| We moored at the Balboa Yacht Club after transiting the Canal. The tides here are daunting...a full 20 foot swing between high and low. We had great views of transiting ships as they passed under the Bridge of the Americas. . |
| Archipelago Las Perlas - the Pearl Islands |
| s/y Nine of Cups Panamá 2003 |
| Balboa - the other side of the canal |
| The tides weren't the only difference between the Atlantic and the Pacific side. Panama City is clean, modern and safe. Skyscrapers line the horizon. There are ritzy restaurants and any amenity offered in a large city. We stayed only long enough to do a bit of provisioning and we were off again. |
Welcome to the Pacific Ocean
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| Vasco Nuñez de Balboa On September 25, 1513, the Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa led an expedition across what is now Panama from its Atlantic coast to its Pacific coast. He became the first European to see the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean. His discovery provided additional proof that America was a separate continent between Europe and Asia. |
| I provisioned for a couple of weeks and asked David to catch me some fish to complete our ship’s stores. "Sure", said he and proceeded to catch a trevally… first we’d ever caught, but good eating. |
| We’d heard from friends that there were lots of whales in the area and we were thrilled to see them. A playful pod of about 5, spouting and sounding and having a good time. We turned off the engine and drifted towards them. They’ re so massive, yet so graceful. |
| Without a doubt, the prettiest place we visited in Las Perlas was Punta Cocos on Isla el Rey. This is a photographer’s heaven …breathtaking scenery and vivid colors. Near the anchorage is the Servicio Nacional de Panama, an agency comparable to the Coast Guard. They hailed us in to ask to basic boat and crew info. When we asked to walk around the island, one soldier was only too happy to act as a guide for us on a 2-hour hike. He explained the island had lots of wildlife including wild peccaries, lots of boas, parrots, loros, iguanas and caimans. Beyond the fact that scenery doesn’ t get much better, this area also provided brightly colored scallop shells and lots of sea beans on the beach! |
| David’s hands are never idle. We beachcombed on Pedro Gonzalez and found lots of small conch shells which soon became napkin rings. |
| Next we moved to Espirtu Santo, where the flowers alone could have taken days to photograph. The trimaran,(right) Wind Chaser, hit a reef in August 2003. The captain, Nick, with the help of some other cruisers, managed to keep her afloat and get her to land on Espiritu Santo. For two months, they camped out on the island and through hard work and the benevolence of other cruisers and Neptune, Nick was able to repair the 8x2 foot hole in her center hull. While we were there, David offered our gasoline generator and we gave him gasoline, expoxy and food. He finally got her afloat again on September 26th while we were there and we celebrated with pizza and beer aboard Nine of Cups that evening. |
| Mogue and the Darien |
| From Las Perlas, we traveled up the Rio Tuira, Panama’s longest navigable river, to La Palma, the capital of the Darien province. The Darién is an ecological bridge between South and North America and it is protected by a national park, the largest in Panama and the second biggest in Central America. Construction of the Pan American Highway as far as Yaviza in the Darién has produced deforestation, but the Darién Gap still stands untouched between Yaviza and Colombia. With 570,000 hectares, Darien is a very humid, dense, primary rainforest and the home of the famous Harpy Eagle. The indigenous tribes here are the Wounaan and Emberra. While ashore one day, we met a Canadian who was staying with an Wounaan family. He introduced us to Amelio whose pregnant wife wanted to get to her home village in the jungle to pick up her mother who would deliver her baby. We paid for the gasoline for the motorized "panga" (dugout canoe) and went along for the ride. |
| We anchored off La Puntita and marveled at the thatched huts on stilts we saw ashore. |
| With Amelio and his very pregnant Emberra wife, Diana, we traveled by motorized panga up the Rio Mogue to Diana’s home village of Mogue |
| As we pulled up to the village, we saw Diana’s uncle finishing up carving out a panga. |
| The Emberra huts are built on stilts about 8’ or so off the ground. There are no exterior walls, nor internal walls. Everything is just open and the breeze blows through. Since there are no walls on which to hang anything, baskets, tools, interesting pieces of wood, etc. are just hung from the ceiling on a piece of cord. |
| A log with steps notched in it is the “ladder” to ascend into the hut. We watched babies, pregnant women with their arms full and even dogs ascend these ladders, we figured we could, too. Requires a bit of balance! |
| The river and village are quite a pastoral sight. Several women were washing clothes in the river, kids were swimming, a young mother walked in with her baby in arms and starting bathing. The women are mostly bare-breasted and wear a brightly colored patterned skirt, which it seems, they rarely remove…they even bathe with them on. |
| We were invited "up" for lunch.We sat on low benches and were given a spoon and a plate of rice with onions topped with a piece of the fish we had provided and prepared by Diana’s aunt. Diana sat on the floor, as did Minerva while both their husbands swung in hammocks. The people sleep on the floor as well, we were told. |
| Darien is noted for its rice growing. We saw a rice threshing building in La Puntita and here in Mogue, several pieces of corrugated tin roofing were being used to dry rice. |
| We saw more huge spiders (bigger than Buicks!) than I care to mention. |
| The women went visiting and Amelio found us a guide to go through the jungle up into the hills in search of the endangered Harpy Eagle. We switched into our hiking boots, crossed the river in a panga and set out along a muddy red clay path. At first the path meandered past some huts, but then the trail got denser. Our guide had a machete in hand and chopped his way through the thick jungle growth. The trail was quite apparent some times, but the jungle quickly takes over when trail use diminishes. Leaf cutter ants, indomitable and ubiquitous, marched across the trail in long lines. It was fascinating watching the pieces of green leaf, held high above their heads, pass by as if moving on their own. |
| We walked very quickly, trekking through a couple of streams, across a log over a river, up a gravelly riverbed, scrambling up hills, slippery with red mud. We hiked about 2 hours in…6+ miles…then the guide told us to sit and pointed out an eagle’s nest in the crotch of a very tall tree. We patiently waited for 1½ hours, ants crawling up our legs, innumerable insects buzzing around our sweaty heads. The guide whistled for the eagles every once in a while, but alas no eagles. A quicker trek back to the village. In the interest of education, I nicked a harpy eagle photo from the internet. |
| Everything grew big here...including this huge Magnificent Owl butterfly. |
| Our Thoughts on Panama… We have four really distinct impressions of Panama.
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| Now, the plan was to cross the Pacific this year, BUT we read an article about Ecuador and thought "What the heck?". So...we hung a left from Panama and we're going to Ecuador. Care to come along? |