Rob Mizrachi and friends visited Alex Livingston in Mariato, Panama on 7 Oct 2001 for a little fishing and a much surfing. Rob's trip report is continued below.....

Rio Negro Main

When the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan October 7, me and a couple friends were a day into a four-day stay at Rio Negro Fishing Lodge. A world away from WW3 couldn't have been a better place to be. The frequent, heavy rains obscured us from reality. (Enough poetry, eh Al?).

In the past five years, Al Livingston and Tom Giles have created comfort out of a couple acres of Azuero Peninsula wilderness. Their two-story lodge, capable of putting up about six people, has an A/C in every room. A guest will find that luxury invaluable after a night of 1000 Africanized sandflies -- a fair characterization of Panama's rainy-season insect problem. As one who grew up in Panama, having hot and cold running water, electricity, and satellite boob-tube out there, way the hell out in the middle of Somewhere, seemed so peculiar and decadent. However, stateside fishermen, take note: when it comes time to hunt, be prepared to get down. Al launches his nameless, hand-made panga on the muddy edge of the Rio Negro. Though he's happy to get womenfolk in the 26-footer with the least amount of trouble, if you're a man, you're expected to behave like one: help the women and don't complain about the earth-slurry on your L.L. Bean footwear. You've got to break eggs to make omelets, right? Well, to land the type and size of fish you see on the website, you've got to rough it a little. There are no marinas, no tackle shops, no souvenir stores for hundreds of miles. The upside: there are nearly as less sportfishermen.  

The days we went out, we pulled in many snappers that averaged 40 pounds. We also got amberjack and roosterfish. I could give a @#$% about fishing; I'm more into the cooking and eating. Four nights in a row, between sips of white rum, me and my buddies cooked and baked behind the long bar on the patio. And -- no b.s. here -- we put out the best-tasting fish I've ever eaten. If the meat had come from the freezer it likely would have been the tastiest ever. After days of activity to the point of exhaustion, we were ravenous. The fact is (and I hope I've buried it deep enough in this piece), I was in Mariato for the surf. Al told me ten years ago about the unridden waves in this part of Panama. I didn't listen closely enough and kept going to Tits and Malibu, making the periodic pilgrimages to Venado and Santa Catalina (what a little fool). The day we got to the lodge, a medium swell was running. We took a short drive and found a beach with five-footers breaking left and right. My eyes fell out of my head: no one out. We got a couple hours of that before sundown.  

The next day, we surfed similarly sized waves on the sandbar of a nearby island (look it up or beg Al to take you). We named it "Grouchy's," for the spot's unpredictable peak (a left? a right?) and predictable wallop. The name also refers to Al's faux-a#$h&^% demeanor; he gave us two minutes to jump off the boat before he headed out a couple miles to get bait. "Are there sharks here?" I half-jokingly asked. "Yeah, but they're mellow sharks," he said with a smirk before turning on the piss 'n' vinegar. "Now go on! I'm leavin'!" (Shark jokes aside, with as many good-eating fish as there are plying these waters, you'd be a mentally retarded shark not to hang out here.) 

The swell died a little the following day. Because we assumed Catalina would be picking up more of it, we put in for gas so Al could take us there. The 17-mile ride took about 40 minutes -- less than we had expected. Once we got there, we found 15 people in the water -- a helluvalot more than we expected, for a Monday morning. It was like the friggin' United Nations out there. "Don't they know World War 3 is going on? With favorable winds and tides coinciding, Catalina reeled off perfect rights and the occasional left, but there weren't enough to go around. The natives had no qualms with stuffing anyone (and who can blame them?). It was a pig pile, everyone waiting at the peak for the next dispatch from the deep. I tired of this soon and didn't hesitate to go meet Al's boat when he returned. An hour later, surfing azure-blue four-footers at Grouchy's, I knew I was where I wanted to be. Though it's not the flawless milling form of 'Liners, it's also not The Scene for an international gallery of chumps.The last day at Mariato, we surfed a "bien pritty, sin huebachun" spot that I refuse to describe in detail. It was a left. It was hollow. It had the biggest sharks I've ever seen. (You think I'm lying? Check it yourself.) We got to it in the early a.m., the sun not quite busting through banks of misty jungle respiration. Forty-yard rides were the average. Beyond that, I'm still speechless for having had the experience (very convenient, because I'd rather not promote it further).