Pitufa.at

Our plan was to relax for a few days once we reached the first river, but who can rest, when the leaking dinghy needs a patch, the zipper of the lazy bag (bag on the boom where the mainsail falls into and is stored inside) decides to tear off just when we’ve left the shops of Panama City, the new BBQ needs a mounting, the forecabin has to be reorganised, and many things more need to be done? After finishing all these projects we took the dinghy to a nearby Finca (hut with farmland). The people who live there had come by in their canoe the day before to invite us to take a walk there. One of their daughters showed us around (she looked like 13, but turned out to be 19–eager to go to university next year and was very proud of all the “cleaned” (meaning burnt off) land. An entire hill is necessary for 5 cows–not exactly sustainable agriculture. We were rather sad to find that there’s not much rainforest left here. There are hardly any mosquitoes around here (at least now in the dry season). However, in the evening back on Pitufa we discovered that each of us had collected about 15 tiny ticks. Today we anchored a few miles further south in another big basin. Spring tide is approaching and it was quite a challenge to find a spot, where Pitufa wouldn’t sit on the ground at low tide. Quite surreal: circling around with 3 metres under the keel and knowing that this lake would turn into a sandbank a few hours later… We found a spot with adequate depth, anchored and then took the dinghy into a nearby system of little rivers. On the way we saw two little bears (some members of the raccoon family, but slimmer and darker than the well-known Northamerican ones), lots of birds, but not the crocodiles we had hoped for. Unfortunately also in this vicinity there’s landclearing going on, brownish hills and fires.