Pitufa.at

The day before yesterday we sailed Pitufa back south. Again we got the timing wrong and had a strong current against us, the combination with about 15 to 20 knots of wind with us the resulted in steep, short waves that made the ride quite uncomfortable. Nevertheless it was an exciting trip: we saw a small whale (we think a pilot whale), a school of stingrays surfing down the waves right under the surface and caught the largest fish so far: about 1 m long (we’re not sure what it was, maybe some kind of mackerel). As the fish was far too big for the three of us we shared it in a beach bbq on Casaya with our friends from sy Spruce and sy Iolea.

Yesterday we returned to our favourite spot: Isletas de Platanal. It’s a magical place with an abundance of wildlife. Fish are jumping everywhere, a colony of a few hundred pelicans live on the island and we saw an incredible number of cormorants flying by (more than 10 000 for sure…). From the boat we heard loud grunting sounds, but when we took the dinghy ashore, there was no sign of the seals we had hoped for (we’ll check again today). High up on the beach we found large dugout holes that baffled us, until we discovered a baby turtle in one of them: it’s turtle hatching time and the babies must have dug themselves out of the sand the night before leaving those large holes behind. The poor little guy (about 8 cm long from tail to head) we found was stuck under a root and when we took him to the water he was too weak to swim. We didn’t want to leave him as food for the pelicans, so we took him back to the boat, planning to release him in the cover of the night, but unfortu nately he died in the evening.

The tides are so high at the moment (about 5 m difference, because of the spring tide) that the rocks that bridge the 3 little islands of the Isletas the Platanal stick out high at low tide, but disappear completely at high tide. You want to be extra careful when anchoring in conditions like these–it would be a nasty surprise to sit on the bottom at low tide

In the bay south of Contadora where we’re anchored now we get daily entertainment: in the mornings and in the afternoons big schools of stingrays (medium sized devil rays) round up shoals of small fish and then a special spectacle starts: first the tips of their wings are visible on the surface, then the water seems to boil when the small fish are herded to the surface and finally the rays start jumping out of the water in a feeding frenzy. The jump up to 2 metres high, flap their wings frantically (imitating the pelicans??) and then splash back either in a bellyflop or after doing a somersault. Sometimes 5 or 6 jump at the same time–like a dolphin show, only with stingrays

I spent the morning on deck trying to get some of the stunts on photos and managed to take some pics of them (they will follow soon in a photo gallery). The rest of the day we spent patching up dingsi our faithful dinghy and mounting the last solar panel in its new place (after buying two bigger ones for the radar arch we had to rearrange all the other ones…) and changing the oil on the outboard.

Yesterday Roswitha left us again, she took the ferry from Contadora back to Panama City (quite an adventerous device, ferry guests have to wade into the sea, climb on a boat which then takes them out to the ferry ) and is now sitting on the plane to New York, then on to Frankfurt and then follows yet another flight to Salzburg… We had a great week with her in the Perlas: swimming, snorkeling, exploring beaches–having a guest onboard made us realise again how nice life on a boat can be
Roswitha, thanks again for all the spare parts, presents and for being such a flexible, helpful and cheerful (despite uncomfortable rolly nights) crew member!

The last few days we’ve been terribly busy mounting new solar panels, running through chandleries, buying provisioning–something seems to be weird with the time in Panama, it flies by and the days are never long enough for everything we want to do.
Today Christian’s sister arrived and we have a good excuse to have a break and spend some days off swimming (last time we went swimming was in the San Blas at the beginning of November…), snorkeling and relaxing. We’ll head to Taboga (a little island near Panama City) tomorrow and then on to the Las Perlas archipelago.

This year we didn’t get into a christmassy mood at all–Panama’s just too tropical for our associations of snow, red noses and stiff half-frozen fingers holding on to mugs of mulled wine…
We’ll make an effort today by baking Christmas cookies, if that doesn’t help we’ll start singing carols
We’ll spend a quiet Christmas eve aboard Pitufa, and maybe it’ll be cool enough in the evening for some mulled wine.

Merry Christmas to everybody out there travelling along with us on our blog!

Today we ventured into Panama City for the first time and even though our quest for an evaporator (for the fridge) and electronic parts lead us to the non-touristy, less pretty parts of the city we’ve decided that we like it here. The bus system is very convenient (you have the choice between comfortable but awfully cold metro buses and loud, packed old schoolbuses) and fortunately Panama City is considered safe for tourists and so we had the chance to wandered through posh residential areas, buzzing streets with elderly, slightly run down houses and plenty of litte shops, broad avenidas with flashy skyscrapers and big shopping malls–the contrast between areas in the same neighbourhood is really interesting.