Paradise in Paradise Eastern Lemmon Cays

The mola ladies did stay away but an ulu filled with crab and lobster came buy. Although we just had some lobster we could not say no. I bought 3 big crabs (they are a type like a spider crab, body is the same size but the legs are only half the length that of a spider crab but still very meaty) for 2 bucks each and 4 little lobster for a buck. After 4 miles underway to the Swimming Pool we came buy some small islands part of the Eastern Lemmons which looked really inviting and so we went and checked it out. It looked like Paradise and Paradise dropped anchor at Banadup and settled right in. We are in 20 feet of water not the 40 plus we had been in the last two islands and we are surrounded by small coconut palm overgrown islands and a huge reef protecting us. No bugs either and each island here has a family living on it. The island right next to us Nuinudup, two young kids, about 4 and 7, paddled in their oversized ulu out to us to ask for candy. We don't have any candy on board but they sure loved the Swiss chocolate. They were too cute. Every time we took a photo of them they posed with a big toothy smile and thumbs up. After they had left the other half of the family showed up in their ulu and wanted to sell molas but since we bought plenty already Gaby settled with another Kuna bracelet.
The weather is pretty unsettled or probably it's the way it is at this time of the year; thunderstorms come at any time. Each day we do the rain shuffle and are getting better and better at it. The unfortunate thing is there are two directions NE and S where they can bring lots of winds just like that catching our sunshade and blowing us sideways. So now when we see one approach from these directions we try to roll up the shade as fast as we can.
After another squall drill Gaby and I hopped into the dinghy and ventured towards the reef and pulled onto an island with nobody living on it, walked around the islands and collected some beautiful shells.
Not long after we returned to the boat another one of those heavy wind squall came buy, of course exactly at the time again I was standing in the galley cooking, steaming with no windows open. Dinner was wonderful, sautéed lobster oven baked with a Béchamel sauce and topped with Parmesan cheese and 2 giant crab cakes each. There was not much talking at this table and when Gaby had her dessert (guava pie) in front of her she said she was never ever going to leave.

Lemmon Cays

Early in the morning already more ulus stopped with Kunas eager to sell molas and of course we got suckered into buying a few more. They truly are beautiful pieces of art.
What is a mola? It's a beautiful appliqué shirt all woman wear and is made by sewing and cutting different layers of colorful cloth, all are hand stitched. Every mola is different but each one tells a Kuna story and shows birds, fish, crab, lobster, turtles, medicinal plants, villages, mountains any thing that is important in their lives. Not all ulus (dug out canoe) stop to sell Molas, some sell fish or lobster. I could not pass on the two nice slipper lobster and a good size crab, what a treat! There is a cute little island next to our anchor spot with three palm trees on it. Gaby fell in love with it so we ventured ashore with a Swiss and a Norwegian flag and claimed the island for her and toasted the event with a bottle of champagne.

Chichime is a protected anchorage and surrounded by several coconut palm overgrown islands with sandy beaches. Cruise ships used to come here but now they go to Carti which makes it again more cruiser friendly for us.
Just a little over two miles south are the delightful islands of the Lemmon Cays and also well protected from weather from any direction. The entrance was a bit scary to navigate as it gets very shallow. We managed get the boat in reverse before getting stuck in the shallow. Two empty oil cans one red and yellow show the narrow and only 8 foot deep channel into the anchorage and there it is anywhere from 60 to 40 feet deep and hard to hook up. Finally on our third try the anchor set.
The names of the island are kind of funny: Ogopsibadup, Mandarraya, Kagandup, Tiadup, Koledup, Kuasidup, Miria, Nugaruachirdup, Tiadup, Kiledup and Kuasidup. The snorkeling here is incredible, Gaby and I were barely in the water when a friendly spotted eagle ray started to swim towards us then at close distance he started gliding around us curiously looking at us as curious a we looked at him. What a beautiful animal. There is an abundance of coral heads and each one is the home of colorful fish. After the fun snorkel we went ashore on one of the islands and found some interesting seeds and many dried out sea bisquets and no-see-ums biting my ankles while mosquitoes sucked on my arm. We were out of there! This was the first day we did not receive any rain, the sky was hazy and we had a brisk wind out of the west. Great we can keep the hatches open over night. At 4am I heard the slamming noise of the hatches; Sid was busy doing the rain shuffle again. A couple of hours later a huge system hit us with gusts over 36 knots and lots of lightning.
So far no mola ladies showed up; maybe we will have some money left over when we return to Portobello.

Chichime, San Blas

Riding the bus into town is really a hoot. It is an old school bus painted with fun graffiti, the inside is also all decked out. Above the front window is always a mirror the width of the bus, for him to see how many seats are still open, is surrounded with colored feathers. Pink feathers seem to be their favorite. Of course the busses are very, very old and not sure how well they are maintained. When they step on the brakes they have to pump them while they squeal like crazy, worse than running your fingernail on a chalk board.
When all the seats are taken they stuff everybody into the bus like in a sardine can and who does not fit hangs outside by the door. The bus was so full before I knew it I had a baby on my lap and a broom in my hand.

Ever since we arrived in Portobelo it's been nothing but rain, rain, rain and rain again with occasional thunder and lightning. Our neighbor got hit and was pretty lucky he only lost his VHF radio and GPS. Later when we finally left Portobello we noticed that our radar was not working proper anymore possibly due to the lightning strike to our neighbor. By the way I have to add that the 10 boats we know having been hit by lightning all except one had a brush (static disapator) on top of the mast, our neighbor did too. I guess from now on we will have to check our neighbors first if hey have a brush on the mast and if so anchor way away from them.

Gaby is having a wonderful time and Sid and I decided that we will keep her on the boat, she did a wonderful job cleaning the water line and I don't have to do any dishes anymore. After she had settled in and was used a little more of the motion of the boat we pulled anchor and left for the San Blas. The sea was calm there was not a breath of air so we knew we had to motor. As soon as we headed out of the bay and turned right the sea state changed. Huge (6 to 7)rollers fortunately far apart and a backwash from the shore turned it a bit too rough for poor Gaby. We assured her that green looked really good on her. We never had enough wind to sail but it was enough to motor sail until halfway when the engine over heated (hose clamp came off and ½ the antifreeze spewed out). As luck would have it, at the same time the wind started to pick up, we pulled all the sails out and in no time we were sailing 5 to 5.5 knots. It took our mechanic Sid about 15 minutes to fix the problem then we waited a little over an hour for the engine to cool as the wind died down again and we started the motor for the last 18 miles to Chichime in the San Blas. We watched as several clouds ashore started to rain and one started to follow us just about when we started up the engine again and we out ran it. But arriving in Chichime a huge system hung over there and poor Sid had to drop the anchor in heavy rain. We were not anchored 5 minutes when the first ulu (Kuna dug out) stopped to sell us molas. I told them to come back the next day. Early enough they knocked on the boat and we all had fun haggling with them for a few molas, a stuffed parrot and we even traded for reading glasses and big jars of glass beads.

Portobelo, Panama

Chris was right on with his weather again, we had a great sail for about 4 hours then the wind shut down and the iron jib had to be turned on. We had a quiet and calm night and both of us had restful sleep. After the sun came up she immediately was blocked out by dark clouds which grew darker and darker and the one behind us following us started to throw darts out of the sky into the water, one after another. We checked on the radar if there was a way to outrun it but it was heading our direction slowly. Luckily it changed course a bit and the lightning part missed us, we did get some hefty rain that seemed to last 2 hours. We had another two squalls approaching but all missed and were treated with a fun pod of dolphins playing in the bow wake while at the same time a Bird of Paradise flew over us in calm seas. We arrived in Portobelo early enough to relax for a while before enjoying the sunset. Checking in is a breeze here but I was told I had to go into Colon to get a cruising permit, which now costs 180 dollars and is good for one year. The following day I took or was going to take the local bus into Colon but the friendly lady that was waiting for the bus with me gave me a ride with her friend that drove buy and offered us both a ride. While at the office to get our permit papers I was told that I needed two copies of all our paperwork which I didn’t have, oh well. I immediately hopped into a bus to Panama City to get my passports renewed. It’s a hour and a half ride in very well air-conditioned bus, the AC has two settings: OFF and FREEZING. While freezing your butt off you watch a movie, it’s actually a pretty cool ride for $2.75. Back in Colon I took the local chicken bus for 1.75 and it took almost 2 hours to get back to Portobello. This bus stops at every corner and fills the bus up to the brim so that people hang outside the door. It’s fun though to travel as the locals do. While I was in town Portobelo had such a downpour of rain that the 70 foot boat in front of us created such an eddy to suck Paradise right into it. Luckily Sid saw what was going on, turned the engine on and drove out of the eddy.

Our third day in Portobelo we met with our friends Cindy and Reed who used to sail Sea Fever. We had met them first in Colon at the Panama Yacht Club then in Cartagena and now here, wonderful people. Both picked us up and we had a fun day catching up and we had the most wonderful Osso bucco at the Panamarina  Yacht Club. 

Cindy knew I was going to pick up my cousin Gaby at the airport and offered to take me into town to show me the ropes again where all the good stores were. We had a blast and it was Merry Christmas all over again in every store we went. They had goodies in there I haven’t seen in years. She dropped me off close to the airport at a fun mall. I tell you Panama is the place it to buy clothing, I found beautiful tops from 2.99 to 14.99, I don’t think any cloths cost more than that.

Finally went to the airport to pick up Gaby and meet her after 35 years, that was exciting. She likes roughing it so I took her back on the chicken bus and man did they pack it full again, but she survived and loved it.

In the mean time Gaby and I are having a wonderful time catching up and especially talking about our childhood, so many things we forgot have come in to our minds again. It’s really good to have her here. 

Fun Chicken Bus

Beautiful but always rainy Portobelo

Gaby and Sid

Gaby

Famous Fort in Portobelo

Paradise in background

Oh, did I mention that it rained here every single day ever since we arrived, except for today. I guess Gaby was right when she said she will keep the bad weather away from us!

Tropical Fruits

View from Crows Nest with Cartagena in background

Time is coming to an end here in Cholon. It has been a very fast couple of months with all kind of exitment some more fun than others. For instant a couple of weeks ago the owner of the island next to where we are anchored drove by on his power boat and invited to join them for a sunset cruise and after the sun had set they invited us onto the island for a cocktail. They had many questions about cruising, where we check in and some about our friends in Crows Nest. Five days after that the Armada (Navy) arrived and boarded all our boats without permission. There were three officers, one from the Navy, the others I am not quite sure which department they were from just that the Navy guy was in charge and he was harassing us. He wanted to see our paper work which are all in order except our cruising permits were still in Bogota but a phone call to our agent proofed that we were all legal. The Lieutenant found another reason he insisted we needed a Zarpe for the park which we know doesn't exist, we cleared that up then another and another, he tried really hard to nail us for something. We realized that this was clearly harassment especially when he threatened to tow us to the Naval Station in Cartagena all 5 boats. He did tell us at the begin that he was told that there were 5 American boats here! It was a 5 hour ordeal including searching all 5 boats, with no permission and when they finally left they ordered us to be at the Port Captain's office at 8 sharp following morning. Non of us did as we know he only deals with our agents. It was clearly harasment and we figured out that it was the friendly neighbor who had us on his island a few days back,what a nice guy! He's tried to get all the cruising boats out of this bay a year ago. We all went into Cartagena and had a meeting with our agents and learned that the boarding was totally illegal and that they had no right to threaten us as they did. We learned that when at anchor nobody can board you without a warrant, you may let them on board but you can decline. If you are afraid if you say no that they would take over your boat that would fall into piracy and they know they can't do that without getting in trouble. Our agents advised us to go to the National Park Authorities and file paperwork. As we entered the office and were introduced to the Boss of the Park he looked at Roberto and said I always wanted to meet you, you are famous in Cholon. He then showed him a page with many photos and asked if that was his boat. It sure was but the other photos were of garbage tossed in the mangroves and whoever sent the photo to the park authority claimed it was from Robert's boat Manatee. We all assured him that it was not Roberto's nor our trash as he weekly collects our trash and he takes it to Baru to the garbage dump. After filing paperwork we were told that we all were welcome to stay in the park as long as we wanted (one year then paper work has to be renewed) and pay 3 dollars per person per day which is used for the park upkeep.

Life was good again and we returned back to Cholon. Sid was still helping Roberto on Manatee and last week I was involved in some sewing project. I also had to see a dermatologist for a sore I had on my lips and she ended up whacking a piece away, ouch.

Weather has been changing and we have our first tropical Low's, hurricane season has arrived. We have a very good weather window for the next few days before westerlies are starting to blow which means we would sail into the weather so we are leaving here today.

We love Colombia and will return soon for some more of all the good things here, tranquil anchorage, historical city, friendly people and wonderful food. I am still amazed how many tropical fruits we are able to enjoy, most of them I don't even know the name of but they all are just yummy tasting.

Carmelita spoils us daily with papaya's from her garden and believe me they are the sweetest we've ever had. Here are a few fruits we enjoy:

Guava Apple

Algaroba (tates just like honey)

Guama (cotton candy flavor)

Mamom (tart and sour with same texture as Guama)

Tomate de Arbol (Tree Tomatoes taste best in juices)

Caimito
 

 

Lunch