Sponge Bob Square Pants and a Tsunami

This morning we had set our alarms early as we heading out towards the La Perlas Islands in the Gulf of Panama. As we were getting ready to raise the anchor Daniel and Nicholai from the Danish ING boat were heading towards the marina. ‘Hey you guys what are you up to this early in the morning?’. Well it appears that their boat wasn’t sailing for the Galapagos as planned so they had both decided to jump ship and Nicholai was taking Daniel ashore to catch a plane to the Las Perlas for some diving before heading out to the Galapagos. We duly offered him a lift which he gratefully accepted and jumped aboard.

Whilst this was all going on ‘Natibo’ a big cat with Sponge Bob Square Pants on her sides was also lifting her anchor and came steaming over to us with the skipper shouting ‘Tsunami is on its way from an earthquake in Chile – we have to get out into deeper water before 08:50 – pass the message on’. Our anchor came up so quick and we duly passed the message on. We headed out to sea and within half an hour as we looked back towards Panama the whole fleet was heading out behind us. Luckily Honalee can take big waves so we knew that once we got out into deeper water we would be relatively safe. At about 09:15 we had 2 bigish waves come beam on to us, we are still not certain whether this was the result of the Tsunami or not, it could have been the wake from a big boat miles away - who knows!

Nigel caught his first fish today – two infact! One was a dolphin fish (don’t panic it wasn’t Flipper!) the colour of a rainbow and the other was a tuna. The dolphin fish was soooo good to eat – the best fish I have ever eaten! The tuna was not so good, far too bloody and the meat was very dark more like a piece of steak. They were both b*ggers to kill, and even the copious amounts of alcohol poured into their gills didn’t have much effect. In the end Daniel clubbed them to death, I think we need stronger booze – Ted’s 4 year old Greek Ouzo couldn’t quite cut the mustard

The Isle of Contrador was our first stop, it’s the Panamanian version of Mustique where the rich and famous have holiday homes. Nigel and I went ashore to look for a bar or hotel and the usual internet. A guy saw us struggling up the beach with the dinghy and came down to help us lift it up the beach (we now have to contend with tides now we are in the Pacific). Turned out he was a builder working on one of the beach front villas and he invited us up to the property and even sent one of his builders to show us the way to the hotel. It cost us 4 beers but hey we got to nosey round a million $ home and they got to practise their English.

Over run with Pelicans and Cormorants

The Las Perlas Islands at this time of year are visited not only by whales but by thousands of pelicans and cormorants, all taking advantage of the millions of shrimp and krill brought in by the Humboldt current. It seems at times that the sea is boiling with fish and all around we are surrounded by wildlife in various forms. Whilst we were anchored off the Isle of Viveros Nigel hung off the transom and did some night fishing, the boat was surrounded by quite literally millions of fish. Quite by chance as we had the dive torch on the water we were visited by a very ‘large fish’ it was either a barracuda or a small shark – Nigel quickly moved his legs back into the boat - toes look like bait!

March 3rd (Steph’s Birthday)

Today we are anchored off the Isle of San Jose at the southern tip of the Las Perlas. This is a huge bay which I have to say is not the most scenic and there isn’t as much wildlife about as the others. I decided not to go ashore with Nigel after reading the guide books – too many wild pigs, snakes and crocodiles ashore. Apparently there are Boa Constrictors ashore that live on the wild pigs, I figured if they are happy to attack wild pigs they wouldn’t be too unhappy at taking a pop at me as well! Nigel is quite happy to go poking about in the undergrowth, well he was until the other day when a French guy on Viveros warned him about the constrictors. He duly went off to explore the mangroves until he figured that it looked like something out of a movie scene and didn’t hang around to find out whether he was up to the Johnny Weisenmuller part of wrestling a boa in the jungle.

I guess if we hadn’t have been to the San Blas Islands then I would consider the Las Perlas quite scenic, but by far I think the San Blas out weigh them by a long shot. Nigel and I have joked about getting tattoos at the end of our trip with the Lat’ and Long’ of our favourite place – mine so far is Porvenir in the San Blas. From someone who is very anti tattoo - it’s going to have to been a pretty special place to be etched on my butt for eternity!

Isla Del Rey

This was to be our last stop before heading out towards the Galapagos Islands. We anchored up just of the mouth of a river which was supposed to be great to explore on a rising tide. Lorrigray a boat that we had met on several occasions was anchored up beside us so we all decided to take a little sojourn up river into the jungle on our dinghies.

Wow - what a way to spend an evening! We carried on up river surrounded by jungle, not something that I ever thought I would ever do (especially in close vicinity to salt water crocs!). The mangroves were amazing, and the birds calling to each other was out of this world – we felt like we were on a movie set. We decided to head back when it began to close in on us and vines started coming down into the river – not only was it mozzie heaven we thought that we were getting too close to things that lived on the river banks.

We spent the rest of our night on the back of Honalee with the crew from Lorrigray enjoying a ‘few’ sundowners!