Erica comes to visit for three weeks

Erica dropped her busy schedule to come visit us for a whirlwind visit of Panama City and the surrounding area. Her intent was to relax and enjoy the beaches in the Perles Islands, but we managed to fit in travel to lovely El Valle for a couple days as well as concentrated shopping at the lovely Multi Plaza Mall and our ladrone (thieves) infested Cinco de Mayo walking mall. Then on to lovely, quaint Casco Antigua where there are old and restored victorian buildings, museums, stores homes and restaurants all nestled together on the waterfront. We managed to celebrate Erica's birthday over a three day period, topping it off with a coconut spice cake. Towards the end of her stay, we were joined by Sammer Elias who stopped by to see us after an extended surf trip in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Pictures to follow once we get our computer back from the shop!! This typing is being done on our itty bitty Asus surfing 2g computer with a very small keyboard.

El Valle del Anton

We decided to take a field trip into the higher elevations and after a 2 hour bus ride ended up in El Valle, a beautiful little community outside of Panama. Rain dampened our attempt to hike to the waterfall and hot springs, but we did enjoy many yards and a Sunday market where we bought some Panamanian trinkets.
We traveled with Ron and Kathy of Vilisar and Mark of Erika. It is always great to get off the boat.

Tidal Range in Panama

More Perles Mangroves

Perles Islands in the summer

On our way to the Perles from Panama City we encountered a group of whale sharks. They were almost the size of Batwing!! all they do is swim about eating small creatures ....




Later on we anchored in Espiritu Santo, where many boats like to dry out to do work on their bottoms. Here you see two different bilge keelers. Both steel boats built in europe.


There are also many small creeks that empty into this anchorage and we followed some of them thru the mangroves.

Onwards to Panama

Kathy from Erika, Pedro from Jade and Ron on our tour of Golfito whoops this is only pic from Golfito, sorry

New hair do, tis much cooler!!
Panama friends at John's Birthday party -- he and Janet have boat Bambolero
Cruising kitty Kiira is still content
New outfit for rainstorms

Golfo Dulce and Golfito, LandSea Services

Our stay in Golfito is coming to an end. Costa Rica as well as all central Latin countries make you leave after 3 months, so we will be heading to Panama soon. Meanwhile we have enjoyed some great hikes and trips around Golfito and Golfo Dulce. Enjoy these pictures of our Golfito tour as well as Rincon further north in the Gulf. The top picture is of Tierra Mar or LandSea services, the wonderful marina where we have landed our dinghy for the past 3 months. There are fantastic showers, cold beverages, and a cruiser lounge where we do internet, watch TV and movies. Tim and Katy are great folks who welcome cruisers and host many delicious potlucks, not to mention Tim's delicious coffee every morning. We consider this a "home away from home" complete with enough animals so we all can get our "pet fix"!

More visitors, Brian and Nancy

More visitors from Boulder, the Sperrys. Brian and Nancy met us in Golfito in their rental car and we spent a few days in Golfo Dulce, on Batwing, visiting the furthest north reef for morning fishing and swimming then ended up trying to find the animal rescue place, failing that, found the Orchid Gardens that are only accessible by boat. We survived a rain storm and made it back to the anchorage in Golfito intact. Next on our agenda was a trip to the Osa penensula, the most desolate part of Costa Rica where we found many Coti and Scarlet Macaws. Next we headed to the Chirripo area to a lovely animal sanctuary sloths and birds, and after a trip to teh cloud reserve Chirripo, said goodbye to Nancy and Brian. It was again too short a visit but lots of fun!

Visitors, Kathy and Julie

March in Western Panama brought us our first guests from Boulder Colorado. Kathy and Julie who managed to find us in out of the way Boca Chica, with a little help from a blog entry and other internet sites. Yay for the internet! They joined us at Frank's for dinner and then we headed out to the islands to enjoy Paradita and Gamez for a few days. After returning to Boca Chica, we found the tribe of Howler monkeys and had a great time snapping pics. Later we hopped into a bus and went to Boquette in the mountains for a taste of altitude and cooler climate. Although it was altogether a too short visit, we had a blast!

Along the Panama Canal