At last Trish's blog
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Thu 13 May 2010 19:11
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The long awaited blog from
Trish
Well where do I start, there is so much to tell you
all. I have decided to go back as far as going through the Pannama Cannal. I
think that is far enough back, as you will have read about it already from
Stewarts blogs so I am not going to try and remember the dates of when we did
these things, just write about my memories.
The Panama Cannal was a piece of cake on a very big
scale. And I mean VERY BIG scale. We had our line handlers imported from
Scotland; Angus, Avril and Dave. They played a very important part along with
myself in dealing with our lines going through the cannal. Our Captain Stewart
always ready to keep us right and our minds on the job, while he kept our boat
in the right place at the right time going thought the locks.
We were all very excited about the canal passage
and all a bit aprehensive. We had to wait about four days in Shelter Bay Marina,
after the time we thought we had booked to go through, and I think that this was
the hottest and most humid place that I have ever been. It really was quiet
tough hanging around waiting for "our day" to go through. When we did get our
call to go through we had sailed out of the marina to go on safari up the
river next to shelter bay which turned out to be a very wonderful experience. We
were just about ten miles, as the crow flies, away from civilization and we were
in the deepest jungle, listening to howler monkeys screaming back at Stewart's
atempt at talking to the animals. Usually he is not that interested in talking
to the animals, but on this occasion I think he was enjoying the craic of seeing
who could make the most noise. He had interested parties from both sides of the
river and the trees were shaking and the roars were deafening and quite eerie
- sometimes you thought it was a lions roar or maybe a demented dog trhat
you were hearing. We saw beautiful jungle greenery, and gorgeous flowers along
the river while out on our dingy explorations. We looked for, but did not
see any alligators, but we did see a troup of white faced monkeys that
looked so cute and cuddley (unlike the sound of the howler monkeys) We also saw
lots of different birds some that we thought to be Parrots and Tucans others
like Vultures and many Egrets - black ones and white ones.
On the whole there was alot of wild life to look
out for on our trip up the River.
Anyway I was meant to be talking about how easy it
was to go throught the Panama Canal. Once we got the hang of it, there really
was nothing to get uptight about and we had no problems with the transit. All
was very interesting having the experience of the unbelievable hugh scale of the
canal and the size of the hugh ships that go through it. It is something I will
always remember.
Then we had a few days in
the Islas Pearlas where we chilled out around some nice beaches and
did some snorkeling. It was so nice to be away from the stiffling heat of Panama
and be out in the open air and breezes of the anchorages off deserted
islands.
We then set off for our 5 day sail to Galapagos in
which time we saw a lot of activity in the sea. We saw dophins and rays and a
lot of balls of fish bubbling on the surface with the sea birds having a feast
at their expense.
We still had our visitors from Scotland to help on
this short passage and I think that we had a pretty happy ship as we had a happy
hour every day and the winds were being good to us, so our passage was short and
sweet with plenty laughs along the way.
Now, this is one of the things that I was very
excited about - arriving in Galapagos. On route we had done alot of reading up
an all the different things that we might be able to do in Galapagos, but our
main thought as we arrived was where we were going to find the pub that would
make the best Blue Footed Boobie cocktails. After 5 whole days and
nights at sea for our two novice ( longer than a day sail )
sailors and Angus and I were very keen to go
ashore and see people and shops and pubs. Stewart was keen too he just doesn't
like to be seen to be as much of a lush and the rest of us. All the amazing
wildlife that can only be found here would have to wait for one
more day to show itself to us Scots.
The main town in Galapagos was a revelation to us,
it was so interesting with a lot of shops and restaurants and
pubs. We had such a good time there. We found a cafe that the
locals use, that had the best breakfast you could imagine. It was also
the most different kind of breakfast that you could imagine. This breakfast was
stew, rice, scrambled egg and a plantain doughball, the size of a tennis ball,
with gorgeous gravy. It was a feat to be able to eat half of it, but it was so
so good, and very cheap. This, we would wash down with a very creamy milk shake
of a wild berry flavour. These sailors did not loose wieght on our trip to
Galapagos. We also found a very good pub with an extented happy hour and a
wonderful new drink to us called Caiperina (rum lime juice and sugar)
- very delicious.
Now about the amazing wild life that we saw there.
First when you arrive you notice all the sea birds every where. Boobies,
Pelicans, Storm Petrels, Egrets the list goes on and on. Then you notice that
the bay is full of sealions and that the sealions like to sleep a lot and they
are very at home sleeping on boats and dingy's or the steps up from the water to
the pontoons to get ashore. They are everywhere. Then when you get ashore there
was a sign to go to the Darwin Centre, which is very interesting to go to.
It has a vast amount of information about Darwin's findings on the island and
how he developed his theory of evolution. There is also a breeding progam for
the giant tortoises and several very large pens where you can go into, to get
right up to the giant tortoises to see them as close as you like. We went in to
see them and this boy tortoise was in very fine form and proceeded to show us
how they mate. It is a very slow leisurley thing with loud growns and a lot of
clunking of shell. This guy was feeling very fine cause he went straight from
the first girl tortoise to the one beside her and did it all again. I have to
say that the girls didn't show much pleasure as he was very clumsy and stood on
their heads and quite often got the wrong end as well. There was lots of other interesting things to see there as well and
was well worth the visit, I loved it.
We did lots of other things there including
a scuba dive. This was really great and I got over my worries of diving
with sharks as I think that I was diving in shark city. Thankfully they were not
interested in us at all and were mostly just chilling out on the bottom. I must
also mention that they were white tip sharks and not much bigger than me so
that is why I was not that bothered about them. (If they are bigger than me
then that is when I start to get uncomfortable about things.) We saw lots of
other nice stuff down there too. We had sea lions swimming with us and doing all
sorts of acrobatics in the water, a joy to
watch. We saw turtles and beautifully coloured little fish, then at the end of
the dive we came up in a ball of tuna swimming around in a hugh circle with us
coming up in the middle of them and we caught a glimpse of a very large
Black Tip shark so I was well ready to get out then and was first in the queue
to get back on board the dive boat.
We also went on a two day trip to one of the other
Islands, Isobella. There we went on a tour up to the top of a volcano to see the
biggest crator you could imagine, all very interesting and mind boggling at the
sheer scale of the thing, but the best part for me was that the four hour walk
was broken up by getting to ride horses for part of the way and I had a blast on
the horse and watching Stewart on his. Both of us are not sure about how to ride
a horse other than get on and hold on. We met some really nice people on the
tour and ended up bringing a Uraguayan girl Lillyanna and her friend Fred
from Sweden and also a young couple Max (the dentist) and Andrea
from Equador back to our boat for a lunch with too much wine and the like.
We had a really good time with them and learnt a lot from them about their
countries.
I could have stayed in Galapagos for longer but we
have to keep moving to get around this world in our two year time frame. Also
this is where our two "imported from Scotland" line handlers for the Panama
Canal had to leave us to go back to Scotland. (So a special thanks to Avril and
Dave our nieghbours who were excellent line handlers.(P.S. if anyone reading
this needs line handlers in the future Avril can tie an mean bowline now and
they are both well up for the job if required).
I promise to follow up very soon with the Pacific
installment. |