Back in Portobelo

We are back in Portobelo, our fav town in Panama so far, getting ready for the big time - transiting the Panama Canal. We are getting measured in Colón and will be line handling for another boat this week, but until then we have used Portobelo as a base camp for provisioning and for an ever-expanding list of monkey business, i.e. the eerie sound of howler monkeys early in the morning and looking for the Panamanian night monkey (best monkey ever).

We heard about the night monkeys from Mother Jones, some cruiser friends who incidentally came from Texas just like we did. Two years ago, they saw the monkeys chilling in a tree at the fort on the left side of the bay, and they are still there! But this time with a baby night monkey.

These guys look totally alert, but Vlad took a series of photos showing them staring at us intently and then slowly falling asleep small child style. 

Isla Linton: Invasion of the Fruit Bats!

I was sooooo excited to go to Linton, a small island about 15 miles east of Portobelo, mainly because I had heard that here there be monkeys. And not just any monkeys but bad spirited, badly behaved ones! 

Anyhoo, we pulled into the extremely crowded anchorage in Linton, with the nearly 80 (77 to be exact) other boats, and dinghied over to the island. But much to my dismay, there wasn’t a monkey in sight. Nothing. Zip. Nada. We took a little walk around the beach and then, disappointed, we headed to the little town on the mainland where we did manage to see a camel and hear the lonely honking of a peacock (obviously there must be a wildlife sanctuary near town).

The next morning, after an awful, horrendous, rolly night, I woke up and noticed that the bananas in our fruit hammock had become so ripe that one had actually fallen out. Ugh, I thought, no one wants to clean up banana goo first thing in the morning. But I made some coffee and began to tackle to problem. Only, I couldn’t find any mushy banana on the settee. Not a speck. Upon closer examination, the banana peel looked as if it had been ripped and the banana scooped out, the entire thing licked completely smooth. That’s when I woke Vlad up saying “There was a fruit bat on our boat last night!”

He then sleepily described to me how in the middle of the night he had woken up to the sound of fluttering and something brushing past his leg and saw what he thought was a large moth flying around the boat. Whatever the case, he said, it wasn’t a Panamanian, and he went back to sleep. That giant moth was actually a banana-eating fruit bat that had roamed freely in our boat all night. Ever better than badly behaved monkeys!

Green Turtle Cay Marina

Have you ever had one of those moments when someone helped you without any prompting and left you feeling pretty darn relieved? Well, something just like that happened to us when we were anchored outside of Green Turtle Cay Marina. We had just left the San Blas, and the tradewinds and the accompanying six to nine foot seas were blasting. Our plan was to pick up fuel at the marina so that our tanks would be topped up before going through the canal, preferably after spending the night in the anchorage.

Unfortunately, that particular anchorage was not as tranquil as the last time we dropped the hook here on our way to the San Blas. In fact, there were some pretty big rollers coming through, an uncomfortable way to spend an evening for those of you who haven’t experienced the joys of sleeping while bouncing before. But we weren’t too troubled. It’s just one night, and we’d experienced WAY worse.

But then we saw this man who was standing on the marina breakwater with a Rottweiler motioning for us to come inside. This man was Yogi, the manager of Green Turtle and a fixture in this area of Panama after working for years at Isla Elephante in the San Blas. Before we knew it, we were ensconced in a slip and enjoying all the privileges that being attached to land has to offer – mainly the ability to take a walk without having wet, salt-ridden shorts from the dinghy ride.

And we got two nights in the marina sans charge. If you purchase diesel from them, which we did, you get a free night, and if you’re a first-time customer, which we were, you get a free night as well. It was an odd – and pleasant - marina experience, not only to not be overcharged but to not be charged period. The marina is steadily growing, adding amenities like restrooms and showers, as well as haulout facilities. Yogi said that they hope to have the haulout up and running by March, meaning that Shelter Bay, the only marina on this side of Panama with a haulout yard, would finally have some competition. (Currently, Shelter Bay’s prices are so high that we are forgoing a bottom job until we get to someplace more reasonable - like back on planet Earth.) 

We don't stay in marinas often, but we thought we'd give Green Turtle a shout out because of their excellent hospitality. 

Goodnight, Sweetheart. It's Time to Go.

Our last look at the San Blas. Sniff, sniff.

We knew it was time to leave the San Blas Islands when the tip fell off of the speargun somewhere in the waters surrounding Salurdup Island. We spent three and a half months sailing through these islands, meeting some amazing cruisers and Kuna, snorkeling through some of the best reefs I’ve ever seen and just zenning out on the sand, palm trees, repeat blissfulness of it all. However, all good things must come to an end, and when your speargun breaks in the San Blas the end comes more quickly than expected.

Some things that we will miss about the islands:

-       The reefs!

-       The awesomeness that is protected (i.e. behind a reef) tradewind sailing. It’s so good that even I don’t get seasick.

-       The spearfishing.

-       The wonderful people we met. (I’m especially talking to you, Reach, Infinity and Kaya! We are so sorry that we didn’t get to say goodbye.)

-       Giving random Kunas rides to Nargana.

-       Not having to lock up our dinghy or our boat for that matter.

Reasons we are ready to leave:

-       The lack of cheese.

-       Three months without a decent internet connection. It sounds trivial, but it gets old after a while.

-       The inability to take a long walk without going in circles.

-       The fact that the Kunas own all the coconuts. We are really looking forward to being able to pick up a coconut off the beach, break it open and eat it without starting a trade war.

In summation, the San Blas is probably the only place we’ve cruised that we feel ready to leave. Not because we didn’t like it, but because we were finally in one place long enough to see most of what we wanted to see, to get a decent understanding of what the place was like and to come out the other side feeling fulfilled. Plus, it's one of the few spots where when saying goodbye it really makes sense to quote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - "So long and thanks for all the fish."

A Video for Friday

Here's a crocodile along the Rio Diablo for your viewing pleasure.

Visitors: Round Two

To top off our whirlwind of visitors, Vlad's daughter and her boyfriend stayed with us for a week just before Christmas. We took them on the rounds of the San Blas, which if you can't tell is perfect for visitors. Lots of snorkeling, spearfishing, beach exploring and the general relaxing vibe of this island group definitely gives guests plenty to enjoy and was especially nice for Natasha and Adam who had both just slogged through their college finals week.

Not to mention that they got to escape the Texas winter for several days, and Natasha even survived Vlad throwing her out in the dinghy without any instruction on how to work the outboard.

We couldn't ask for better guests. Plus, Adam shot us a squid! Which, of course, was delicious. Thanks for coming to visit us, guys! We miss you.

More Photos from the San Blas

And even more San Blas pictures. Can you see why we wanted to stay?

Spearfishing

A 20-pound snapper Vlad shot on Christmas Eve!

Vlad went spearfishing for the first time a couple of months ago, and he came back a changed man. “It’s like being a mid-level predator,” he said with this exhilarated expression on his face. On land, if you have a gun, you’re pretty much at the predator apex, but in the ocean it’s a different story. You’re slow. You only have one shot. You’re not nearly as good at being underwater as the fish are, and if another fish with sharper teeth wants the fish you’ve speared, well, it gets it.

I don’t find being a mid-level predator particularly appealing, but Vlad loves it. Now, he wants to go spearfishing every day, which is an odd obsession for someone who doesn’t even like eating fish. He will spend hours out fishing with some of the cruisers we’ve met, who we’ve dubbed “the killers” because they go cruise the outer reef with giant fins, are able to hold their breaths for 3 or 4 minutes, dive down to forty feet nonchalantly looking in caves and are only satisfied if they land a fifty-pound grouper. 

So far, Vlad has shot us a smorgasbord of squid and fish, including the awesome snapper (a special thanks to the crew on Infinity for all the good Christmas fish wishes), and I’ve even given it a shot, popping a lion fish, though it escaped into a hole. By the way, lionfish are an excellent spearfishing practice, if you can get past the whole poisonous spine thing. They are an invasive species that kills the reef, and they have no natural predators in the Caribbean. They stay still, making them easy targets, and they taste pretty darn good too.

Here's a post on the triggerfish - one of our favs - from Controlled Jibe. They say that the Mexican's call the trigger conchito, or "little pig," which is funny because our cruiser friends in the San Blas call it "pork of the sea."

When Brothers Come to Town

My brother, David, with some Kuna kiddos

Our brothers came to visit us for ten days, and, yes, they brought ten cases of beer! (None for Vlad's brother Todd, though, who was a professional cyclist and does not imbibe.) We bounced around from one anchorage to another, delivered school supplies and photos from my mom to Isla Tigre, gave a Kuna family a ride, saw a MASSIVE crocodile on the river and did a lot of lounging around in hammocks.

Case in point.

We even saw a Kuna wedding, which consisted of a bunch of guys tossing the groom in a hammock and then picking up the bride and placing her in the hammock. She keeps getting out of the hammock until the fourth time they put her in when she stays. Then everyone cries. I have to admit, I also got a little misty. Sorry once again, no pictures.

 We had an amazing time with the bros, even my little brother Aleks who suffered from an impressive sunburn (gingers weren't made for tropical climates, Al). We miss them mucho! Despite the fact that they left us with three cans of Spam.

To Panama City and Back Again

It's an incongruent feeling to wake up in the morning and take a ten-mile ride over choppy seas in a dugout canoe and then be in a place like the above photo by 2:00 p.m. Literally, I had not seen a large building since Cancun, and Panama City is chocked full of them, a metropolis of astounding proportions when the most people you've seen recently was watching the school band practice on Nargana.

As I've mentioned previously, staying in the San Blas meant that we would have to take a trip back to somewhere with a grocery store, and after weighing our options we decided that Panama City made the most sense. And I have to say the whole experience was pretty darn fun. We got the aforementioned dugout canoe ride, then an awesome jeep ride through the rainforest on washed out roads with a driver who, while slow and cautious, also listened to a strange mix of soft rock that made me reminiscent of awkward middle school dances (Bryan Adams??? On a jungle jeep ride???). And then we were dropped off in the middle of downtown Panama City somewhere near the place we were staying, a cruisers hostel of sorts, but with no real idea of how to get there because one of Panama City's planners forgot to add street addresses and no one has ever bothered to correct the problem.

But we had yet another secret weapon. Roger. My little brother described Roger as the guy who makes the entire city of Panama run, and I think I have to second that motion. We hired him at $10 bucks an hour, and he took to get our crew visas sorted out. (A moment for bureaucracy: when entering Panama, you get a 6-month visa. Then you have to leave the country for 72 hours. Cruising permits, however, last for one year, and cruisers are able to tie their visas to their boats. Last year, the price for this was $10. This year, it is $105. It was the cheaper than us going to Costa Rica, but still.) He then took us to a marine store and drove us to PriceSmart - the Central American version of Costco - where we restocked on everything and bought cheese, glorious cheese!

We popped into some other grocery stores and then as quickly as it started, our trip to the big city was over. We reversed the process - jeep ride at 4:00 a.m. and the same dugout canoe laden with all of our stuff and finally back to our boat, which some great cruiser friends watched for us while we were gone.

In case anyone is curious, Roger's phone number is 507-6717-6745. The cruisers hostel we stayed at was very nice, cheap and centrally located. Plus, it had a deep freeze and a huge fridge, which is really helpful if you're provisioning. The person who runs it is Deborah, and her number is 507-6153-2089.

Staying in the San Blas

All in all, it’s not a bad place to stick around. There are so many different spots to see within an hour’s sail, and every new island is a surprise. Our latest favorite anchorage is in the Central Holandes right above Miriadiadup. To the north of us is a vast shallow lagoon protected by reef and to the south lies the prettiest island I’ve seen yet in the San Blas, covered in palm trees and ringed by a sandy path with perfect ocean views. Three Kuna families live on it, keeping it well maintained, and they sell some pretty darn nice molas, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The massive surrounding reef system provides fantastic snorkeling and spearfishing, and there are a ton of other islands nearby to take a walk on. And, no, I’m not on the Kuna Yala tourism board. But I should be!

Happy New Year!

We wish everyone a wonderful new year!