Susan
Last year at
this time we were aboard “Daydream” in the lovely Los Roques
island group off the north coast of South America. Since then we’ve
had a busy, long-distance travel year both on the boat and on land.
We had our
hearts set on sailing to the Panama Canal, through it and up the west
coast of Central America before summer. This would have us returning to
one of our favourite cruising grounds in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico
before the hurricane season began again. It may not seem like it to some
of you but this is a fairly long journey in a sailboat. It would be easy
to spend years covering this route but fortunately we had already
covered the west coast from the Panama Canal to Mexico twice on our last
adventure. Thus we were determined to spend as much time as possible
seeing the area between Venezuela and the Panama Canal and then move
very quickly from there up to Mexico.
We really
enjoyed the remaining two island groups that were the next stops after
Los Roques. Los Aves (The Birds), as these areas are called, are mostly
coral reefs with a couple of tiny dots of low-lying land. The enormous
reefs provide incredible protection from the relentless waves generated
by the ever-present trade winds. It was a fabulous lesson in boat
handling to weave in among these coral heads lurking just below the
surface. Wayne had a permanently blistered nose and lips from standing
at the bow for hours at a time peering into the crystal clear water and
directing me which way to turn, to stop (quickly!) and in some cases to
jam it in reverse to avoid a collision. It was an interesting experience
to learn to ‘drive blind’. Since I had my eyes glued to the compass
and depth sounder, I simply listened to Wayne’s directions hardly ever
looking at where we were going. It was certainly a fantastic exercise in
trust and working together.
The islands and
reefs are basically uninhabited although there were a few military/coast
guard personnel on one island and literally thousands of birds. We never
did see the coast guard guys and spent most of our time in complete
isolation, snorkelling, exploring and generally enjoying ourselves. For
company, we did pick up a couple of hanger-ons who we called Bill and
Bob. They were two enormous (between 3 and 4 foot long) barracudas that
liked to hang out behind our boat waiting for table scraps to come their
way. They freaked me out a bit but you soon got used to them lurking
about.
These reefs
have had many, many ships and boats wrecked upon them over the years.
Some of which are still visible above the surf. There is a rumour that a
treasure fleet was lost here hundreds of years ago so we searched a
little. We found no gold bars but we did drag up an old brick that
didn’t belong there.
We would have
stayed longer in these idyllic places but I had developed a terrible
chest cough at Christmas and just couldn’t get rid of it. We read all
the medical books that we had and tried all the options including
antibiotics and home-made cough syrup when we ran out of store-bought.
Just so you know you can make a pretty effective cough syrup out of
lemon, gin, and honey. As the coughing continued unabated, it was time
to seek professional help in the civilized world of the ABCs.
To see photos
from the Aves click here.
So one quick
down-wind passage later we found ourselves back in civilization when we
arrived in Bonaire. Even the slow pace of life on this island was quite
a jolt to the senses after spending so long in isolation. Certainly
waking up to find a cruise ship cuddled up to us wouldn’t have
happened in the islands that we had just left behind. Bonaire is a
lovely island with some of the clearest water and most abundant tropical
fish that we’ve ever seen. You aren’t allowed to anchor in Bonaire
so we pulled up right in front of the main
town of Kralendijk and picked up a buoy. We spent only a few days there.
Just time to see a doctor about my cough and to do a little restaurant
eating! Bonaire is part of the Netherlands Antilles just like Sint
Maarten but it is much more “Dutch”. We suffered a bit of sticker
shock, as it had been a while since we’d spent any money at all and
the prices were a lot higher than in Venezuela.
All too soon we
headed west to the island of Curacao where we would spend almost a month
stocking up and doing some upgrades on the boat including ordering some
items from the U.S. Curacao is a very modern, bustling island that is
also part of the Netherlands Antilles and has a very strong Dutch
influence. I’m not sure how long we would have had to stay to pick up
some of the language.
We
spent our time anchored in the very well protected, amazing anchorage of
Spanish Waters. It’s a good thing it was well protected as we
experienced 20-25 knots of wind and rain squalls almost every day. A
twenty-minute bus ride would get us to the main city and harbour of
Willemstad. The architecture and colour of the buildings is just
amazing. In between stocking up and working on the boat we squeezed in a
little time for socializing and catching a few movies at the theatre in
town.
To see photos
from Curacao click here.
Wayne
The trip from
Curacao to the San Blas Islands is reputed to be fast and rough
especially in the winter months. However, with the wind from behind it
couldn’t possibly be all bad, could it? We finally got away from
Curacao on February 9th and had the fastest passage that we
have ever done. “Daydream” was in her element and flying. For
the first several days we had winds up to 30 knots from behind, rough
seas and a current pushing us along. Other than the roll, this was
really fantastic sailing. The boat was near hull speed all of the time
and the sky was bright blue. It’s true we were being tossed around a
little and some of us may have tossed our cookies a few times but
that’s they way it goes. (Susan: easy for him to say). On the
first day we did 180 nautical miles. The second day we hit 196.5 miles,
which now stands as our 24-hour record. Then the current turned against
us and on the third day we only managed 163 miles. The last full day we
only did 157 miles and then reached Isla Pinos in the San Blas Islands a
few hours later. We had come much farther than a straight line between
these two ports because the weather just off the Columbian coast
produces some of the highest seas in the entire Atlantic. As a result we
were well off of Columbia until just the last few miles before we
arrived at Isla Pinos. Even so, in the middle of one night a helicopter
appeared out of nowhere, had a good look at us and then apparently
decided that we were not involved in anything too nefarious and
disappeared back towards the mainland.
The San Blas
islands are officially part of Panama, however the indigenous people,
the Kuna Indians, have managed to hang onto some degree of sovereignty
and much of their unusual culture including their own language. The
Kunas call their island chain of 365 islands and their strip of land on
mainland Panama, the Kuna Yala. Only about 50 of these spectacular
islands are inhabited.
Isla Pinos is
unusual in the island chain because it stands a couple hundred feet high
as compared to most of the islands, which are exactly the height of the
tallest palm tree, plus about 3 feet of sand. Isla Pinos is near the
eastern end of Panama, very close to the Columbian border and is in the
least developed area of the Kuna Yala. The people here live in houses
that you can see through. The walls are made of upright sticks and the
roofs are thatch. There is very little electricity although some
villages had a TV with DVD and a generator or solar panels to run it.
There are no cars and very few outboard motors.
Most of the men
are either farmers or fisherman. If they are fishermen, they use a
hollowed out (by hand) log canoe to get to and from the ‘office’. If
they are farmers, they farm mostly coconuts but also some mangoes,
bananas, platanos and a few veggies. The coconuts are the main crop and
the main source of export earnings. Every town has a little concrete
dock that the coconut traders dock at to buy coconuts. They show up in
extremely colourful and dilapidated old wooden shrimp boats and buy
coconuts for 10 cents each and sell flour, sugar and luxuries like
potato chips to the locals. Because most of these boats are operated by
Columbians and these are the only outsiders that many of these folks
normally see, they often asked us if we were Columbians.
One of our
favourite sights in the Kuna Yala was the pigsties. For some reason that
we never quite figured out, they build little one-pig sties about 3 feet
off the ground, right on the ocean front. Anywhere else in the world
this would be million dollar real estate!
Susan
The other
important industry in Kuna Yala is the making of molas. The women mostly
undertake this work. ‘Mola’ means blouse and is the traditional
dress for Kuna women. They sew the mola panels by hand using a unique
multi-layer method that involves cutting through the top layers to
display the colours of the layers beneath. The good ones are painstaking
works that can take months to make and it is almost impossible to see
the tiny stitches. Two matching panels are sewn for each blouse and then
connected together by a neckline and sleeves. Molas are often
characterized by rather unique colour combinations due to the Kuna’s
love of red, burgundy and orange!
Wayne
The eastern
half of Kuna Yala has never had any industry to speak of and as a result
has never been carefully charted. The Spanish made the last
‘official’ chart around 1810. We have a guidebook on board written
by a guy in a sailboat that provides much better information than the
official chart, but even so, one of us was on watch on the bow of the
boat the entire time that we were moving through this area. There were
many times where we had only a few inches of water under the boat and
many uncharted reefs. Of course we did go aground once, but got off
again just a few minutes later.
Susan
We spent over a
month working our way slowly NW through the island chain. We enjoyed our
time immensely. It was the most unique area that we’ve ever visited.
The people were very friendly and the culture very interesting. The area
was highly photogenic. Between the colourful people themselves, their
fascinating villages, the uninhabited coral island paradises and the
underwater gardens of diverse coral; it was truly a slice of heaven. We
could go on for hours discussing the San Blas but it’s time to move
on. Please take a moment to see some of the incredible photos from this
area on our website.
To see photos
of the Kuna people click here.
To see photos
of the San Blas Islands click here.
All
too soon it was time to leave paradise. We had begun to hear rumours of
long wait-times to transit the Panama Canal. At this point it was
mid-March and many other cruisers in the Western Caribbean were also
preparing to transit the Canal in preparation for heading across the
South Pacific. It was time for us to get in line.
We
had one quick stop in the historic port of Portobelo before reaching the
Panama Canal from the San Blas Islands. Portobelo was one of the ports
along the route of the Spanish treasure fleets. We only had a day to
spend here but Wayne took some great photos of the old Spanish forts
surrounding the bay.
To
see photos from Portobelo click here.
Our
last stop in the Caribbean was the, less than lovely, city of Colon. It
is, however, a necessary evil as this is where all boats wanting to
transit the Panama Canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific end up. If
you are lucky, the wait is short, but we arrived at one of the busiest
times of the year for small boats to transit in this direction. We
arrived to find out that some of our friends had been here waiting for
over four weeks! We immediately set about going through the process of
“getting in line”. This involves being measured (the boat, not us)
by a Canal official, filling out piles of paperwork and finally parting
with $850 US, which was the going rate for an over-50 foot boat. That
fee seemed like quite the deal compared to the alternative of sailing
around the tip of South America!