Shelter Bay

We bid a fond farewell to our friends and helpers at Marina Carenero on Saturday afternoon, leaving somewhat later than we had anticipated as we discovered the engine's alternator had seized and needed replacing. Not a huge problem as we had a spare alternator available, but a hot and sweaty job for Ivan as access to our engine is verrrry squeezy. Anyway, a few hours and many curses later we were on our way.

Leaving Marina Carenero, Bocas del Toro

We hadn't planned on going too far anyway, just a little closer to the open sea to be able to leave reasonably early the next morning. We motored over to Isla Bastimentos and spent the night anchored off the village there. For dinner we hiked up the hill by torchlight to the Thai restaurant only to find they were ully booked. So we hiked back down the (very muddy) hill and ate in Ca Venice, a place that focussed on Italian style food because that's where the proprietors are from.

We left Isla Bastimentos at around 9.30am the following morning heading towards Shelter Bay at the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal. We had a "jolly lively time of it" as Dick from the Famous Five might say as the winds were fair and there was a bit of swell. I think we were averaging 6 knots over the 130 mile passage. We arrived at Shelter Bay somewhat bleary eyed as we had to hand steer all the way because the tiller pilot and the wind moitor both decided not to work.

Tomorrow we haul Brio out of the water to remove the seafood salad that has grown on her in the past 6 months, put a new coat of anti-foul on her and do a few other out-of-the-water jobs.

Back to Bocas

Well it's been a long time between posts, but as most of you know anyway, we have been back home in Australia enjoying the summer with family and friends. It all went too quickly and now here we are again in Bocas del Toro aboard Brio.

John & Marilyn with Cole and Huck the dog

We arrived here a week ago, having spent a lovely few days on the way over with our friends John and Marilyn who live in Los Angeles. As always, they were incredibly welcoming and we were lucky enough to be with them while they were babysitting their grandson, Cole, for a few days. He is just a magic little bundle of energy and laughs.

We arrived at Marina Carenero in Bocas just as the weekly 'pot luck' was happening (this is the saturday night communal dinner for people staying at the marina where everybody brings a dish to share). It didn't matter that we had just stepped off the plane and had nothing to offer, we were made to feel extremely welcome and got to say hello again to some folk who were here when we left 6 months ago, and got to meet lots of new people too. Since then, our Canadian friend John has joined us and we have been working at getting the boat ready to sail over to Shelter Bay marina at the Carribean entrance of the Panama Canal. Brio seems to have sat contentedly in her berth while we were away, so most of the work has been trying to remember what sails and sheets go where...oh and the small matter of evicting a few pets (weevils!).

John hamming it up in the main st of Bocas

The weather during the past week has been unseasonally wet and windy so no boats have been moving anywhere, but it looks like there is a break in it and we may even be able to get going tomorrow.

Our little dinghy finally has her name 'Miss Allie' put on

Canada

Our best laid plans for getting to Bowmanville, Ontario to spend 2 weeks with Daniel, Tanya and Baby Knight, went somewhat awry with Baby Knight’s arrival. However, as I said to Ivan, if I can spend 10 days on a yacht with hardly any sleep, I can sleep one night in an airport! And so we did, before catching the early morning bus to Toronto.

The reason we are here!

Baby Knight now named Zaden Troy Gnarly Knight with his gorgeous parents

Back to Bocas

We caught buses back to Almirante and then a water taxi to Bocas and another water taxi over to Marina Carenero to be reunited with Brio. We were surprised, after all of the rain we had been experiencing, to find the marina in drought. They had not had rain for two weeks and the beautiful basil and other herbs in the kiyuka gardens was dying off and the laundry had been closed for a week to conserve the precious rainwater.

The kiyuka herb garden before it dried up

We had a week to pack up the boat before leaving her for 6 months. It will be an experiment to see just what state she is in when we return. There is all sorts of advice available about how to leave a yacht in a hot, humid environment – foil on the windows, kitty litter in trays, shade cloth over the top. In the end we didn’t do all of these things, although I did try to store things so that air could circulate and cleaned the inside surfaces to try to reduce mould growth. Ivan was busy oiling tools to prevent rust and covering the propeller to prevent barnacle growth amongst other things. We will see when we return!

The day before we left, the rain came in the form of a wild storm. The timing was outrageous – we had just received word from Daniel, Ivan’s son, that Tanya, Daniel’s wife was in the final stages of labour with their first child. The storm caused a power outage and the internet was also out. It was another 6 or 7 hours before we could log back onto the internet to find out how Tanya and the baby were and in doing so we received the great news that she had had a boy and all was well. Of less importance, but also something we were keen to finalise, was our washing that was half done, but now with the power back on could be dried before the morning.

Panama - Boquete

We spent 2 days at Boquete, a town known for its cool climate, coffee, cloud forests and walking trails. We spent our first day enjoying a leisurely breakfast in a converted garage and then walked along a road out of town into the hills. After about an hour the cloud rolled in and the rain pelted, fortunately just as we were passing a bus shelter. So we ate our picnic lunch in the bus shelter and then hailed a passing taxi to take us back to town. We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging in chairs watching the river next to our hostel swell from the rain. The hostel (Suenos del Rio) is so close to the river that at night it is hard to tell if you are listening to rain fall or just the usual rushing of the river. It was a nice place to stay, especially as we had a small kitchen/lounge are to ourselves.



Cloud rolls across the forest

 The hostel owner put us in touch with Feliciano, a local guide who has been guiding in the area for most of his 56 years. He is a very fit and personable man. In order to avoid a washout, we were up at 6 the next morning to be ready by 7 for Feliciano to collect us and take us on a walk into the World Heritage listed national park, La Amisted. We had a really enjoyable walk with him – 3 hours up and 2 hours down – through lush, secondary forest. We saw some flowers and birds, but the season for the elusive quetzals was over. At the top of the walk we could see the Altlantic Ocean in one direction and the Pacific in the other. The path we were on continued all the way to Almirante on the Atlantic side. Feliciano sometimes takes people on a walk all the way. It takes 4 days when he takes tourists, but only 2 when he goes alone!



Sometimes the trail was very narrow



We were not long back in town when down came the rain in great torrents, so although the early start was a bit confronting for “she who loves her bed”, it was worth it to avoid a drenching on the walk and walking on a path turned into a river.

Ivan and Feliciano at the top of our walk

Panama - El Valle

After our two weeks in Colombia we spent 6 days on mainland Panama before going back to Brio. I was keen to see some wildlife in the cloud forests if possible.

Our first stop was a town called El Valle. After the beauty of the towns in Colombia, the Panamanian towns look very plain and unkempt. El Valle was one such town, but the Don Pepe Hotel was clean and comfortable. We were hungry after travelling most of the day to get there so bought some kebabs from a street cart. They tasted of firelighters and were completely inedible so we went to a busy looking restaurant for something else. It wasn’t a great culinary experience here either – the service was incredibly slow and at one point the whole restaurant filled with smoke. My rice arrived and was quite ok, but Ivan’s soup didn’t. We asked for the bill and his soup arrived not long after, but it was inedible glug. My Spanish is good enough to indicate the soup was not good so they struck it off the bill. Other people on nearby tables were also having problems with their food arriving, so it seems the restaurant was having a really bad day. Oh well, we retired to our room to take in the luxury of cable TV and proceeded to watch what looked to be the fall of the Gadafi regime as rebels took control of Tripoli.

Finding a good restaurant is tiring business

We spent the next day in the company of an American couple, Bob and Tammy, and we visited the zoo and frog sanctuary, the Macho falls and the local mud pools. We also found a better place to eat!

at the Macho falls

Having fun at the mudpools

Colombia - Villa de Leyva



From Bogota we went north to Villa de Leyva, an old colonial town with cobblestone streets and whitewashed houses and as quaint as the guidebooks say. It has a huge central square for a relatively small 'cbd' and when we arrived, it was showing the remnants of its annual kite festival that had been held the previous weekend. I could see how the open space and brilliant blue skies could be such an attraction for kite flyers. Villa de Leyva is in quite an arid area, and the Iguaque National Park next to the town has unique plants and is a sacred place for the local indigenous people. We enjoyed the temperate climate of Villa de Leyva after the cool of Bogota (average year round temperature of 14 degrees). We also enjoyed doing some physical activity - cycling and hiking - as we are both feeling like our finely honed, taut and trim bodies :) are sliding into serious disrepair.



Villa de Leyva central square

We spent most of one day on rented bicycles touring around the area. Fortunately the traffic in Villa de Leyva is minimal and much slower than in Bogota and Cartegena. Our first stop was the Azul pools - promoted to tourists as unusually blue lakes. Yes they are blue. It was early in the day and they didn't look that inviting to swim in so we decided to push on. It was a steep hill back up to the main road and Ivan had just started up it when his chain broke. Luckily for us there was a group that had arrived at the pools on horseback at the same time as we had and the group's guide had a mobile phone that he used to call the person we rented the bikes from. They sent a car out to pick us and the bikes up and we went back to town to select another bike for Ivan. Then we headed off on the bikes again!......

Ivan and the fossil 

synchronised goats

A fuel station named after our boat!

the old monastery

the Terracotta House

The next day we walked for a few hours with Christian, a local guide, and another couple into the Iguaque National Park behind the town. As we walked we stopped frequently to admire the indigenous flora, including a number of types of orchids. The views were panoramic from the top.

Iquaque National Park

The next day as we walked to a nearby waterfall, again we were interested to see many different types of plants, including wild native tomatoes and potatoes, as Colombia is where these staples of our diet today originate from. The native tomatoes were tiny, but delicious.

native tomato

On our last morning in Villa de Leyva we wandered around the small weekly market. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a range of good quality produce at a market. The consistent year round climate of the area allows many fruit and vegetables to grow all of the time rather than being seasonal.

A farrow of piggy banks...just for Wilma

market produce

We caught the bus back to Bogota to spend our final night there before going back to Panama. Verne and Troy were having a housewarming party that night so we got to say a final goodbye to them and their friends we had met previously. On return to the hostel we were staying in my uneasiness about Bogota is confirmed when we are approached by an American man claiming to have been robbed and asking for money to help him out. While his situation sounded plausible, we didn’t really believe him, and he wasn’t going to stop his pleading. So it being midnight, standing in a cold, dark street and wanting to get rid of this guy, we gave him 5,000 pesos (about $2.50 – enough for a meal) just so he would go away. It worked.