Panama Canal
Ripple2
Tue 28 Mar 2006 02:38
|
After arriving in The San Blas islands on Thursday
02 March we left 24 days later.
It was a wonderful time. There will be a picture
blog coming. Now that we have access to a landline (non-satellite) internet
connection.
By the way,I will be sending a
"picture" blog from here in a day or so. This one starts back at the begining.
This may get a bit confusing. But just realise that I can send you text only
updates (via satphone) more regularly.... and then when I get to
a place (ie internet cafe) then I can send a fancy one with pictures. It's
just that this one will be a little out of date by then. If you get what I mean.
So there's two versions of the story going at the same time.
Anyway, after we left The Coco Banderes Cays we went to The
Hollandaises Cays. The day we arrived we had the get together on little
island, see last blog entry. The next few days were heavy overcast and a
light rain every now and then. This was sort of OK as we were tired and
besides I had come there to get a guy to weld the bracket for the fridge
compressor. It had cracked nearly all the way through. So this was
half a day to dissasemble a take out. A morning to weld and the rest of the day
to put all back (this was much harder than taking it out).
We left there sat. and sailed
back to Porvenir, where we first checked in. And guess what.......it was a
cruise ship day. So there was ample opportinity to buy more molas. Buy the end
of the day our total mola count on Ripple was 51 of various sizes and
designs and prices.An interesting thing happened while we were having lunch.
Remember this is the island with the airstrip. A 10 seater twin turbo
prop came in unanounced and flew at high speed 20 feet above the
strip.
This I imagine was to let everyone know that he
intended to land, so could everybody please stay away from the strip. There is
no fence.And you have to cross the strip to get to the
hotel/restaurant.
Then after we had finished
eating, a military helicopter (the ones they used in Vietnam) that had been
parked on the grass came to life. It lifted 2 feet off the ground, with a lot of
noise and moved sideways over the cracked concrete, tilted forward and sped
away. This is 20 metres from my lunch table. I mean real close. The table cloths
blew away and there were leaves and sticks all through the place
now.
Then it was mola buying, people
watching and drinking beers.
Next day we sailed 40 miles to
Isla Grande (really it's only one mile long). We were now out of Kuna
land.
There were "normal" houses and............wait for
it...............beach bars! We found an amazing little place called Pupy's. It
is a reggae bar extraordinaire. It is all painted in the reggee colours, plays
Bob (Marley) CDs AND as a highlight, a fabulous bar. It's like a three sided
cave with floor to ceiling bottles of all different liquors. It was quite a
sight. So,,,,,we had to take a picture. We were the only ones there and felt a
bit touristy taking a picture within 2 minutes of arriving. Well after the
picture I looked left and there was a whole wall of pictures by multitudes
of people of the bar. More that a hundred of them that they had
sent or brought back on another visit. I laugfhed out loud. I ddn't feel so
funny about taking that picture now.
After a couple of drinks we
strolled the "town" and ended up back there for dinner. The seafood combo
with rice and plantain chips was great. And we got to watch "Lord of the
Rings" in spanish by looking through a doorway.
Back in the dinghy and home by
9.
Today (Mon 27 March) we
arrived at Colon the city/port on the Caribbean side of the Canal. Its windy and
rough so we just stayed on the boat for the rest of the afternoon and wrote
this. Tomorrow we will go and make some of the arrangements to get on the list
to go through.
|