So, we recently anchored at Mogo Mogo, a popular island destination in the northern part of Panama's Las Perlas islands. Apparently one of Mogo Mogo's claims to fame is that one of the "Survivor" TV series was filmed here. We never saw the reality show itself, but the ads for it gave us the impression that it was filmed in some sort of remote location where the show's participants faced some level of risk or something. Having now been to Mogo Mogo, and having passed by another "Survivor" filming location (San Juan del Sur) when we were in Nicaragua, we have this to say about the TV franchise:
Haaaaaa.
Yeah, these filming locations are so gosh-darn remote, once you're voted off the island it's a 30-minute power boat ride to the nearest resort hotel. From Mogo Mogo, for example, you ride a power boat to the nearest martini air-conditioned villa 3 miles away, and from there it's a mere 20-minute flight to Panama City, population 3 million. Oh the deprivation these Survivors face.
Put another way: we two pink, chubby, middle-aged, dipsomaniac cruisers made it to Mogo Mogo...so how tough can it be? It would be, like, filming "Survivor: Pacific Northwest" on Orcas Island. Or "Survivor: Sonoran Desert" in Old Tucson.
The "Survivor" camera operators on MogoMogo must have had to work really hard to make sure they didn't get the city skylines, seaside mansions, condos, fancy yachts and surfer dudes in any of their "remote desert island" shots. There must have been a bunch of behind-the-scenes workers who spent hours before every "remote desert island beach" shot, picking up all the plastic garbage that washes ashore with every tide. See, the entire Gulf of Panama is one big ocean gyre - there is more floating plastic garbage that accumulates on all the shorelines here, than we have seen anywhere else in Latin America - and that's saying a lot. The only way to have made the beaches at Mogo Mogo look pristine for the camera would have been to scoop up all the oil cans, flip-flops, garbage bags and syringes with a backhoe.
Or, to take low-angle photos like this one, of the patterns the outgoing tide leaves in the sand.
Plastic trash aside, the anchorage at Mogo Mogo is scenic and there are plenty of beaches to explore, iguanas to surprise, and a few seashells to collect. In early January the water temperature was still quite cool which would have made snorkeling very pleasant had it not been for the strong current that was jetting through the anchorage. The spring tides brought all manner of heavy flotsam and jetsam our way, including not just plastic bits but 12-foot tree limbs and large sections of tree trunks. When a 2-1/2-foot-diameter, 5-foot long log struck The Fox's bow at 3 knots as we lay at anchor, we decided to give up on Mogo Mogo. Yep: we voted ourselves off the island.
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