21:00, 29 December 2013, Anchored at Salardup, San Blas
Islands
It has been a while since my last entry and apart from
Christmas and a few outings, there hasn’t been much going on. Our daily routine
consists of relaxing onboard, after attending to any projects that need to be
done, snorkeling along the reefs and playing bocce ball with the other cruisers
on the closest island to the anchorage. Most of the group, that was in the East
Lemmons, stayed for Christmas and set up a Christmas pot-luck on the beach with
the exception of the Italians. They tend to stick to themselves and had their
do on Christmas Eve as is the tradition in Italy. They were nice enough to
invite us all but didn’t tell us until the following day. We reciprocated but
none showed up, strange….
We also did our Christmas Eve traditional dinner with Fran’s
tourtiere. We invited one of the single guys, Gord (Island Dreams) whose wife
was away. Fran outdid herself, as usual. As Fran was cooking up supper one of
the local Kunas came alongside selling lobsters so we had a “surf and turf”
Christmas Eve.
Cruisers' Surf & Turf
The pot luck was a roaring success with about 65 people
participating. As pre-arranged, one of
the late arrival boats brought 2 turkeys from Panama City, and, like all
pot-lucks, the variety of food was outstanding. Kuna family that lives on the
island was also invited. They are a shy people and spent most of their time by
themselves but did partake in the dinner. One of the pre-requisites of the
dinner was that each boat bring a gift of non-perishable food for the Kuna family.
It is difficult to say if they appreciated the gift as they are not a
demonstrative people.
We have been anchored off this small island of Salardup for
two days. We moved here to be closer to the mainland and Rio Sidra, the home of
Lisa, the master mola maker. One of her sidelines is tours up the river and,
with 2 other boats in the anchorage there were 6 people for yesterday’s outing.
Before we left, however, Fran had to do some surgery. She had left a bilge
hatch opened and I stepped into it, cutting my ankle, about a half-inch cut but
deep and bleeding profusely. Thank God we have a well equipped first aid kit.
Fran took out a suture kit and made her first 2 sutures. Didn’t hurt a bit and
18 hours later it looks great.
The tour with Lisa began with a ride from the anchorage to
Rio Sidra, about a 2 mile ride in a panga. We were set ashore about ½ mile
upstream and began our trek inland. The well-worn path took us past several
Kuna cemetery sites, including the one where Lisa’s parents are buried. The
graves appeared to be shallow with a built up mound on which they place the coffee
cups and drinking glasses that the dead used. There was also a clay incense
burning pot. The entire plot of several graves is covered by a thatched roof
with open sides. Lisa said that the more work that goes into the structure, the
more the dead appreciate the effort. She showed us her parents’ graves and went
into a long explanation of how her people honour their past relatives as often
as they can. Lisa actually comes once or twice a week and spends the day making
her molas by their gravesite and talking to her mother. Several times a year
the family will come and spend the day and cook a meal close by. She also
explained some of the local Kuna traditions including the puberty ceremony for
the young women that will occur in early January, a 7-day event in which the
girl has her hair cut off, she is blackened with charcoal and serves a local
hootch to the assembled. There is also a time honoured custom of determining
whether the girl is still a virgin. This involved the father doing something to
a leaf. Apparently it is quite accurate.
The hike continued for another hour and ½ upstream to a
beautiful set of pools and waterfalls inhabited by a mermaid of Kuna legend. We
all dove in to the pools, didn’t see any mermaid but the small fish teeming in
the pools must be part pirana. Fran was the first to cry out that something was
nibbling at her butt. The remainder of us swam for the shallows at that point
and the guides had a good laugh. One of the people we were with described the
fish as similar to the ones they use in spas for exfoliation.
The girls posing with flowers called "Marilyn Munroe Lips".
Mermaid Pool
For the next hour
we made our way down the river, a hard slog over boulders and slippery rocks.
Half way down Fran slipped and injured her wrist but it seems to have been just
a bruise. When we arrived back to the boat yesterday afternoon my ankle and
Fran’s wrist were in pain so we spent the remainder of the afternoon and
evening licking our wounds and watching season 7 of Burn Notice.
This afternoon we had a visit from Chris and Doreen on a
boat from Vancouver called Tagish, also in this anchorage. We last saw them in
Manzanillo in 2009 as they were setting out for their circumnavigation. They
have just arrived from Colombia and are going through the Canal in a few weeks
on their way to the Pacific and home to Comox by the summer.
15:00, 2 January 2014, Anchored, East Lemmons
It is a relatively calm day for a change. For the past few
days it has been blowing anywhere from 15 to 25 kts here in the anchorage. It
lay down a bit New Years Eve but piped up again yesterday but that didn’t slow
down too many people from visiting and a good bocce ball game on the beach,
which Fran and I won….
We arrived here on the 30th after a day-sail from
Salardup to Soledad Miria for water. The Island village of Soledad Miria has a
small dock with a water outlet. It has good deep approaches and Fran did an
outstanding job of coming alongside. It took about 2 hours to fill our tanks and
so we had lots of locals come to the boat to say hola, including the local
congresso chief. Popular items here are magazines, which we are very poor in
but we did manage to find a few. The chief asked if we had any reading glasses and
Fran found him a pair that she was no longer using. Fran went into the village
on a quest for fruits and Vegetables but found none which begged the question
of what these people eat.
We got back to the anchorage at the East Lemmons to meet up
with a few boats that had been on the hard with us at Shelter Bay. Lion’s Paw,
Rio Nimpkish and Diva had arrived the day we left for Salardup. There seemed to
be a sense of apathy for New Year’s Eve and only one boat announced that they
were setting up for whoever wanted to come. As it turned out, most of the
attendees were back on their boats by 21:00, cruisers’ midnight. We are
definitely getting too old for partying. Onboard Gosling we had a quiet evening
with Tom and Shirley (Rio Nimpkish) and played Mexican Train until, we too, were
yawning too hard to continue. We packed it in about 22:00 (real night owls, we
are), Fran went to bed while I stayed up, curious to see a San Blas New Years
Eve. Apart from a few hoots and hollers and some distant fireworks it was quiet
and calm. I didn’t even wake Fran up….
22:00, 3 January 2014, still at the East Lemmons
Time to move on. We have been here way too long and it is
time to make our way to another of our favourite places, the East Hollandaise
cays and the “swimming pool” anchorage. We are heading out tomorrow. Had we not
arranged for some fuel to be delivered today from Carti we would have departed
this morning. Most of the other boats we know have already left. Looks like we
will be staying in the Sam Blas area for a while longer. The weather for
heading north doesn’t look to promising for the next few weeks and, besides, we
just learnt that Optical Illusion left Shelter Bay this morning and are on
their way here.
Today’s fuel delivery was quite an ordeal. Mike, on Gilana,
knows a chap in Carti who will deliver barrels of diesel or gasoline but you
have to commit to a full 50 gal barrel and the boat can carry 5 barrels. We
only needed 20 gals but managed to find another boat to take the remainder of
our barrel. The big dugout canoe with a 9.5 HP Yamaha arrived about 8AM,
thankfully, in fairly calm seas. The process of siphoning the fuel from the
barrels to jerry jugs was messy but we only spilled about a gallon of it in the
end.
With the move tomorrow we will again be out of telephone and
internet coverage.
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