February 13-28, 2007

February 13-28: On Daniel's recommendation we motorsailed from this
anchorage over to Isla Zapatilla #1, with New Passage following, to snorkel
around Zapatilla #2, which has no tenable anchorage. On this day the
anchorage on #1 was not so good either. We put out the flopper stopper,
which decreased the discomfort. But as we looked at nearby #2, we knew there'd
be no snorkeling there with the water breaking onto the reef. We did have a
brief snorkel at the reef off #1 and saw some beautiful brain and staghorn
coral, purple sea fans, coral-colored starfish, and a few colorful fish.
The next morning we were off early for Bocas Marina, on Isla Colón,
carefully following our progress through the reefs between Zapatilla and
Isla Bastimentos on our computer navigational program. Once again, we
encountered 12-foot seas at the bar, but they seemed less formidable this
time. Past the bar the seas were flatter, and we motorsailed in comfort,
despite the light headwind, into Bocas Marina.

Our 90-day visa for Panamá was expiring in two days, so we had to get
ourselves up to Changuinola, on the mainland, to renew it for another 90
days. This process took us all of the following day. From the marina, a
local water taxi took us the short distance to the town of Bocas, on the
same island as the marina but separated by wetlands. From Bocas we took a
high-speed water taxi, this one more like a bus carrying about 25 other
passengers. At the dock in Changuinola, we caught a land taxi for town.
And this was the easy part. A renewal process that should have taken about
a half hour took us almost three hours to complete, with much unnecessary
running around and sitting in the office. But we can now stay legally until
mid-May if we choose.

Planning to catch the 1230 water taxi back to Bocas, we were back at the
dock at 1200. But the 1230 was already sold out, so we had to wait for the
next one at 1400h. At first we groaned, but then we talked with three young
surfers, one from Australia and two from Minnesota, and another young couple
from New York. All these people were spending several months on the surfer
route in Central America, camping out on beaches or staying in hostels-and
having a grand adventure. Very entertaining.

The waterway between Bocas and Changuinola is an old canal built by United
Fruit, now Chiquita, to transport bananas. Bananas remain the primary
industry in Changuinola, but Chiquita no longer uses the canal, perhaps
because the water hyacinth is taking it over. It's nevertheless a lovely
way to travel between these two small towns.

When we went into Bocas the following day to re-provision, we had a pleasant
surprise. The town itself is funky, most of the aging structures, primarily
wooden, that once must have been homes along the main street now either
restaurants, hostels and hotels, or tour companies. But, perhaps because
the economy of the town is now clearly based on tourism, the provisioning
options are excellent for such a small, out-of-the-way place. Three or four
supermercados have a good selection of local foods, and another, Super
Gourmet, has many specialty items, such as cheeses and frozen imported
salmon-the latter surprisingly good on the palates of two salmon-deprived
norteamericanos.

After a week in Bocas Marina, getting the boat shipshape again and
acquainting ourselves with the services in the area, we welcomed aboard
Kerry and Spencer, the mother and son from Panama City who transited the
Canal with us. They arrived in the rain by water taxi at 0730, tired but
ready to go after an overnight bus trip from Panama City. As soon as we had
a break in the rain, we motored the sort distance to our first stop, Punta
Concho, where our day was a late lunch, naps, a late afternoon swim, a
shrimp risotto dinner, and a short evening.

And that was pretty much how our days went, except we varied the dinner
menu. We listened to howlers in the distance early morning and late
afternoon, we took rides up small channels in the sportboat, on one of those
rides coming to a Ngöbe-Bugle settlement of two huts. A man, a young woman,
and two children were trying to wrestle some kind of large fish out of the
bottom of the cayuco. The man quickly answered "Si" to our offer of help,
so Bob, Spencer, and Kerry got into the water alongside the cayuco while I
tended the sportboat. When they saw a hammerhead shark filling almost the
length of the 18-foot boat, Bob asked for reassurance: "It is dead, isn't
it?" Then they all went to work and got the fish into the water.

After a night at Punta Concho, we spent the second night at Ground Creek.
For the third night we moved to the anchorage behind Quary's Point, a mile
or so from the coastal town of Almirante. Kerry and Spencer had ridden the
bus from Panama City to Almirante and then had caught the water taxi for the
30-minute ride to Bocas. But to return they would have had to leave Bocas
at 0600, and we were unsure of the taxi service from the marina to Bocas at
that hour. So from the anchorage we ran them around to the dock at
Almirante, and they caught a local taxi to the bus station.

We went back to Carricklee and did a few chores while we waited for more
light to return to Almirante and take pictures of all the houses on stilts
lining the estuary. At a service station on the water, we filled up our
jerry jugs with gasoline for the sportboat.

Besides the convenience of the anchorage we were in, it was another
splendid, quiet bay with numerous channels we could follow into the
mangroves at another time and reefs we could snorkel over. We will return
perhaps in a few days.

Returning to Bocas Marina later that day, we got back to all the usual
chores, but we did have one more land trip for this visit in Bocas. Once
again, we took the water taxi to Changuinola, this time the 0700 one, where
a driver met us at the dock and took us out to Río San San and the entrance
into the San San Pond Sack Wetlands. Here we crawled into a lancha with our
guide, whose name I'm still struggling with-something like Austraques,
maybe? Along also were four bags of cement, shovels and other tools, and
five other men.

The river is wide at this landing, but, when it joins with Río Negro a few
miles downstream, it doubles in size. We were too late to see birds except
for great American and cattle egrets and little blue herons. But we did see
them by the scores.

The primary tourist attraction of this trip, though, is not the birds. The
manatees are what we'd come to see. The lancha stopped at a site about 10
miles downriver, where Austraques, Bob, and I climbed onto the first of a
series of wooden steps leading to a look-out in a tree. Three of the men in
the lancha tied stalks of banana leaves to strings hanging from low limbs of
our tree down almost to the water's surface. Then the boat sped away on
down the river, and the three of us quietly waited.

After 15 or 20 minutes, Austraques alerted us to some quiet splashing sounds
among the mangroves around us. We waited again. Then he pointed to a
variation in color in the coppery colored water: splotches of tan on black.
The first of the ultimately five manatees had come to feast on the banana
leaves. We could see them only hazily through the water as they ate the
tips of the leaves hanging into the water. But we could hear the loud
crunch, crunch, chomp, chomp of their eating. Then they would all swim out
toward the middle of the river, disappearing from view. In a few minutes,
one by one they returned to the leaves. The best views came when the only
portions of leaves left were all above the water. Then we saw their black
pig-like snouts, lips, and tongue as they consumed every last morsel tied in
the strings.

As Bob observed, these were the most mannerly of mammals. They glided
quietly, their motions almost sonorous, up to the leaves, never interfering
with another's progress. Two might be munching off the same long leaf, but
always at opposite ends, with no bumping. It was a rare experience.
So now we're making plans to go out cruising again in the next day or so.
In just three weeks Kim and Caitlan will be coming from Idaho for a week's
visit-not nearly long enough, but they both have only a one-week spring
break. Then we'll be getting ourselves and the boat ready for a separation
when we return to the States, probably in late April.