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.