NOTE: Article is after the photos ....
NOTE: All the
photos are at the beginning of the article.
It is time for you all to get out your atlases or open up
Google Earth and check out the islands that are about 30 miles off the coast of
Panama. They are known as Las Perlas
(the Pearls in English) and they are beautiful.
We have been exploring the islands and I am so happy that we decided to
spend a little time here. They are very
different from the San Blas, which are primarily coral head islands. Apparently,
The Pearls appeared some 3 million years ago when the earth’s plates shifted and
created the islands. The colours and
types of rock are quite diverse and the rising of the tide has created
interesting formations. The tide levels
here are much more dramatic than they were in the Caribbean coast rising almost
9 feet. We have to be a little more
cautious when we anchor and also when we take the dinghy on shore because if it
the tide comes in while we are ashore, Squirt just might get washed out to sea.
We have snorkeled around many islands and have not yet
found beautiful corals. The few we have
seen so far are rather dull and small with little variety. However the fish are larger and we have seen
many, many schools of larger fish such as mackerel, jack fish snappers and
groupers. The reef fish are also
slightly larger than what we have seen on the East coast. We spotted large humphead parrotfish, moray
eels, angelfish and wrasses. One of our
favourite things is to watch the Dolphinfish or Mahi Mahi as they are
hunting. They jump clear out of the
water and in again several times as they chase down their prey. The colours on the Dolphinfish are quite
beautiful – shimmering green, yellow and blue.
What a beautiful sight. We’ve
also seen Eagle Rays jumping out of the water but we’re not sure if they are
also hunting or doing it just for pleasure.
Most of the islands are uninhabited and we can explore
them to our heart’s content. We enjoy
walking around the islands looking for shells or other treasures. Too often, we just find plastic bottles and
other miscellaneous junk washed up on shore.
So let me give you a summary of the islands we have
visited and a comment or two on each.
Isla Contadora: A
popular hang out for the rich and famous with a busy airport, decent shops and
restaurants. Fredrik and Johan joined us
having taken the ferry from Panama City.
We had a nice dinner at Casa Tortuga where the Italian chef cooks for
you in his home. No menu to be had, he
just prepares what he feels like cooking and despite the black out for the
first hour (suddenly the power went out) we were served a delicious dinner with
plenty of beer and wine.
Isla Bartolome (uninhabited): I also think of it as bird poop island – lots
of birds hanging out and the smell of their poop was a bit disgusting. However, the snorkeling around this island
was the best we have seen in Las Perlas.
Isla Mogo Mogo (uninhabited): This is where they filmed Survivor, Pearl
Islands (I think it was the third season of Survivor). We came ashore to find the beach littered
with pink shells. It was all I could do
to stop myself from collecting them all.
The guys found some oyster shells and we opened them with the hope to
find a pearl. But, no - no pearls for us.
Isla Bayoneta (uninhabited): We sailed to this island with the hopes of
finding a lot of large cowries as described in Eric Bauhaus’s Panama Cruising Guide. Yes, we had to look up cowries on the
internet as we didn’t know exactly what they were … we guess shells or maybe
birds. Cowries are in fact shells and
unfortunately, we only found a couple, most of which were already inhabited by
Hermit Crabs.
Isla Pedro Gonzales:
This is an island with a huge ambition.
They are building an international airport, a hotel and condo
complex. The town as it exists today
looks very much like a shanty town and is not too impressive. But the construction that is under way looks
first class and will mean big changes for the locals.
Isla San Jose:
This is one of the largest islands in The Pearls and is privately
owned. The island is also one of the
more southern and western in the group so you can really feel the swells coming
in from the Pacific. It also makes for
quite the surf on the beach, which doesn’t necessarily make for good
swimming. Instead we had a nice long
beach to walk along.
Isla Del Rey: The
last stop was Isla Del Rey where there is a larger town and where we had hoped
to do some last minute provisioning for our sail down to Ecuador. It turned out to be nothing more than a large
fishing village with a lot of scurvy, flea-bitten dogs hanging around and the
smell of garbage wafting through the air.
Not exactly the place I would like to buy my food supplies. We could have managed without food supplies
for our onward journey but the deciding point was the lack of internet. So we headed back to Isla Contadora.
We will now spend the next two days shopping, doing
maintenance and prepare a few meals before we set sail to Ecuador. The entire journey will be about 680 nautical
miles. We want to stop at Isla Malpelo
off the coast of Colombia along the way if we can. If the wind is good, it will probably take us
5 or 6 days of sailing not counting our stop at Malpelo. We won’t have internet access till we reach
our destination of Salinas, Ecuador.
Till then, enjoy your Atlas and Google Earth. By the way, you now also have to look up Isla
Malpelo and Salinas, Ecuador J.
PS: Regarding
whales – Jens was truly lucky as we heard the whales had pretty much moved on
and we only spotted some far off in the distance. The locals said the season runs to end of
October and this had been one of the best whale watching seasons they have
had. I hope we have a chance to see some
on the way down to Ecuador.
