March 1
Ole got home this morning at about 9:00, with something on
the order of 75 pounds of luggage, including boat parts, charts,
books, dvds and mail from home. It’s quite the hop, requiring
travel from Orlando through Miami to Panama City, then an
overnight, transfer to a smaller airport, and a puddle jumper
into Bocas. Even so, it’s not quite as adventurous as the 7
hour bus ride to Guatemala City! It sure was great to have him
back – it gets lonely without him! We decided to order a new
dinghy (thank God) because the Danard pvc dinghy we got three
years ago in Florida has virtually melted in the tropical sun.
It was supposed to be here today, but, this being Panama, we
didn’t get it. The driver called, saying he had to fill up the
truck before making the trip – ah well, perhaps Monday.
After a long afternoon nap, we wandered next door to the
Cosmic Crab for dinner and a fund-raiser for the local
elementary school hosted by Joan and Steve. It was a lot of
fun, with music, a live auction, raffles, carnival games, and a
trivia contest, raising nearly $1500 for the Isla Carenero
kindergarten. As fate would have it, Ole won a haircut. (!)
For our $45 bill for dinner and $20 in raffle tickets, we walked
out with the haircut, a lunch, and two dinners. Not a bad take
for an evening’s fun.
March 3
Hooray! A brand new, 9.5 ft AB RIB dinghy arrived in town
today. We ran over with the Marina Carenero guys in the big
lancha, and stood by the back of the truck to manhandle the box
to the boat and back across the bay. We offloaded the dead
Danard and donated it to the marina for use as a weed barrier
and planter box, hung the outboard on the new AB, then set off
for a test zip across the bay, only to have the outboard die.
The chief doesn’t work on any engines smaller than a greyhound
bus, so after learning how to dismantle the lower drive unit, an
exercise of several new words and sweaty grunts, he found the
impellor had been stripped. Then the adventure started. Where
in town to find a $12 part for a common outboard. Checked both
hardware stores and both Yamaha dealers, and found replacements
could be ordered from David (and put on a plane, and delivered
to the store…jeez…) so we bought one the right diameter but a
few millimeters too tall. Ole sliced off the excess, fitted it
into the housing, wrestled the motor back together, re-hung it
on the dinghy, but alas, now the motor sounds like a motorcycle
without a muffler. Rats. So we’re going cruising with a great
new dinghy that floats, using muscle power to row it.
Here's Ole "test driving" the new dinghy!
March 4
After a quick blast through town for
provisioning, we left Marina Carenero to explore the area for a
few days before moving over to the Bocas Yacht Club and Marina.
Who knew that just an hour’s cruise from here there were
absolutely deserted bays where the only sound was the
howler monkeys hooting back and forth. Superb! We dropped
anchor at Big Bight, the first of the three bays
north of here, and were stunned by the quiet – and the noise!
We figured we’d stick around here until tomorrow, do a quick run
into town for the new impellors, then head for the next bay up
tomorrow night.
March 5
Just after lunch, we motored back to drop anchor in front of
Bocas Marina, and called a water taxi to pick us up from the
boat to get into town. When the taxi didn’t show after about 30
minutes, I stuck out my thumb as a lancha full of tourists was
zipping by – and who knew – you can hitchhike from your boat
here! New impellors in hand, we motored an hour up to Conch Bay
to anchor for the night. At the entrance to the bay is a
wonderful resort,
Punta Caracol, built on stilts across the mouth of a shallow
lagoon. We glided past it into the bay, then up about a half
mile to a quiet, narrow spot in the mangroves. There is not a
soul up here but us.
Punta Caracol resort from Almirante Bay
March 6
Ole worked on the outboard for most of the morning, hoping to
identify the annoying sound and lack of function of the cooling
water pump. No luck. And out of nowhere, we lost our GPS
signal. He checked every connection, traced every wire, ran
every reset problem, and called Raymarine for help, to be told
“you’ll have to find an authorized repair person.” In the
process, he disconnected the antenna/receiver, and found it was
full of water. After some hours of drying, he reassembled it
and poof, we have GPS again. Wish he could do the same with the
motor! While he worked on the mechanical parts, I worked on
updating journal entries for the log.
March 7
This morning we opted to explore the head of Conch Bay by
dinghy, following a creek for nearly a mile through the jungle.
It must have been too late in the morning, as we didn’t see or
hear much in the way of animal or bird life, but we rowed over
to a stilted palapa full of hammocks belonging to the lodge at
Punta Caracol and decided to follow the dock/path to the lodge
itself. The path crossed the tip of the peninsula, then turned
into a dock running about 100 feet from shore, creating its own
crystal clear lagoon. The stroll to the restaurant took us
past the charming accommodations – little private 2-story
cabanas built right on the pier, each with its own veranda
facing the bay equipped with kayak and snorkel gear. We stopped
at the front desk and inquired about rates -- $300 per night for
lodging and 2 meals a day. Eek. Lunch at Punta Caracol was
superb – but expensive for Bocas. Seafood stew with lobster,
calamari, shrimp in a coconut base for me; grilled fish for Ole,
2 pina coladas and 2 glasses of wine -- $50. Setting and mood –
priceless. A lunch like that called for a major nap, after
which we headed north to the next bay of Isla Colon, Ground
Creek, where we anchored for the night.
March 8, 2008
This morning we explored Ground Creek by dinghy, but again,
too late in the morning for any serious wildlife spotting. We
decided to head about 2 hours south to Dolphin Bay on the
mainland, departing about noon.
 We anchored in a little pocket
in the south end of the bay and met Mary and Carl from Camryka, who are busy building a house up on the hill.
Mary, a retired psychologist, said she and Carl, a retired
professor, decided to bite the bullet, buy some land, and throw
a house together after many years of cruising, because, “after
all, you might need a house one day.” Whenever somebody decides
to build here, the first thing that has to get put in is a dock
to land supplies and construction materials – there is no road.
The second thing is to hack a path through the jungle from your
dock to the homesite to haul every post, window, faucet, wire,
nut and bolt up by human-power. The result, in Mary and Carl’s
case, is a 1000 square foot stilt house with exposed beams and
high, open ceilings under a tin roof, surrounded by a 12-foot
deep shaded verandah with a view that won’t quit. They, like
most people, are going to be powered by diesel generator and
supplemented by solar panels, with a rainwater collection
system. The setting is beautiful, and the feel of the cabin is
rustic, open, and cozy. They put together the blueprints, found
a contractor, who did a bang-up job until the very end, leaving
most of the finish work to a frustrated Carl.
March 9
We chose to anchor near Camryka because we had heard of a
little farm called “Green Acres” that happens to be their
neighbor. Cruising friends had strongly suggested stopping in
for a walk around the property, as Dave and Linda Cerutti, the
owners, are manufacturing chocolate from the cacao trees they
found when clearing and improving their property. We were a
bit shy about just going over by ourselves, but when we saw a
lancha speeding up to their dock with some tourists inside, we
jumped on the phone and asked if we could join them for a walk.
Dave and Linda are retired from the yacht captaining
business. Dave explained that when they arrived in Bocas on
somebody’s yacht ten years ago, a man in a cayucos paddled up
and asked if they wanted to buy land. No, they said, they were
sailors and weren’t interested. The cayuco man was undaunted,
and after several tries, got Dave and Linda ashore and showed
them 10 hectares (about 25 acres) of jungle, complete with a
stream, ancient trees and vines, howler monkeys, toucans,
sloths, parrots, and poison dart frogs. Dave asked the man his
price -- $20,000, he said. Dave countered by saying “12,000”
thinking that would end the conversation, but he ended up with
the property. He recounted that at the closing, as they were
signing papers, it became apparent that the seller had no idea
of the difference between $1200 and $12,000! In the next few
years, they hired some local help to clear a home site, build the
dock, and hack through the jungle, finding some amazing plants,
including many varieties of wild cacao.
Linda, a plant fanatic, has turned the area around their
home site into one of the most beautiful tamed wildernesses we
have ever seen, encouraging orchids, heliconia, hibiscus, peace
lilies, and more species of rhododendron than we knew existed,
as well as making way for some spectacular tropical hardwood
trees. Her efforts provide shelter to an amazing array of
insect, amphibian, and other animal life.
Blue Morpheus
Butterfly |
Hard to see, but it's
a Golden Orb Spider. |
Owl Moth |
Dave, not being much of a gardener, got interested in cacao,
researching how the sweet fruit with big seeds ends up as
chocolate. After about a 2 hour walk through his property,
marveling at the flowers, golden orb spiders, poison dart frogs
that look like they came out of a crayola box, and blue Morpheus
butterflies as big as salad plates, Dave showed us his chocolate
manufacturing “plant.”
He gathers ripe cacao fruit from his own trees, and the local
Indians sell him ripe fruit that they find on their walks
through the jungle. Twenty to sixty seeds, black and shiny and
about the size of almonds, are extracted from each fruit and set
out to ferment for 3 to 7 days. Then they are set out in trays
to dry, tricky here in this area of unexpected tropical
downpours. Once dried, he then roasts the beans in a
contraption made from an old propane tank for about 30 minutes,
then cleans and winnows the beans to separate the “nibs” from
their shells. He then grinds the nibs finer and finer until
they release their oils and liquefy, pouring the resulting
“chocolate liquor” product into ½ lb molds and refrigerating
them to set. This whole process is accomplished in a homemade
“Rube Goldberg” factory, put together with old tanks, pieces of
blenders, hammered together trays, and a circa 1960
refrigerator, all in the space of a single-car garage.
Cacao Fruit |
Inside of Cacao Fruit |
Tasting the
Raw Fruit |
Drying the Seeds |
Dave's "Factory" |
Well, we couldn’t leave Green Acres without buying some
product and a cookbook – and a later experiment making brownies
from scratch with 100% organic homemade chocolate produced the
most satisfying chocolate experience of my short life!
March 10, 2008
 After a leisurely morning and lovely cruise through the
islands we stopped at Twin Cays, a parentheses of mangrove
islands with coral reef in between, before settling in at
Bocas Yacht Club & Marina our new home. We think we’ll like
it much better here. While the price per foot is a bit more, the
metered electricity, available water, reliable internet, calm
and reasonable management, and
evening respite from reggae club boom boom boom will make for a
much more pleasant stay in Bocas del Toro.
March 15
Ole left today for Finland to join the Independence of the
Seas as it readies itself for launch in May. It will be lonely
without him!
March 18
Given that Panama grants 90-day visas to visitors, I had to
leave the country for three days this week, to re-enter Panama
for another 90 days. Today was an exercise in middle-agedness.
Catching the 7:30 a.m. water taxi, I alighted from the 45-minute
run at Changuinola only to discover I had left my wallet in Emma
Jo’s pilothouse. Having planned to take the 10:00 a.m.
international bus to Costa Rica, it became apparent that I would
miss that bus. The dispatcher at the water taxi office in
Changuinola suggested I call to have my wallet sent on the next
boat from Bocas. So I called the marina, explained my dilemma,
and was assured that it would be taken care of. At 11:00 in the
morning, the shuittle from Bocas arrived, the driver carrying an
envelope with my wallet (credit cards and cash in tact). Only
then did I stop to think how naïve and trusting I was to have a
relative stranger go onto my boat, hand my wallet over to an
unknown secretary, who packaged it and delivered it to an
unknown water taxi driver, in a very third-world area of a
Central American country, and then expect to get everything in
tact. But wow – that speaks well of the people we are choosing
to live with for the foreseeable future.
Next, I had to negotiate getting to, then over, the border
into Costa Rica, then find a bus to San Jose. That’s where
things got interesting. The border lies on one of only 2
highways between Panama and Costa Rica, and this one, at Sixaola,
is the backwater. One gets out of the taxi in a dirty, grimy,
dusty, busy corner of Panama, climbs up some steps, crosses over
the railroad tracks, then stands in line for as long as it takes
for the ONE border control guard to leisurely leaf through the
passport, pausing over each entry and exit stamp, then finally
stamping you out of the country. Then one must walk over an
ancient railroad bridge across a river into Costa Rica, stand in
another line for as long as it takes, then discover you need a
return ticket to enter Costa Rica. So then one must walk to a
pharmacy, ask for a ticket, pay whatever, then return to the
line for more of the same leisurely passport perusal, when
finally you are “legal” in Costa Rica. All of this was
accomplished by about 1:00 pm, when I found myself stumbling
around the same dusty, grimy, gritty, backwater, but this time
in Costa Rica looking for a bus.
This border town, Sixaola, is a Chiquita Banana town, with
massive plantations peopled by workers who live in company
shacks, and little else. But luckily there was a 3:00 pm bus to
San Jose. Yippee – a two-hour wait for a six-hour bus trip!
On the upside, the bus was large, modern, comfortable, air
conditioned. On the downside, it was a local, not a direct,
stopping at several little burgs along the way. Most of the
passengers seemed to be backpackers on vacation. Unfortunately,
I didn’t get to see much of the mountains, as it was after dark
when we began the ascent from Limon. But the trip was
uneventful – I landed at the bus station in San Jose about eight
blocks from my hotel.
March 19
Only today did I realize that this was Easter week – a heck
of a time to be travelling anywhere in Central America. I left
Panama on a Tuesday, thinking I could return Thursday and that
would be three days. When I came to my senses, I realized that
“72 hours” meant I needed to stay until Friday. That’s when it
got more interesting. All of Central America shuts completely
down on Good Friday. No buses. No planes. No taxis. No
restaurants or movie theaters or nothin’! So I negotiated with
the hotel to put me up for another 2 nights (during EASTER
WEEK!) and they were wonderful about it. I chose to spend
today, Thursday, visiting the Santo Thomas mall in downtown San
Jose (MALL!), getting a haircut and some necessary computer
components. Most of the downtown museums appeared to be closed
in preparation for closing tomorrow. On the upside, the food at
the restaurant at the hotel is superb – reasonably priced,
beautifully presented and briskly served.
March 20
Another vote for the quality of the folks at Bocas Marina. I
originally planned to be home today, and left food and water out
for the cats accordingly. So I emailed Chuck at the marina, who
assured me that he’d make sure the cats had enough until I get
home Saturday. What amazing service!
March 22
Good Friday. You could run naked through the streets of
downtown San Jose Costa Rica and nobody would see you.
March 22
After a relaxing 5 days in Costa Rica, visiting A MALL! And
watching CABLE TV!, and walking through an old city, it was up
at 5:00 for the 6:00 bus back to Sixaola for the re-entry into
Panama. I must say, getting in was faster and easier than
getting out! I arrived back at the boat by 3:00 pm, to much
yelling and screaming and chastisement from the cats!
At Happy Hour at the marina cantina, I ran into some cruiser
friends who invited me to go motor-scootering tomorrow to
explore Isla Colon. Even though I’ve been gone five days, I
think I’ll give it a shot.
March 23
Wild Hogs! Five of us on four scooters, each of which had
its own unique mechanical problem. Mine kept stalling in idle;
Trevor and Sandy’s was smoking like a chimney and stinking up
the place; Jennifer’s handlebars were crooked; and Drury’s had
minimal suspension. At $60 for half a day, it was pretty
expensive, but off we went.
There are essentially two roads on this island – one
following a big wide bay on the east side and the other pretty
much following the middle out to the north end, to a place
called Bocas del Drago. We started out thinking we would run
along the east side, but gave up after about 90 minutes of
circumnavigating mudpuddles (lakes!) in a road made of sand.
The star of the day was Jennifer, who broke trail most of the
way, zooming boldly through the puddles, daring the depths. I
provided comic relieve, falling once when the scooter stalled as
I was trying to get up to the footpath from the road, and taking
a spectacular header while avoiding a puddle with a damned
navigation aid in it! Too bad – it would have been a beautiful
trip, as this bay is where many of the new “resorts” are planned
to be built. It’s their trucks that have been digging up the
road. So we ran back to the main road for an enjoyable run 18
kilometers to the end of the island, stopping here and there to
ooh and aah at the scenery and try to spot wildlife. We
stumbled into the restaurant on the beach at Bocas del Drago, me
looking for all the world like something the cat dragged in –
covered in mud, ripped pants, and helmet hair. All in all,
though, it was a splendid day.
Renting the Scooters |
Figuring out the Nav Aids
in the Puddles |
After Spill #2 |
The Wild Hogs |
Enjoying the Post-
Traumatic Beer |
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