We left Panama City scheduled by the Captain’s
smooth and lazy rhythms: at 6.00am we leave the mooring “La playta”. The ocean
is really pacific and winds are even hard to imagine here at the moment. We
decided to stop for a week or so to Las Perlas isands. 36 miles far from the
city, they are a quiet archipelago forgotten by the tourism machine that
probably prefer the Caribbean coast. Suddenly we realized that fishing here is
the easiest thing ever. Fish are everywhere, and also big ones are not shy to
show up to our bait and close to us while we are swimming. We first anchored in
front of Isla Contadora and visited the magnificent beaches. There are a few
hotels, a little airport and an internet café. It looks to me that here someone
tried to build structures for tourism but it didn’t work so well and most of
them are abandoned and attacked from mother nature. The first time I dove here
I got really scared from the quantity of curious fish that come close to your
feet and hands to smell if you are well done for their dinner. It took me a few
minutes before I could live the rope from the boat and quietly swim. With the Captain
we decided to sail the eastern part of the archipelago, touching places like
Mogo Mogo, San Miguel and Los Viveros. Don’t expect to come here and find
anything else than nature. We really spent a few days like if someone took the
time back of hundreds years, living between jungles and beached forgotten by
god. The only “city” and actually the biggest of Las Perlas is Sant Miguel: if
you are thinking to go there, be sure to arrive with your dinghy and the high
tide so you’ll don’t have to walk in the mud for 300 hundreds meters, as we did.
The local population is very friendly and they will show you around without asking
money, only for the pleasure to stay with you. The day before we arrived,
someone had the brilliant idea to bring a Big Caterpillar into the beach with
the low tide to bring his boat closer to the shore. He actually made it to take
the boat, although the Cat is still there half grounded in the mud. So I guess
you will easily recognize where you should stop with your dinghy. Tides here
are serious, up to 5 meters and lots of sailors take advantage to work on their
Catamarans hulls while they are out of the water. Basic food can be found in
the village 3 times per week.
Mentally ready or not…we are now looking the
Perlas far behind us, almost disappearing on the horizon…our destination is now
Manta, Ecuador, where we’ll try to get some diesel and leave for the Galàpagos.
The ocean is really incredible, calm like oil and reflecting every color of the
sky. Late in the day we also had some winds and a small Barracuda.
We are expecting to sail for 5 days before land
will appear in front of us again, from here we can already say that the line of
the small sailing trial is passed, from now on we will have to be ready of days
and days of navigation that hopefully will take us in some of the best places
in this world.
Arriving in Manta, a commercial port, we all felt
lucky to have a fantastic sail. The area between Panama and Colombia is well
known as unpredictable zone of wind. The “Doldrums”. When 50 knots are rare but
they can happen, often is totally the opposite, so no wind at all and if you
are planning a direct Pacific crossing from Panama to Polynesia without stop to
Galàpagos, be ready to start your engine for a few days or check the forecasts
and hope for a good window. We luckily
had 15 knots almost every day and the sea was flat like never before, which
allowed us to speed up a little more enjoying at same time the fantastic
cruise.
Manta is one of the largest city in Ecuador,
the commercial port is full of foreign fish companies well equipped with big
boats and helicopters ready to empty the ocean. We found a little hard to
anchor between the big and small boats parked everywhere. Weird thing was that
when we decided to go into the only yacht club, we could entry, eat, use
internet wi fi, swimming pool, and after a few hours the manager came to us
with the info we asked before, telling that by the way we were not allowed to
stay there, nor to use the facilities and not even to make petrol. We were a
bit shocked, since the main reason why we made this stop-over was basically to
make petrol. Anyway I remember since my last trip here that Ecuador is one of
those countries where you can’t stop, buy the petrol and leave. A national law
establishes that the local price for petrol is not to apply for foreign people,
it is too cheap for us. The only solution was going back to Bahia De Caraquez
Marina or continue forward to Salinas, and for both the options we were obliged
to make a formal entry in the country with an agent. Too expensive and far from
our final destination, so we took a night of good sleep and left after a little
incursion to the excellent supermarket.
The Captain is that kind of person that feels
always a bit lost when there is nothing to do and he’s awesome to create new
situations, add this kind of personality to mine… et voila… What was an easy
look to the diagnostic of the autopilot trying to set up a new program for
sailing following the wind, we pushed something wrong and everything suddenly
shuttled down. We were like the two kids with a broken bone after mom said not
to jump from there!!!
Alice and Mme Nicole were not so far from killing
us, and even if we tried everything to re-organized it again, Furuno GPS had no
intention to start again. The only solution was to arrange 24h watches, 2 hours
per person at the steer, trying to direct a boat that nobody of us almost drove
before except from short occasions under engine power. Luckily we had not a
drop of rain nor strong winds, 4 days and 4 nights of learning to do what could
seem obvious for a sailor but is absolutely not, on the modern sail boats with
amazing technology that makes everything smooth and easy just pushing a few
buttons. At the end of the day we arrive in Puerto Ayora on the Santa Cruz
island of Galàpagos. It was a calm morning of glory for us four. Alice learnt
how to sail without listening to her brain that at the beginning was making her
listen someone screaming or even seeing ghost islands in front of the boat. I
was fully satisfy to finally try the old manual way to sail and thought that
also Cap and Mde where happy to make the four days a little different than
usual. When we relished the anchor in the middle of the bay, the weight of the
effort came down to us, but even that was not enough to contain our excitement
when we realized that we were surrounded by hundreds of birds, sea lions and huge
turtles swimming close the boat. We couldn’t ask a better welcome from this
world famous archipelago, and I’ve got
the feeling this is going to be a very special spot destined to last long on
our memories. Later on the Captain invited us to an excellent local restaurant
to celebrate the arrival. Tired and proud of us, I felt blessed to look at the
sea from the little window of my room, and see the water growing on the reef
100mt on our side. I could totally see the reflection of the moon while the
wave was creating a perfect stage for tomorrow’s surf!!!!!
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