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.