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January 18, 2010
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The following morning we called Flomenco Station, all transit in the canal area requires approval, requested our departure clearance and set off for the Las Perlas Islands once again. We had always put out a fishing pole while making the transit, as our cruise speed and trolling speed are pretty close to the same, 8 knots. We had only caught a few small tuna on our previous transits and I was looking for something different. I had stopped in at Abernathy’s, a local chandlery, and asked about a Dorado lure, they set me up with a couple and I was eager to try my luck. As we exited the controlled area, I put Linda on the helm and got out my pole and new Dorado lure with eager anticipation.
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I was quit surprised to get a strike within the first 5 minutes, in fact, I hadn’t even a chance to get settled in when this nice Dorado decided to become part of our meal plan. Unfortunately room in the freezer was at a premium, so I had to quit fishing after only a few minutes with only this one catch. I’m sure my new lure will keep us in fresh fish as we continue to travel.
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We opted to go back to one of the Islands we had stayed at before, but to a different beach, Isla Casaya. We were looking for some seclusion, a calm anchorage with clean water and a nice sandy beach. We picked this beautiful spot and were all alone for about the first 4 hours. A large (65’) Catamaran pulled into our small island paradise and anchored within a hundred yards of us. With as many beautiful beaches and perfect anchorages within a mile why this guy decided he wanted to be close and personal with us is beyond me. To make matters worse, there were about ten people on board and they had a large tender with a big motor and decided to spend the day water skiing around US!! Talk about inconsiderate. Finally the next day at about sunset, they decided to move on their way and left us to our Island paradise sans waterskiers. As luck would have it the swells changed direction and we spent that night rocking and rolling forcing us to relocate to the other side of the bay the next day. We spent a couple more days at Isla Bayoneta and then headed further south to Isla San Jose our jumping off point for Punta Mala and the start of our journey to Costa Rica.
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Rounding Punta Mala (the bad point) was a milestone making the 70 miles across the Gulf of Panama complete, another 14 miles up the coast to Benao, our anchorage for the night. We had several “hitchhikers” on board for our crossing and they were as glad to see Punta Mala as were we.
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spending a very rolly night in Benao, remember it is a surfing resort, we departed early and made our way another 54 miles to Ensenada Naranjo, another small anchorage on the west coast of the Azuero Peninsula, the large peninsula that sticks out of the mainland of Panama. This anchorage was a little smoother, but still too rolly for more than one night. A village nearby had a herd of over 40 cattle and they were all down on the beach.
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We were getting close to Christmas and hadn’t had a good nights sleep in three days so we decided to find an anchorage that was land locked with no swells, no wind worries and decided on Golfo de Mantijo. Golfo de Mantijo is a large river delta with several rivers coming down from the mountains. It’s over 15 miles wide and averages about 12’ deep in most places, a scary place for someone from the Pacific Northwest who is used to depths of hundreds of feet. We chose a spot on the north west side, as the storms are usually from the north, into a small bay about two miles square. We thought there were three rivers converging into the bay and it would be great exploring, Estero Cate, Estero San Andres and Estero Canazas. We spent two days out in the dinghy looking for wildlife and of coarse, a crocodile. All we found were a lot of birds, mud and mangroves. Then came the big discovery, Estero doesn’t mean estuary, it means SWAMP!! Ok, so if we were in a swamp where are the Crocodiles??
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Another nice thing about Golfo de Mantijo was cell service. We had bought an international cell phone in Panama and we had a full five bars of cell phone reception in Mantijo so we could call and talk with the family during Christmas. Christmas alone was a little depressing and had we known what was ahead there were two other cruise boats having a big turkey dinner just 20 miles to the west of us.
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The day after Christmas we decided that six days was enough in the river basin, we needed to get back to the clear blue water of the Pacific ocean again. We left early so that we could exit the river area on a raising tide considering the shallow water depth. We had planned to go to Isla Catalina, a nice sheltered Island just outside of Mantijo where there was a surfing beach and small resort community for the surf crowd, including a pizza place and an internet cafe so I could publish this page. As we rounded the corner into the Pacific the swells from the southwest were coming in at about 6-7 feet, spaced far enough apart that we were getting almost now effect from them other than a gentile up and down motion. But going ashore on the beach was going to be more of a challenge than we were up to in a 9’ inflatable. Our alternate plan was to continue on to Bahia Honda another 19 miles.
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The cruise westward to Bahia Honda was in perfect weather, the swells were spaced so far apart that we had only a small rise and fall of the boat, but no pitch or roll. A school of dolphins joined us for a short time, frolicking in our bow surge and jumping through our wake. We are still fishing as we travel, this time using a wooden plug that was recommended for catching Yellow Fin Tuna (Ahi) and sure enough we caught a small one just before we entered into Bahia Honda.
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Bahia Honda is protected on all sides with a small opening to the ocean, there’s a small village with an even smaller Tienda (shop) that sells some basic stapes including beer. The harbor is about 2 miles wide and a mile deep with the village located on an island in the middle. There are several nice anchorage’s and some homes along the beach, mostly Panamanians, but one home is an American from Colorado. We finally found two other cruising boats anchored here and opted to anchor near them as they were also Americans. It looked like there were lots of places to explore.
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We had no sooner gotten the anchor down and the engines turned off and the local residents stopped by to say “Buenos Dias”, speaking little english and of coarse our spanish isn’t much better. The family that lived on the shore near our anchorage was three generations. Domingo (right) was the head of the family with his wife, daughter and her husband. Kennedy (left), Domingos son, lived next door with his wife and two children. Daisy (right) is Domingos granddaughter, a real cutie. The entire family welcomed us with open arms and offered fresh fruit and vegetables for sale.
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Domingos home on the left is comfortable and spacious, they use outhouses as do all of the homes out here, but Domingo has installed running water with a pipeline from a creek and they raise chickens and pigs, plus grow a large garden. Kennedy’s home (center) is more modern, and still under construction. Kennedy does construction work for the American from Colorado and is living a little better than his father. On the right is our anchorage with the two American sailboats, “Sea Fury” and “Encore”.
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Domingo gave us a tour through the village and we found the homes to be well kept, a nice school with a soccer field, and a couple of little cafe’s that served cold cervesa. There are four different kinds of beer brewed in Panama, Altas, our favorite, Panama, Balboa and one other that we haven’t run across yet. Panama and Atlas seem to be the favorites, with Balboa coming in a close third.
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Coiba National Park is one of the worlds largest marine parks and located just outside Bahia Honda. Unfortunately the park fees have become somewhat unrealistic reaching as high as $150 per night to stay there so we opted to make a day trip out of it and took the “sailboaters” with us for some snorkeling and lunch. We picked the closest Island and found this wonderful beach and clear water. We could see bottom in 40’ of water, so we could avoid the live coral when we anchored We spent the day snorkeling, seeing 30-40 different species of fish and then had lunch before we returned to Bahia Honda.
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Domingo offered to take us up the river to another village, we had to take the dingy’s about two miles through the mangrooves until we arrived at the village. The children were really curious about these gringos that had come to visit, Linda took a bag of candy and became their “new best friend”. About 700 people lived in the village and it even had a medical center the government built, unfortunately there was no doctors, nurses or medicine so the government built a fence around it and locked it up. They did have a nice school, both primary and secondary with a ball field. We stopped in at the local tienda and had a coke, watching the owners son do a little redecorating. Linda was still passing out candy to the children and they seemed to come out of nowhere, guess the word got around. Panama has many different species of birds and parrots seem to come in and adopt the people. We had seen many of them around without cages or tethers and they certainly could fly.
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We spent nine days in Bahia Honda and decided it was time to continue our westward journey and bid our farewells to Domingo and his family. Our next stop was the Island Medidor only a one hour cruise away. The anchorage was beautiful and “Encore” continued on with us. Medidor is owned by an Italian, Jim Pigozzi, who has built a Villa on top of the island with a tramway up the steep slope for access. More recently a research station has been under construction and many of the Panamanians from several local villages get ferried in for work in pangas daily. We asked for a tour, but were restricted to the beach area and not allowed access to the top where all the work was going on. While on the island we found this huge spider and the locals say they are harmless and only eat mosquitos!
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Our next stop was Ensenada de Rosario, a small protected anchorage behind a small island. We met up with “Sea Fury” here again and Roger and Norma were glad to see us all. At night we could see lights from some small homes, but we seldom saw their owners. We took an excursion to the nearby village Pixvae and were somewhat surprised that they had power and running water as most villages do not. There were several tiendas (shops) but they all had about the same things and very few of those.
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On the way back to the anchorage we found a small Eco Resort right on the beach that caters to backpackers wanting to get away from it all! They didn’t have any guests and were really glad that we stopped in for a few beers and some lunch. Our lunch consisted of chicken and fried banana’s, well not really bananas but a smaller version of the banana that is a local delicacy. They pound them flat, deep fry them and serve them like potato chips or french fries, really very tasty.
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Ok, you can see the lifestyle here, traveling frrom island to island and anchorage to anchorage, exploring the beach and doing some socializing, even breakfast. Cocktail hour is so important that we even continue when the weather gets somewhat questionable. We went to Isla Contreras next, knowing that it was on the outer fringe of Coiba National Park we thought that we might avoid the park fee, but the rangers showed up late in the evening and wanted us to pay $20 per person and $60 for the boat per night! We pleaded ignorant and said we were only in transit and would leave at first light, that seemed to make them happy and we didn’t have to pay. The next morning we moved on to Islas Secas, a very beautiful group of Islands but somewhat open to the seas. Sure enough shortly after we got settled in the wind came up over 20 knots with wind waves reaching 4-5 foot so we had to move to the lee side of the island, unfortunately while moving the wind tore off the bimini top. Linda got out Jans sewing machine and with a spool of thread Roger , from Sea Fury, provided she spend the whole day re-stiching the entire bimini top.
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We spent several days in the Secas, but our beer supply was getting low as well as our fresh food stuff, so we decided to make the 18 mile run into the village of Boca Chica where we can catch a bus into David the second largest city in Panama and get some provisoins. Boca Chica also has a couple of restaurants and we our first night in an open air bar that sat right on top of the entry point to the anchorage enjoying cold beer and a hamburger. That pretty much brings us to today! We are going back to the bar this afternoon and getting internet connection so I can post this newsletter. We will spend the next couple of weeks in this general area, than head into Costa Rica checking in at Golfito before heading on to meet Jan and Ole on the February 21st.
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Our trip through Panama has been wonderful, we’ve had a few mechanical mishaps, but as Jan is so found of saying “Cruising is repairing your boat in exotic places”, and they aren’t major problems just inconveniences. This trip has definitely renewed our interest in taking our boat “El Capitan” south to warmer waters. Who knows maybe one of these days we will reverse our itinerary and boat south in the winter while RVing north in the summer. I hope everyone is still enjoying our newsletter, sorry that I can’t post more often, but we are really out in the middle of absolute nowhere! The weather has been a constant 86-89 degrees during the day, dropping to about 70 overnight, humidity isn’t that bad and most days we have a 5-10 knot breeze to keep us cool. We have only had two days of rain since we left Panama City and even then it was less than an hour. We mostly get up in the morning and put on swim suits, only changing into a dry suit after swimming. We have been quite surprised by the lack of boaters, prior to our anchorage in Boca Chica,” Encore” and “Sea Fury” are the only two cruising boats we have seen in over 400 miles of travel.
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Until next time
Dale and Linda
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