mouth island we disembarked the boat and climbed up a short crude trail to a set of trees where a few howler monkeys were barely visible, and then the monkey part of the excursion was over and we boarded the boats again. It was a bit anti-climatic after all of the monkeys that we saw in Lake Gatun.
Back on the boat we then drove around looking for Dolphins, we did see a few that were occasionally coming out of the water, but nothing we haven't seen from the Avalon beach.
After about 40 minutes we headed to the largest island, Isla Parida where we were dropped off. THe staff of the Windstar had set up a huge beach BBQ for all of the guests. We sat on lounge chairs that they had set up on the beach while they cooked burgers and hot dogs and all kinds of salads and sides. They also had a full bar set up with Zodiac's providing shuttles to and from the ship which was anchored nearby.
The marine sports team was also on the beach. One of the unique things that they have on Windstar boats is a marine park that can be set up off them back of the ship when the ship is anchored in warm calm water. There ar kayaks and stand up paddle boards as well as places to lounge and swim. They had brought those things to the beach for our BBQ so we took a Kayak out for a short ride. We also had a swim and had some lunch. After lunch we decided to head back to the ship. We took a zodiac and the staff really struggled to get us back on the ship from the zodiac because of the swells. Unlike the National Geographic crew in Antartica, this crew didn't seem to be as experienced at zodiac landings. Just as Conrad and I stepped off the Zodiac and safely onto the ship, a swell deluged the zodiac which was tied to the ship and two guests were very close to falling between the Zodiac and the ship. The zodiac was filled about half way with water and luckily they were able to get it untied from the ship and then get everyone onboard safely after getting the water out. We later heard that a guest on the beach who was near a Zodiac suffered a compound leg fracture after the zodiac was pushed into him as he stood on the beach.
We had dinner and spent some time on our beautiful wrap around balcony watching the stars. We really enjoyed the balcony while it was in the shade and after dark. It was one of 2 rooms with a balcony on the whole ship and we loved it.
Tomorrow we will go to a sloth farm.