Two years ago we crossed the Atlantic and dropped anchor in Falmouth Harbour, Antigua. Now we are 1,100 nautical miles further west, across the wide Caribbean.

Behind me are the misty, jungly Darien mountains of Panama and behind those, the Pacific Ocean, now just 30 miles away from where we are anchored.

I mentioned in the last post that we had sailed off the edge of our chart into an unsurveyed area. Now we are in the Western San Blas and the depths have reappeared on the chart plotter, although some of the islands are still in the wrong place.

It is also very much more popular than the eastern islands. There it was just us and the Gunas. Here it looks more like Grenada, anchorages with a dozen yachts bobbing about together, radio nets, barbecues, Some boats stay here for months, or years. But you can see why. It is a beautiful area with hundreds of perfect sandy islands covered in coconut palms, surrounded by coral and lagoons.

There is surf, fishing, reefs to explore with dinghy and snorkels. The weather is beautiful and we seem to be having a week off from those strong trades. The solar panels are powering the water maker, we still have fresh vegetables and cold beer. We even have a phone signal in most places. Guna families come paddling by in dugouts selling fresh bread, speared fish, lobsters for a few dollars. Days go by. We could be here for a while.

But first we needed to visit the mainland for a few days. Linton Bay, Puerto Lindo, Portobello, Savanitas. We handled all the formalities, got our passports stamped (Escapade’s 30th country) did all the laundry and provisioning, then sailed back to the islands.

Sightings on the mainland:

I like a monkey.

In the forest around Linton Bay we saw lots of them playing in the trees above us. Leaping from tree to tree and hanging by their tails.

On Isla Linton a family of spider monkeys came to take bananas from our hands and put on a show swinging through the trees around us.

In Panama a three-toed sloth is called ‘oso perezoso’. A lazy bear.

That week flew by, a procession of lovely islands. We anchored alone in a vast shallow lagoon studded with starfish and conch.

We sailed, spearfished, swam, we even found some waves for Scotty to surf while Sam and I windsurfed.

The galley was turning out lobster, conch, all kinds of pescado, and the wine cellar was woefully depleted.

We lay stargazing on the trampoline.  All over too fast, thanks for coming guys, let’s do it all again somewhere.