Sunday 5th February 2012  Isla Canas, Islas Las Perlas   8 23.00N 78 50.1W  

Today’s Blog by David

Our last anchorage - Isla Chapera – did have one drawback; if you went swimming it had a bite. Tiny ‘no-see-em’ jelly fish that made nasty red welts on your skin.   Up popped Doctor Caukill with one of his patent remedies: douse it with vinegar- shave the area having first lathered it with shaving cream - thus :

Then oral antihistamine and Cortisone cream to follow.  A sledgehammer, maybe but it did the trick, anyway.

Our idyllic anchorage   now found to have something of a sharp  edge, we upped anchor and sailed about 22 miles through the water to cover about 14 as the crow flies – jibng down wind with, you guessed it – the Frog Sail.

Another tricky entrance with growlers (aka hidden rocks) all around into a completely protected anchorage, reminiscent of the Western Isles of Scotland – only rather warmer.   We stayed here two days.

Yesterday we went to the village of Esenada – about a mile from the anchorage - where we were expecting to find fish, fruit and pearls for sale – so we took money. Fruit is especially important because all of the bananas, melons and peaches – intended for our passage to Galapagos that we bought in Panama on Monday and Tuesday have ripened to the point they had to be eaten.

Esenada was – for me at least – a depressing place.  It had a picture postcard outlook:

And the main street had once also been nicely decorated and maintained:

There are about 150 people living there.  The men were either at sea, fishing, or on land farming – or so it was said.  There were a couple of men repairing fishing nets etc, but otherwise the village was occupied primarily by women, children and grandparents etc.  It was not all picture postcard stuff. It was Saturday, so there were a lot of people just sitting around:

Most surprising though was that - as a village – it had absolutely nothing to offer for sale.  No fruit, no fish and about half a dozen pearls about the size of a pinhead.  Shame really, because we had wanted to spend money- it’s just there was nothing to spend it on.  

Today, we move on to San Miguel – the largest settlement in Las Perlas to see whether there is any fruit there………………..