Pitufa.at

Yesterday we hiked to the next bigger town Capurgana. It was an incredible experience walking through the rainforest, with large butterflies fluttering around us and colourful flowers everywhere. The region here is within the “Darién gap”, a nearly impenetrable jungle in Panama and Colombia that reaches from the Caribbean all the way to the Pacific, without roads and very few inhabitants. The colonialists were fended off by Malaria and other diseases, later on it was infamous for Colombian guerrilla and drug dealers and nowadays forest protection movements create a break in the Pan-American Highway, which otherwise forms a complete road from Alaska to Patagonia.

The well maintained, but slightly muddy path took us steeply up a ridge, we could first hear monkeys shouting from far and the further we walked the louder they got, but unfortunately we couldn’t get a glimpse of them in the dense foliage. When we reached the highest point we were drenched in sweat, but rewarded with a view of the Sapzurro bay with Pitufa peacefully at anchor.

After 2 hours we reached Capurgana, a town with a few minimarkets and many bars and restaurants for the backpackers, who hike along and the coast, take “lanchas” (open boats) from bay to bay, or sign up as passengers on sailing boats going back and forth between Panama and Cartagena. Instead of walking back over the mountain we also took a lancha, that only took 10 minutes back to Sapzurro.

Today we took a walk up the hill (steep earthen steps) to the border to Panama. After 20 minutes we reached two idyllic huts with thatched roofs, each with a hamack and a relaxed soldier in it. 10 minutes and a few hundred concrete steps later we reached the village on the Panamian side: Puerto de la Miel. It’s also not connected to a road system, even smaller than Sapzurro, but not quite as pretty.

Our first two days here in the bay of Sapzurro we were busy finishing our rain canvas, setting a stern anchor (sometimes some swell enters the bay), cleaning the boat, launching the dinghy, to snorkel along the reef, etc. and only marvelled from afar at the beaches and the pretty village. Yesterday we set out to explore the village and the bay. It turns out there’s no road to Sapzurro, only two footpaths through the steep mountains connect the village to Capurgana (the next somewhat bigger town 2 miles further south) or to Panama (Puerto Miel). All goods are brought here by small, but fast boats (“lanchas”) that commute between Sapzurro and Capurgana and also take passengers with them.

Sapzurro is a pretty place with a lovely church right at the seaside, basic, but well kept houses, some small tiendas, several bars and restaurants for the few tourists who come here. Most of them seem to be backpackers who stay in hostels, on camp sites, or in eco-lodges, but we’ve also met some Colombians from Medellin or Cartagena who have holiday homes here. The only real downside we can see so far is the trash problem. Since there’s no road, there’s also no garbage collection system and there are no rubbish bins. Each household burns the rubbish, but nobody wants to take ours–except for a stiff payment to take it by boat to Capurgana. We refused that offer, as we’ve already paid about 17 dollars for the privilege to anchor here (with water and rubbish disposal officially included…). In the end we found a guy from the “junta comunal” (the ones we paid the anchorage fee to) and he took over our three bags.

We’re the only cruisers travelling through, three of the other boats apparently belong to locals, our German neighbour liked this place enough to buy a restaurant and settle here, even though he still lives on the boat with his family. According to him it’s no problem staying here without an official cruising permit (he’s done that for half a year), there’s a coast guard boat with 4×200 hp outboards at the town pier, but apparently they don’t control sailing boats.

We’ve decided to stay here for a while. We want to go hiking in the mountains and get into the local village life. For some reason Leeloo also loves this place, even though fishing boats pass close by and our neighbours are anchored near to us (conditions that our asocial cat usually hates). But the weather is pleasant, a bit cooler, hardly any wind and she spends hours lying on deck and even ventures up on the sprayhood and the bimini in plain daylight (normally she only dares to do that in the dark).

Yesterday we made a dinghy ride all around the island (that admittedly sounds less impressive when you know that the island is only 1.7 miles long ). On the northern side the reef reaches out several miles, we found a pass into the lagoon, but there’s shoals everywhere and taking Pitufa over here would be quite tricky.

There are a few luxorious looking villas on Tintipan, especially in the maze-like lagoon on the western side of the island, but all natives live on a tiny island southwest of Tintipan. We tied the dinghy to a jetty there and took a walk accompanied by a group of children. They proudly showed us the schoolhouse and the door to their medical centre and the shop. The shop was closed, but the owner opened up for us, showed us around in the light of a single candle and we bought some bread.

The island is crammed with houses, there’s only narrow paths between them, no place for gardens to grow things. Some are even built on stilts directly on the reef. We couldn’t find out why the people are confined to such tight quarters, while there’s plenty of space on the bigger islands. We tried to ask the villagers about this fact, but whenever we steered the conversation to this topic the smiles died and we were faced with silence. Apparently that’s a taboo topic…

Today the wind has turned southerly again and we’re pitching uncomfortably in the waves. Unfortunately the skies are overcast, so we can’t see underwater obstacles and don’t dare searching for the pass on the protected northern side which we found by dinghy yesterday. If we had a portable GPS to take it with us in the dinghy and a portable depth sounder we could scout out passes and anchorages… We’ve already written these two items on the top of our shopping list for Panama!

The area here is famous or rather infamous for its frequent thunderstorms. In Cartagena we saw the lightning far away in the south each night–now we’re in the middle it. Last evening the flashes in the south looked like the finale of a new years eve fireworks… at three o’clock in the morning the squall reached us with gusts over 30 knots of wind, we were bouncing in the waves that quickly built up, uncomfortable with a leeshore behind us, but our anchor held safely.

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Gewitter

Die Gegend hier ist beruehmt, oder eher beruechtigt fuer die vielen Gewitter. In Cartagena schauten wir fast jeden Abend dem Wetterleuchten weit im Sueden zu – jetzt sind wir dort. Gestern Abend sahen die Blitze im Sueden wie das Finale eines Silvesterfeuerwerks aus… um drei Uhr frueh erreichte uns das Unwetter dann mit Boen ueber 30 Knoten. Wir schaukelten ordentlich in den Wellen, die sich schnell aufbauten und fuehlten uns in dem auflandigen Wind nicht sehr wohl, aber unser Anker hielt sicher.

After two weeks in Cartagena’s harbour Pitufa’s hull was overgrown with barnacles and algae under the waterline, the propeller was hardly recogniseable in its never-seen-before layer of barnacles (no wonder we didn’t get over 4.5 knots on the way here), the waterline was covered with a mixture of slime, algae, oil and whatever filth can be found in the harbour. We cleaned for several hours yesterday and today, and now she looks quite ok again. Tomorrow we’d like to head on to the San Bernardo archipelago and hope for some wind. We don’t want to spend the weekend in the Rosarios, as it’ll be even busier here than now. Amazingly we can still see Cartagena’s skyline from here and tourists boats rush back and forth all day long.

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Posturbaner Putzrausch

Nach zwei Wochen im Hafen von Cartagena war Pitufas Rumpf unter der Wasserlinie mit Muscheln und Algen bedeckt, der Propeller unter einer nie-zuvor-gesehenen Schicht von Muscheln kaum wiederzuerkennen (kein Wunder, dass wir auf dem Weg hierher kaum ueber 4.5 Knoten gekommen sind), die Wasserlinie mit Schleim, Algen, Oel und jedwedem Dreck aus dem Hafen verschmiert. Wir haben gestern und heute einige Stunden lang geputzt und jetzt sieht sie wieder recht ok aus. Morgen wollen wir weiter zum San Bernardo Archipel und hoffen auf Wind. Wir wollen hier in den Rosarios nicht das Wochenende verbringen, weil dann noch mehr los sein wird als jetzt. Erstaunlicherweise sehen wir von hier aus immer noch Cartagenas Wolkenkratzer und Touristenboote duesen den ganzen Tag hin und zurueck.

Setting off from Cartagena we’ll next cruise the Colombian coast and islands to the south. We enjoyed the bustling city life, but are now looking forward to anchoring in quiet bays again