Jules and Jam: On the edge

The edge of the bay in Sapzurro.

Three days ago we arrived in Sapzurro, a little village at the edge of Colombia. We could walk into Panama from here, if we were willing to trek through the jungle for 4 hours, but we will take the easy way and sail around when we are ready.

Sapzurro is a very picturesque little village, with a surprisingly busy tourist trade for its size. It is uniquely situated in a little cove, with the Darien mountains rising up behind it, and at the “corner” of the coast. From here, looking to the right out of the harbour, the coastline runs due south into Uraba Bay, the southernmost point of the Caribbean sea or, looking left, the coastline goes around a point and then to the west, heading into the San Blas archipelago, our next destination.

We definately aren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. The jungle backdrop is very different from the tiny tropical islands we’ve been anchored off of for the last week or so. When we arrived, I asked the Captain if he thought we would see monkeys. He responded that this seemed like a place where monkeys could be found, so we spent some time trying to distinguish the monkey calls from bird calls in the noisy cacophony of dawn. And, lo and behold, we went for pizza at a cute little restaurant the other night, and a man pulls up to the restaurant in a dingy with a small monkey curled up around the back of his neck! He is a German who has been hanging out here on his boat for a couple of years, and adopted a monkey along the way. Move over boat cat, I suddenly have a hankering for a boat monkey.

We are quite pleased with this stop, since it has everything one could need - water, diesel, fresh fruits and veg, beer, internet, pizza and monkeys. What more could one want? It may have a few too many bitey bugs, but that is only really at sunset and I just arm myself with bug spray and mosquito coils and hunker down in the cabin of the boat. If we are lucky, we might even find someone willing to tackle the pile of laundry that is threatening to swamp the boat...

PS. I wrote the post yesterday but then the internet conked out before I got a chance to put it online. Good news - we found someone do do the laundry and it will only cost us $20,000 pesos. That's about 10 dollars. And we probably have about three or four loads. That's washed, dried, and folded. I'm telling you, it feels so luxurious to have someone else do all the laundry!

PPS. Because we have internet, I am including some photos that cover the last few stops.


A GIANT luxury yacht out for the day in the Rosario islands. (We actually saw this same yacht on the dock at Cartagena. They were having a party on it at 4 am when we first arrived.)

Our adopted boat cat - drooley :)

This is "la isolet" - or the little island, near to where we anchored in the San Bernardo Islands Apparently it is the most densely populated island in the world - it has 97 houses, 1200 residents and is only 200 meters wide and 150 meters long!