We got onto our 50 foot catamaran around 5 pm on the first evening. We introduced ourselves to the other 6 passengers, to the captain and his girlfriend, and to the owner of the boat who was serving as the cook. It was a beautiful sunset in Cartegena harbour. Shortly after sunset we started cruising and had ourselves some dinner.
The first leg of the journey was out in the open ocean for about 44 hours. The captain and owner switched spots every 4 hours as we went nonstop. There were a few rain showers overnight, so we had to close the windows in the cabin which was a bit stuffy.
Overall the seas were quite calm to our relief. We tried fishing a bit by just trolling, but were unsuccessful. It was cool to be cruising and not see any land in sight. We only used one sail the first morning as there was a head wind most of the way.
At one point, a pod of dolphins raced in front of the boat.
On the second morning, we woke up to the sight of land which was Panama. Around 10 am we anchored at a spot between 4 small islands.
The San Blas islands consist of around 350 islands off the coast of Panama. They are inhabited by the Kuna Yala people who are almost self-governing. Upon anchoring, many canoes came over to sell numerous handmade clothing, jewelry, and other crafts.
A couple fishermen also stopped by to sell us some lobster which we thoroughly enjoyed that night.
It was nice to be able to jump off the boat to cool off in the water. We spent much of the day snorkelling. There were a few coral reefs around and there was many fish although most of them were quite small. I saw a few squids ripping around as well.
That night we headed over to one of the islands and played a little beach volleyball and then returned to the boat around dark for an amazing lobster dinner.
The next morning, we lifted up the anchor and drove along for a couple more hours to the next island stop. Hear there was some really good snorkelling. There was lots of soft coral, sea fans, many fish, some squid, and a few spotted eagle rays. We spent much of the day in the water. There was also a huge barracuda that hung around underneath our boat for most of the day. At one point he must have been spotted by a Kuna fishermen as he came to us later trying to sell it to us for dinner.
The kuna are spear fishermen which involves free diving and shooting a spear with an elastic apparatus that has a line connected to the spear.
The next day was our last of the journey. After a morning of snorkelling around a shipwreck, we headed to customs. Once we got our passports stamped, we jumped on a fast boat to the mainland. After going upriver a bit, we got off the boats and headed in SUVs to Panama City.
Our captain flirted with some Kuna women a bit and here they are giving him some bracelets.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment