Thursday, January 07, 1999 – Underway to Balboa

G’day all

Early this morning I had the pleasure of raising yet another country flag! It may sound a little silly, but there is a special sensation when I replace country flags. What will it be like when I raise the last flag of the trip...? Yesterday I failed to mention an important item. We sadly had to part with our excellent part-time help Mono (say monio). He was an extremely good deckhand/tender driver. His knowledge of Coco Island was invaluable and my Spanish vocabulary improved in leaps and bounds due to him. We would like to honor Mono by putting up his picture, something we should have done ages ago. Another omission was the name of the river we rafted on Monday. The name of it is the   Sarapiqui.

Mono, our part-time Panga Driver

As we have a date with a canal on Sunday, we made two brief island stops on the way. We pulled into Isla Montuosa at 06:00. This was a small island absolutely covered in luscious tropical forest. Sadly there was no ideal anchorage and so we pressed on after taking advantage of good light for a few photos. Our next stop was going to be Banco Hannibal. Rumors have it that this deep bank is the home of big schools of tuna, Tiger sharks and Billfish. The dive and video gear was ready, but once we arrived there were seven fishing boats either parked or trolling over it and not one fish in sight. We decided to pass, and head for our last stop Isla Jicaron.

Isla Montuosa

What a beautiful island this is. A little larger than Montuosa, Jicaron provided us with more very lush landscapes as well as an excellent anchorage. We headed over in the tender and explored for a while. The thick forest bordered a romantic long beach. Rivers on the island fed fresh water down onto the beach. Against all principals, we decided not to take any camera gear with us and just leave footprints. A new experience all together. To the north of Jicaron, lies Isla de Coiba. This is a large open penitentiary colony, which is to be closed down in the next years, as the island has been declared a National Park due to having virgin forest covering 80% of the island. There are still some inmates on the island that will be relocated soon.

Isla Montuosa - difficult anchorage

Now we are back on the high seas and heading for Balboa from where we will be heading into the Panama Canal, after picking up some STERN journalists. The pace is fast I know, but we have a time and date slot to enter the canal, which we should not miss.

Best regards,