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Panama July, 2007
As of our last update, we were on our way to Isla Linton for fuel before traveling to San Blas. The end of July, we left Portobello motored the short distance (~8 miles east) to Isla Linton and were welcomed by a former cruiser, Roger, on the VHF radio. Roger, who is now retired, owns a beautiful home on the mainland (near the Panama Canal Yacht Club Annex) and invited us over for cocktails, unfortunately, we were unable to accept. However, Roger met us at the fuel dock along with his sloth, Bandit. Roger is a wonderful and interesting person who spends his time taking care of a few two toed and three toed sloths and other wild animals he and his wife have rescued. He spent many years cruising before he found his piece of paradise in Panama. He seems truly content and greets many cruisers during their travels around Isla Linton. Though we've anchored in the Isla Linton area a few times this was our first chance to meet Roger and we are grateful for the experience. Isla Linton is a small island owned by Allan Baitel and is uninhabited except for a few monkey families that live in the hills. We had heard that the island has a dock where you could place food and the monkeys would come out to feed. We've also been instructed not to go ashore because although the monkeys appear friendly (at first), they get very upset upon your departure and are known to attack and bite. We did as instructed and stayed in our dinghy. Shortly upon our arrival, a monkey came strolling down the dock arms waving high in the air to greet us. We fed the monkeys and they in turn provided us with unlimited entertainment.
Isla Grande, a dinghy ride away from Linton, hasn't been our favorite place in the past considering our dinghy and outboard were stolen while we were anchored there not long ago. However, we had a much more pleasant experience this trip being greeted by the Black Christ protruding from the water and thoroughly enjoying the brightly colored beach bars and tasty cocktails which seemed to wash the past away.
After a few days, we were ready to return to San Blas, the pristine islands located about 6-8 hours East of Linton which consists of over 340 islands home to the indigenous Kuna Indians. The Kuna people have best preserved their culture and traditions out of all the tribes in the Americas, yet are reachable by small airstrips built by North Americans during World War II. The Kunas are physically small, rivaled in tribal shortness only by the pygmies. The mainstay of their economy are coconuts, so we are not permitted to help ourselves to coconuts on these islands. However, the San Blas also exports lobsters, king crabs and octopus. Women make money selling reverse appliqué "molas" as proven by the many molas we purchased. The women are very persistent and will paddle their ulus to the sailboats to give their sales pitch in either the Kuna language or Spanish and usually bringing their young children along. We anchored throughout the San Blas islands though one of our favorites is north of Niakalubirdup or what we like to call Rankindup, because it is an unmarked anchorage. We enter this anchorage by cutting in between Niakalubirdup (east side) and Ogoppukibdup seeing nothing less than 12 feet of depth then gradually turning to port (left) traveling along the north side of Niakalubirdup while keeping a close eye out for coral. It's a fairly large secluded anchorage with many reefs for snorkeling and hunting. It wasn't too isolated ... we were usually visited once a week by the "fruit/vegetable man" in his ulu (canoe) and on occasion a Kuna fisherman would stop to sell lobsters and crab.
We spent about three weeks enjoying the idyllic scenery of the San Blas Islands, two weeks of which were spent anchored at Niakalubirdup. Unfortunately, we needed to leave and start heading west for Bocas del Toro (Panama). We made a short stop in Linton to top off our fuel and on August 23rd at 7 a.m. began our 30 hour motor to Bocas del Toro. We had a rather uneventful motor/sail to Bocas del Toro except we fought a 2-3 knot current during most of the trip and had an unexpected, messy visitor - a blue footed booby. No big deal, right? Just a harmless bird. However, this bird wasn't so little and we believe he arrived sometime in the night, hitched a ride on our spreaders and made a mess all over the boat including the sails. We discovered him and his mess in the morning and strongly encouraged him to leave and never return. Around 5 pm on August 24th, we finally arrived at Bocas and anchored near Bocas del Toro Marina (a short dinghy ride from town) until morning when we would slide into the marina. Bocas del Toro is a laid back Caribbean/backpacker town located on the Island of Colon about 30 miles from the Costa Rica border. It has several Chinese grocery stores, good local restaurants, a couple of pharmacies and hardware stores, water taxis and a few dive shops. We were in Bocas Marina from August 24th through October 30th and felt very fortunate to have good weather during our stay ... we had heard it rains a lot in Bocas, but fortunately that wasn't our experience. We spent most of our stay at Bocas del Toro Marina which was probably longer than Rankin would care to stay at any marina ... but, we decided to keep the boat there while we explored Costa Rica (remember the zip lines we mentioned in one of our updates). However, we did get sucked into enjoying the many amenities offered by the marina ... air conditioning, internet access, TV on occasion though only one Channel (Ch. 60), laundry service, nearby good restaurant. It also gave us the opportunity to do a few boat chores and maintenance work. Remember that booby mentioned earlier? Well, we had to clean both sails (jib and main) because of our booby friend. We didn't spend all of our time on boat projects. We had plenty of time to meet a boat load of new cruisers (many Texans). I helped a few cruisers with their computers and also went to the Ladies Luncheon held every Wednesday. We also anchored out at Dolphin Bay for 2 nights and enjoyed the relaxed social environment of Bocas and the marina.
We also traveled via a water taxi to a nearby town called Changuinola to tour a banana plantation co-op for the Chiquita Brands International Fruit Company. Bananas make up over 80% of Panama's exports, and the current workforce produces nearly a million tons of bananas a year for export by Chiquita. The color of the ribbon tied at the top of the bunch determines which bananas are harvested that day. The bunch are then cut by hand and brought from the fields via a conveyor belt with foam sheets placed between the banana bunches to limit bruising. Once at the plant, the bananas are inspected, cut apart into smaller bunches, washed with bleach and water, inspected again, rinsed with water, inspected again, the Chiquita sticker is added by hand and finally the bananas are boxed up and shipped out. Through much observation, we have determined that we (in Panama) get the bananas that didn't make the cut ... you're getting the good bananas.
If you wish to continue the adventure, take a look at our adventures in Costa Rica or go to What's Happening to get the latest scoop. Don't forget ... keep coming back.
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