Dear readers,

Bahia Punta, border of Panama-Columbia. What a place – this is a place some of us for sure will come back (captain, Snorre, Stian and presumably some old good friends back home). In Bahia Punta you will find an exclusive fishing lodge, rated as number 1 (ONE) in the world for fishing after Blue Marlin, Black Marlin, Tuna, and other bill fishes. That said the resort is also an experience itself. The fishing lodge/resort is only available by a plane owned by the resort or by sea with own boat, the nearest port being Panama City some 120 miles away. No roads – just jungle. Before we left Panama we sent them an enquiry for celebrating the captains 47 years anniversary there. The answer where quite short: “Tight lines” was all we got as reply.

We arrived late in the evening Feb. 5^th, on the captains birthday, together with the other 5 WARC boats. From Ronja we immediately put the dingy out and went ashore to see what we could negotiate with this lodge and find out what they meant with “tight lines”. Arriving on the pontoon we met the supervisor, witch very politely made us aware that this was a private property and that we could not go running along. After a long friendly talk about fishing, we ended up with an opportunity to have dinner there the next day and to top up our diesel tanks. Next day did not sort out the way we wanted, one of their plane was 5 hours late in with new clients, so they did not manage to arrange a dinner for us separately. We did however get a look around and a talk with the owner. Just to summarize it: The have 15 boats and rooms. On average they catch 11 Blue Marlin pr day, on good days they can have 35. Guys back home – price is 5.000 dollar for one week – all included (from Panama City). Start preparations …

Just adjacent to the airstrip there was a small village with both natives and afro Americans. That was a pity sight. This village was really a sump. Some very lovely people, but all men just seemed to be gathered in the local bar drinking beer. The beer bottles they did not bother to do anything with, so there where mountains of mountains of beer bottles around the village. A contrast to the other native fishing villa we visited in Las Perlas.

Tomorrow we set off to La Libertad in Equador - through the doldrums