In case you were awaiting the results of the May 16 census… there are 3.18 million people living in Panama. There are also a lot of tourists and foreigners scattered about the country so it may seem a little more crowded than that, but that is the official count. Despite the crowds it is still a beautiful place to be.
We have spent the past several days congratulating ourselves for getting our engines installed and working. They are not perfect, and it took us a lot longer than we planned, but we are moving, sailing, visiting new places, and generally enjoying Panama again (which we certainly were not doing last week). While we were on the hard we also applied new bottom paint to Mañana, and shortly after we launched the boat (note picture of yard hands working heavy machinery in flip flops) we hauled Andrea to the top of the mast to install our new rigging and to fix our wind vane. The boat looks great.
There are worse places than Shelter Bay to be stuck working. We had a small hotel with a large swimming pool that made the heat more bearable. We had a rental car that gave us access to Colon, and we found the town to be a little less dangerous that we had been led to believe. Almost daily we would cross the small drawbridge at the Gatun Locks heading into Colon to find parts and hardware for each project. We are experts at crossing the small drawbridge beneath the Gatun Locks. We are, however, very glad to be leaving the Canal Zone and heading for more tropical locales.
We are now in Bocas del Toro (9° 20.538'N/ 82° 14.154). We made an early AM departure from Shelter Bay in Colon, and sailed the Caribbean coast of Panama due west to Bocas. We picked a bright sunny day to start out and we got a great breeze. The trip was about 150 miles and took almost 35 hours. We had a beautiful sail for most of the trip, and we got to dodge rain squalls for the rest of the time. Because it is hot and humid here the rain is not an unwelcome occurrence, and the big downpours have not yet started.
Bocas del Toro is an archipelago of islands in western Panama. (Panama is shaped like an elongated “S” lying in its side with the Canal in the center.) In the Bocas archipelago there are three large bays with many low sand cays (islands) that have grown up behind shallow reefs as well as hundreds of mangrove islands. The off shore reefs absorb the ocean’s swells, and the waves then drop the sand that they have been carrying across the seas. Sooner or later some vegetation starts to grow on these sand bars and the next thing you know… voila!, a tropical island has been created. Our first stop in the Bocas area was Zapatillo Cays which look exactly as you might picture a Caribbean cay. Sand beaches set in turquoise water, palm trees covering most of the island, and shallow reefs protecting the ocean sides from the rolling swells. The living coral reefs protect the smaller fish so Zapatillo is a prime snorkeling spot in this area. The cay we anchored off was deserted, there were no other boats around, and we had the place to ourselves. A leatherback turtle and a LARGE barracuda were our only visitors.
Bocas Town itself is a popular Caribbean tourist area with a lively waterfront filled with bars, restaurants, dive shops, and small tour boats promoting snorkeling trips and trips to remote beaches. Many of the buildings are built on piers hanging over the water to catch the breezes, and all of the bars and restaurants are very much open air, driftwood construction. Because there is almost no tidal range here the floors of these buildings are less than 2 feet off the water. There are many hostels in town for the budget minded, and we read about the new resort villages cropping up on the islands and on the hillsides for the wealthier tourists. We are only 30 miles from the Costa Rican border here, and visitors can reach the area from both Panama and Costa Rica. While we thoroughly enjoy the solitude of anchoring by ourselves we confess that the occasional dose of nightlife does appeal to us also. Of course nightlife at our age ends around 9 PM, but in the afternoon and early evening we have managed to sample Rip Tide, Lilly’s, Pirato, The Reef, Aqua Lounge, Hundido’s, Barracuda… So many bars, so little time.
The town is actually fairly large, and everyone we’ve talked to seems very happy to live here. English is much more prevalent here than elsewhere in Panama, and the culture is more Caribbean and less Spanish. We have been at anchor near town for the past 3 days taking the dinghy ashore in the AM to explore, and coming back for happy hour each evening. Lively music sounds across the water until the wee hours each night. We are meeting other boats from all over the world, talking about places to go and things to see. We have tried some of the nearby snorkeling (lots of fish and some of the best coral we have seen), and tomorrow we expect guests from Cape Cod so we will be looking at several other snorkel sites as well as trying our luck at fishing. You may recall that we nearly starved last year when we decided to rely on the sea to provide all of our meals.
Yes, life is good.
