Beautiful Portobelo

Beautiful Sunsets

 We have never seen soooo much rain in our entire cruising career. It rains every day here at least twice and for sure every night around 04.30. Wouldn’t you think that with all the rain the boat would be clean? Nope, the at times very heavy downpour just moves the dirt around. We have thought about painting the boat green and have green canvas so you don’t see all the algae growing everywhere. Daily mildew patrol is a must inside the boat, I use a Windex/Vinegar solution to rub down all the walls to keep up with the fast growing nuisance. But this area is just absolutely beautiful and we both fell in love with it. Portobelo is located in the northern part of the Isthmus of Panama and has a deep natural harbor.

Today Portobelo is a sleepy town with a population of fewer than 3000 people. Portobelo was founded in 1597 by Spanish explorer Francisco Velarde y Mercado, but legend has it that Christopher Columbus originally named it in 1502 Puerto Bello, meaning Beautiful Port. It is also said that Francis Drakes died of dysentery in 1596 and was buried here in a lead coffin. Between the 16h and 18^th century Portobelo was silver exporting port. 

Portobelo was attacked by privateer pirate Captain Henry Morgan (still Sid’s favorite rum) in 1668. Despite the good fortifications he managed to capture Portobelo with his fleet of 450 men and plundered it for 14 days, stripping nearly all it’s wealth while raping, torturing and killing the inhabitants. Wow didn’t think he was such a mean dude.

After the British disaster in the Blockade of Porto Bello under Admiral Hosier in 1726 the port was attacked and catpured a new in November 1739 by a British fleet by Admiral Vernen.

In 1741 the Spanish defeated Vernen and recovered Portobelo in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias. Vernon was forced to return to England with a decimated fleet, he lost more than 18 000 of his men.



Portobelo is most famous for its gold and silver trade, there was at time so much gold in this town that silver ingots were stored on the streets.

Still today many sunken ships are found with gold and silver coins and some lucky folks find a silver coin now and then on the beaches.

Portobelo is also famous for the recently renovated iglesia de San Juan de dios which is the home of Cristo Negro de Portobelo a black Christ statue which has several stories how this statue got here. Each story dates back to the 17^th century and each story has three parts, the arrival of the statue, the refusal of the stature to leave the village and its veneration. The version we heard is that it was found in a sunken ship. Regardless of which version, each story conclude that the statue is responsible for miraculous deeds in the lives of his devotees. Twice a year the robes of the Black Christ statue are changed, each is used only once. The Christ is adorned with a red wine colored robe for the Black Christ Festival which is held each October 21 and is changed to a purple one for Holy Week. Tens of thousands of pilgrims visit the church for the Black Christ Festival. We at the Festival 10 years ago but it left a bit of a bitter taste in our mouth as within the first 10 minutes we came ashore some hoodlum tried to pick pocket Sid twice, without success I have to add. Now 10 years later we find Portobelo to be safe and very friendly. Then we had less than 10 boats in the anchorage now there are more than 50 boats here and is now the main port for Back-Packers. There must be around 30 boats that shuttle Back-Packers from here to Cartagena and back and fourth. We call them cattle boats as they overload the boats with these young kids who have no idea about boat safety and how rough the waters in this area can get. A 40 foot boats takes on as many as 14 youngsters and the boats themselves look in pretty bad shape and just this year alone 4 Back-Packer boats ended on reefs in the San Blas. The most disturbing thing about them is that they take over the beautiful remote San Blas islands, don’t respect the Kuna Yala laws or the Kuna people in general, leave garbage behind and give us cruisers a bad name.

Coming back to Portobelo, we’ve been enjoying it immensely and have gotten so busy that we hardly find time to keep up with the Blog. At least twice a week (mostly Manuela) takes the bus into Colon or Panama for shopping. The bus ride to Colon takes about 1 ½ hours and costs $1.60, to Panama from there another 1 ½ for 3.10 in an air-conditioned bus with movies, not bad at all. Since we have friends on the Pacific side anchored in the Las Brisas area overlooking the incredible skyline of Panama City we decided to go for a visit. It was really great to run into Lena and Larry on now Hobo,  Allonsy was the old boat when we met in Mexico and realized it had been already 5 years since we last met in Jacksonville Florida. Not just that but Dona on Nintai, we also had met in Mexico, joined us for a delicious lunch and the whole fun day and was also told that Giny and Werner on Ornen, we also had met in Mexico, were on their way on the ferry from the Las Perlas and arrived at 5, so we waited an extra hour for them and it truly was a great surprise for them and us. Hey three boats in one visit that’s amazing. Another visit we did to Panama was to see an old friend we had met at the Pedro Miguel Yacht Club 10 years back Carl Smith, doesn’t look a day older than when we met him and he still hast the same sense of humor, we had a wonderful day catching up and will have more to come as this is not our only visit to see him. There I said it, we will stick around in Panama for a while.

All our friends on Puerto Lindo, keep us busy for the rest of the time, Thursday afternoon its girls domino afternoon. Saturday nights, Karaoke at Captain Jacks which the last one was a huge turnout and every body had a wonderful time with the many talented singers, no seriously they all knew how to carry a tune. Sunday’s food and ping-pong affair at Binnie’s, which is always a lot of fun and I even managed to kick Reed’s butt in ping-pong.

I enjoy most cuddling with the sloth.

 So here we are settling in for a while into an area we fell in love with and enjoy all our new found friends. In-between we find time to battle mildew and manage to keep the boat from turning green. 

End of Gaby's vacation

Gaby’s last two days were spend in Panama City with shopping at Albrook Mall, the biggest mall I have ever seen; Gaby was dumbfound to see the prices, a pair of jeans $5.99, blouses and T-Shirts $ 2.99, shoes as low as 1.99 and not to mention the low liquor prices.

We enjoyed a bottle of bubbly in the pool on the top floor of the Costa Inn hotel with a magnificent view over all the high rise buildings of down town Panama and all the freighters anchored out in the bay awaiting their transit through the canal, enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Casa Blanco in the new-old town “Casco Viejo” which reminds me of Cartagena. Of course you haven’t seen Panama if you haven’t seen the Panama Canal so we went to the Miraflores Lock and spent almost all day visiting the museum and watching the big ships go through while having lunch at the restaurant, best buffet I have had in a long time. It’s fascinating watching the boats come through the locks and brought memories back from our Panama crossings. It’s definitely a different view from the visitor’s center than being on the canal itself.

We ended her visit to Panama with a Swiss cheese Fondue at the Rincon Suiza recapturing Gaby’s vacation. Gaby was a wonderful guest and we enjoyed having her with us and hope she will come visit us again. She truly enjoyed her vacation as she satisfied her curiosity what we do all day living on a boat.

A couple days later we invited Cindy and Reed over for dinner to catch up with them. 

Cindy and Reed

Bob and Jeannie

Then we rented a car together with Jeannie and Bob on Island Dreamin’ and drove all over Panama City. Manuela did all the driving and luckily Bob knowing the city somewhat did and incredible job navigating her through the busy streets of Panama. We dropped our Radar off and a week later we found out that it was not hit by lightening there is nothing wrong with the radar it’s our ground plane that needs to be fixed which will keep Sid busy for a while. We hit so many stores in Panama and are just fascinated how low the prices are in pretty much everything and you can find pretty much anything here. Two days of just shopping around finding parts and this and that we decided we needed a fun day and extended our car rental for an extra day driving to the Panama Canal where Manuela played tour guide and managed to get into the Miraflores visitor center for free while Jeannie, Bob and Sid paid half price for being old farts.

They enjoyed the museum and we all agreed how incredible it is to watch the boats come through. Our fun trip ended having a gourmet pick-nick in Gamboa along the Canal and visiting the Gamboa Resort, wow what an incredible hotel.



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Gamboa Resort

 




While girls were watching view

Boys watched TV !!

Oops caught!!!

Not a boring moment in and on Paradise. If I thought that we would have some relaxing days after the driving stress in Panama I was wrong. Cindy and Reed picked us up for a pizza lunch and then to their friend Binnie’s house where they all meet every Sunday for ping-pong. The coolest thing about this visit was getting a tour of her beautiful house to find she has 3 sloths. Where is the camera when you need it? They truly are cute, 2 of them are 2 toed and the little one is a 3 toed sloth. The 3 toed are very mellow and friendly the 2 you have to be careful they have some nice K9 teeth that can do some harm not to mention the claws on their toes.

We managed to rest for two days before heading to the Free Zone in Colon for one day, wow that is like a city in itself. No wonder they give you a 3 day pass as one day is definitely not enough to see everything. Early the following day Manuela headed into Panama City with Cindy and Reed while Sid worked in the bilge redoing the ground plane and bonding wires under the floor and anywhere where it is hard to get to. Poor guy had cut up hands and nicks and bruises all over when I came home. But that didn’t keep him from joining us again for a Free Zone day.

And boom the week is over again and we will be heading out to Linton for ping-pong and to pet the sloths.

The weather has been grumpy all this time, around 4 pm a nasty swell comes in from the west and rolls all the boats around and of course it rains at least once a day and we’re getting pretty good with the rain shuffle.

We are still waiting for the mail and a few parts. We will start moving around soon we hope.



We are just  having fun!