Dale and Becca are gone :( We got 10 days with them though, which was awesome. They left with a lot less than they came with as well… they were amazing enough to fill all their bags with stuff for us, leaving just their carry ons for clothes and snorkeling gear. It was like Christmas every day, as they stretched our gifts out over the duration of their stay. Licorice, candy and lots of other foods we haven't seen in a long time kept getting pulled out of bags. They even brought VEGEMITE!! Though the sneaky buggers swapped it into a marmite jar just to mess with me. Among other things we also scored a new drill, a working clock mechanism, dive torches and new luci lights (one of my favourite things on the whole boat! The old one went for a long swim in the dark and decided to go to sleep afterwards). So aside from being MAXIMUM excited about seeing them, it was really nice of them to cart all of our crap all the way from the UK. Getting things like a new drill is really, really important and really, really hard for us - our boat is on 240v power and everything here is 120v. Ie, useless to us.
We spent our last few days hanging out in the East Lemmon island group, where we continued to snorkel at least once a day. We even went swimming at night in the phospherescense, which I haven't done in a while. I've never swum at night with my snorkel mask on before - my whole world was just filled with sparkly lights and silvery trails as we moved through the water. It was really amazing.
Becca enjoying the water
On our way over from the Holandes Cays we stopped at Dog Island for the afternoon. There’s a shallow wreck there next to a gorgeous island made up of not much more than palm trees and white sand. The wreck is one of the more touristy things to do in the San Blas, but we decided to swing by anyway. I'm so glad we did!
We swam to shore from the boat and spent a long time exploring in amongst the rusty columns of metal jutting out from the sand. There were even sections that you could swim through, which Garth and Dale did. A lot. They went in one end and swam through the whole ship, popping back up through a hole in the bow.
Me swimming alongside the wreck (Taken by Becca)
Holes to swim through (Taken by Becca)
Aside from it being a giant playground, the colours underneath the water were incredible. There was lots of coral I'd never seen before, along with fluorescent orange and green algae-like stuff everywhere. Throw in a rainbow of different coloured Christmas tree worms and the snorkeling was incredible. It was colourful in a really different way to the reefs we saw in Fiji and in the Great Barrier Reef In Australia. Further west, It’s the multi-coloured hard coral that makes the world underneath the surface so magical. Here, It’s the soft organisms and plant life that are bright.
The reef on the wreck had a lot of different things growing on it than on all the other reefs we’ve seen as well. I'm not sure if it's just because it's in a different area or because it's formed on top of steel instead of the ocean floor, but we all loved it.
There were lots of tubes of coral growing up everywhere. I'm not sure if they were soft or hard coral because I (obviously) didn't poke them, but they were really interesting. There were cones growing along the side of the wreck as well, and a lot of them seemed to have the same kind of fish living in them. They must have been like nests, because the fish did not want us there at all. They would chase us with angry eyes, and in one of our gopro videos you can actually hear a thump and see the camera shake from where one attacked it! So they were clearly not interested in making friends.
He’s eyeing us up...
When angry fish attack! (Taken by Becca)
Cone coral
We had to clear out pretty quickly once we emerged from the water, because we were just in a day anchorage and yet another squall was coming past. Thanks to El Niño we’ve hardly had any rain during the whole time we’ve been in Panama, and most of the squalls just pass us by. But we still don't want to risk getting stuck in them! We ducked around the corner and anchored there for a few days, sandwiched in between a handful of beautiful islands.
The islands here are really interesting. They're all tiny and very narrow, with not much room to spare. Some have a shack or two made from palm fronds and tarps, and others have little communities with several houses built on top of each other and crammed into a tiny space. You see an occasional solar panel on those islands, but most just have little solar lanterns or no power at all.
We tried snorkeling, but there wasn't that much to see. We went out to the barrier reef which didn’t have great coral thanks to all the breaking waves. It was still interesting though, with lots of tunnels and caves everywhere. We disturbed a huge nurse shark when when we swam through one of the passageways, which freaked me out. Nurse sharks like sleeping on the bottom in dark places, and they are like dopey puppies. They’re naturally very curious and will come right up to you to see what's happening. A friend told us that he just pushes them away when he's spear-fishing, because otherwise they’ll steal his fish. But in a quiet dopey way rather than the flesh tearing, angry manner that you picture when you think of sharks eating. Unfortunately I didn't know all this at the time, so all I saw was a shark much bigger than me coming right up to my face to see what I was doing. I was displeased! Becca on the other hand followed the silly bugger for ages, getting as close as she possibly could. Eep!
Eventually Becca and Dale ran out of time. We reluctantly took our visitors back to Carti, where they jumped on a 4WD and headed back to Panama City. The boat was suddenly very empty with them gone, and this is one of the few times after we’ve had visitors leave that we weren't at least a bit grateful for the extra space and extra peace and quiet. We miss them already!
Many drinks were had! (Taken by Becca)
Xxx Monique
Click here for more pictures!
We spent our last few days hanging out in the East Lemmon island group, where we continued to snorkel at least once a day. We even went swimming at night in the phospherescense, which I haven't done in a while. I've never swum at night with my snorkel mask on before - my whole world was just filled with sparkly lights and silvery trails as we moved through the water. It was really amazing.
On our way over from the Holandes Cays we stopped at Dog Island for the afternoon. There’s a shallow wreck there next to a gorgeous island made up of not much more than palm trees and white sand. The wreck is one of the more touristy things to do in the San Blas, but we decided to swing by anyway. I'm so glad we did!
We swam to shore from the boat and spent a long time exploring in amongst the rusty columns of metal jutting out from the sand. There were even sections that you could swim through, which Garth and Dale did. A lot. They went in one end and swam through the whole ship, popping back up through a hole in the bow.
Aside from it being a giant playground, the colours underneath the water were incredible. There was lots of coral I'd never seen before, along with fluorescent orange and green algae-like stuff everywhere. Throw in a rainbow of different coloured Christmas tree worms and the snorkeling was incredible. It was colourful in a really different way to the reefs we saw in Fiji and in the Great Barrier Reef In Australia. Further west, It’s the multi-coloured hard coral that makes the world underneath the surface so magical. Here, It’s the soft organisms and plant life that are bright.
The reef on the wreck had a lot of different things growing on it than on all the other reefs we’ve seen as well. I'm not sure if it's just because it's in a different area or because it's formed on top of steel instead of the ocean floor, but we all loved it.
There were lots of tubes of coral growing up everywhere. I'm not sure if they were soft or hard coral because I (obviously) didn't poke them, but they were really interesting. There were cones growing along the side of the wreck as well, and a lot of them seemed to have the same kind of fish living in them. They must have been like nests, because the fish did not want us there at all. They would chase us with angry eyes, and in one of our gopro videos you can actually hear a thump and see the camera shake from where one attacked it! So they were clearly not interested in making friends.
We had to clear out pretty quickly once we emerged from the water, because we were just in a day anchorage and yet another squall was coming past. Thanks to El Niño we’ve hardly had any rain during the whole time we’ve been in Panama, and most of the squalls just pass us by. But we still don't want to risk getting stuck in them! We ducked around the corner and anchored there for a few days, sandwiched in between a handful of beautiful islands.
The islands here are really interesting. They're all tiny and very narrow, with not much room to spare. Some have a shack or two made from palm fronds and tarps, and others have little communities with several houses built on top of each other and crammed into a tiny space. You see an occasional solar panel on those islands, but most just have little solar lanterns or no power at all.
We tried snorkeling, but there wasn't that much to see. We went out to the barrier reef which didn’t have great coral thanks to all the breaking waves. It was still interesting though, with lots of tunnels and caves everywhere. We disturbed a huge nurse shark when when we swam through one of the passageways, which freaked me out. Nurse sharks like sleeping on the bottom in dark places, and they are like dopey puppies. They’re naturally very curious and will come right up to you to see what's happening. A friend told us that he just pushes them away when he's spear-fishing, because otherwise they’ll steal his fish. But in a quiet dopey way rather than the flesh tearing, angry manner that you picture when you think of sharks eating. Unfortunately I didn't know all this at the time, so all I saw was a shark much bigger than me coming right up to my face to see what I was doing. I was displeased! Becca on the other hand followed the silly bugger for ages, getting as close as she possibly could. Eep!
Eventually Becca and Dale ran out of time. We reluctantly took our visitors back to Carti, where they jumped on a 4WD and headed back to Panama City. The boat was suddenly very empty with them gone, and this is one of the few times after we’ve had visitors leave that we weren't at least a bit grateful for the extra space and extra peace and quiet. We miss them already!
Xxx Monique
Click here for more pictures!
That's pretty hysterical that they put vegemite into a marmite jar! Having lived in New Zealand, I know what a dangerous thing the whole vegemite vs. marmite discussion can be :-)
ReplyDeleteCheers - Ellen
Lol, I was not amused! Every time I got it out of the cupboard I had a moment of panic!
DeleteLol, I was not amused! Every time I got it out of the cupboard I had a moment of panic!
Delete