09:17.064N 079:57.262W   

 

You cannot fault Panama for its diversity in terms of cruising options.  After nearly 7 weeks of deserted islands and sandy beaches we have now taken Bamboozle up the Rio Chagres and have the sights, sounds and smells of the Central American rainforest pressing in on either side.  The entrance to the river is guarded by the old Spanish Fort San Lorenzo which dates back to the days when the river was one of the main routes across the isthmus and a fortune in gold and silver would travel in small boats down its winding course.  This wealth soon attracted the attention of pirates and privateers including one of my personal heroes, Sir Francis Drake, and later Captain Henry Morgan (of rum fame) who used the river to help relieve the "Dons" of their excessive New World loot.  Under this fort the narrow river mouth is itself a little un-nerving with a fast flowing current swirling over a rapidly shoaling sand bank with next-to-no visibility through the muddy waters.  With the depth gauge yoyo-ing alarmingly we crossed our fingers and ploughed on up against the current and soon found ourselves in the peace and quiet of the lower river.

 

In previous centuries the whole river was famed for the power and unpredictability of its floods but in the early 1900s it was dammed about six miles upstream from the mouth to hold the water into Gatun Lake which forms the main waterway of the Panama Canal and provides the quite staggering amounts of fresh water required to keep the canal locks in operation.  As a result you can now navigate safely up as far as the dam and have the unusual experience of anchoring in the river hemmed in on either side by the jungle.  We are actually only about 6 miles as the crow flies from the town of Colon but it is hard to believe that one is so close to civilisation (though I'm not at all sure that Colon qualifies for that description!).  The wildlife is spectacular but it takes a sharp pair of eyes and a good set of "Rommels" (binoculars) to have a decent look at anything before is disappears back into the greenery.  There are birds everywhere although you would need a better knowledge than I have to list them all correctly here.  We have seen amongst many others: Toucans, Green parrots, Blue headed parrots, Hummingbirds, Kingfishers, Electric Blue Tits(!) and huge vulture like black things that soar on the thermals.....we are doing our best to put a name to them all but our World Book of Seabirds is frankly not much help. 

 

The two sorts of monkeys we have seen are simplet to identify.  The "White faced monkeys" are easy to spot because they have got white faces and the "Howler monkeys" are pretty obvious because they seem to spend the whole time making the most un-nerving roaring-groaning-screaming-howling noise that sounds like it comes from the the monster in some dodgy Hollywood horror movie.  In this environment "Katie" our pedal-powered kayak is the ultimate form of transport as we can glide silently along the edge of the forest or push up into the little overgrown creeks that branch off from the main river.  We have been rising early and pedaling hard upstream in the gathering light to the base of the dam where we pour ourselves a  mug of fresh coffee from a thermos as we drift back downstream with the current.  This morning we were rewarded not only with a full blown dawn chorus from the Howler monkeys (we got so close underneath them we nearly got peed on) but we also managed to find one of the river's much talked about but not often seen crocodiles.  After many false spottings (known as "croco-logs") we finally found the genuine article surfacing to eye us inquisitively as we pedaled by.  They are magnificently scary primeval beasts and to be fair he was quite a bit bigger than the "little" Central American version I was expecting.  Maybe it was the smell of the coffee that attracted him but it is amazing how one can suddenly feel so out of place and exposed.  I suddenly realised we were sitting in, rather than on, his river and I will most decidedly not be swimming in all this lovely fresh water!