Monday 12 August 2013

Cruising and cruising

We have acquired new boat pets - two lovely Canadians! Okay, they aren't pets, they are much more useful than the cat or dog fish ever were, doing things like dishes and staying up late and drinking lots of rum with us. Jayne and Phil (yes, another Phil) are siblings who are riding their motorcycles from the Arctic Circle southward - their adventures so far are posted at www.ultimateride.ca - and we met them outside the immigration building in Porvenir, where they were looking to do some cruising of a different sort in the San Blas.

As an aside, yes, we did make it in to Panama City and back. The journey there took 3 hours over a very twisty road; we had 3 hours in the city where we hit the bank (almost literally when we couldn't get exactly what we needed); and we bought loads of groceries, including essentials like nutella and 5 cases of beer, and also bought a Panamanian SIM card. So we are reachable by phone, just as soon as we get closer to the coverage areas! It took 2 hours to come back into the San Blas and two dingy trips to get all the groceries from shore to the boat. But in typical fashion, we had lots of help from local Kuna men at the dock area. Their eyes were agog at the amount of beer we had - drinking is discouraged by the Kuna religion so I guess we wouldn't make for very good Kuna. And a couple of days after all of that, we made it back to the immigration office where we paid our fees and signed our paperwork and we, and the boat, are now legitimate visitors of Panama, with the privilege of being here for up to one year. So, as the Captain would say, "Job done!"

Diva is now anchored in the East Lemmon Cays, where we have been before, and we are waiting for the perfect combination of wind and lessening hangover to head over to the Holandes Cays, supposedly the creme-de-la-creme of cays hereabouts. I have bought several molas*, the local Kuna handicraft, but other than that, we've been swimming, reading, eating, and oh, the aforementioned drinking. The monsoon trough* is now further to the north of us, instead of on top of us, so our weather has improved slightly although still mostly cloudy.

* Your research projects for today. Perhaps google or your search engine of choice for further explanation? If you find anything good, post it back in the comments for those too lazy to do homework.