Horizons Travelblogue

A New Year

2007-01-01T17:30:00.000-06:00

It's a new year and it's well past time to give some attention to my much neglected Blog. Since Horizons' short excursion to western Panama at the end of May last year, and the return to Puntarenas in mid June, I've spent a few summer months in Vancouver, three weeks in England and three weeks in Belgium.

I returned to Horizons, in the boat yard at the Costa Rica Yacht Club, at the beginning of November, 2006, and have been working on a lot of much needed regular maintenance since then. So I've had little time or energy left for starting on updates to this Blog. The Blogger organisation has also updated the master Blog site over the past few months, so I've just transferred over to the new regime. There are a number of upgrades which should make the site more functional.

I will soon start to put together some new content to post here. In the meantime, may 2007 bring to you everything you wish for.

Golfito, Golfo Dulce, Costa Rica

2006-05-25T18:21:00.000-05:00

I'm beginning to get my breath back a bit after the movements of the past few weeks. It's very calm and peaceful here in Golfito. There is a small village which used to be a thriving banana exportation port until the business closed down some years ago. The harbour is in a totally enclosed bay with a relatively narrow channel leading from the larger Golfo Dulce. So the anchorage is very flat and calm. It's a very welcome change after some of the rather rolly anchorages we stopped in on the way down the coast.

The boat is in need of a good hull cleaning after all the dirt which accumulated during my months in the estuary in Puntarenas. My old friend from Vancouver, John, was visiting me for two weeks of, for him, the unknown on board a cruising boat. This was a first time experience for John. He’d never been on a cruising/sailing boat while underway before, and certainly not overnight.

When we first pulled out of the Yacht Club, the engine was blowing huge clouds of blue smoke out of the exhaust - the result of months of running the engine at low revs without load in order to charge the batteries. The engine needed a good run under load at high revs to clean and blow out all the built up accumulated carbon and other crap. But as we motored across from Puntarenas to the nearby Isla San Lucas, the temperature gauge needle started climbing close to the overheat red zone. So I had to baby it until we made the anchorage. The next day I checked the most accessible areas in the raw water cooling system and removed some debris from the strainer. But our next run out, to Bahia Ballena on the Nicoya Peninsula, demonstrated that the problem had not been solved, as the engine was getting hotter than it should again. So that had to be the first project in the new anchorage.

I drained both cooling systems (fresh and raw water) the next day and removed the heat exchanger. It was no surprise to find that it was clogged with a lot of organic debris which obviously got past the strainer system. I was surprised that the heat exchanger did as good a job as it did, given the amount of stuff that was obstructing the tubes. I had to clean out both ends of the heat exchanger as well as ream out a number of the tubes. As always, the biggest problem is getting the thing out of its installation location and then getting it back in place, due to the difficult access. However, this operation solved the high engine temperature problem.

We were the only cruising boat at anchor in Bahia Ballena, and this turned out to be the case in most of the other places we stopped at. The cruising season is definitely over. John went for swims when he could, and even swam to shore from the boat in Ballena, which was a good distance. As you can see in the accompanying photo, he's doing his impression of the Duke of Kent. We also rowed to shore and took a bus to nearby Montezuma. We had a long wait for the bus, and the trip was also slow. So we didn't have very much time to explore the place. But it seemed like an interesting little village with a nice beach and lots of tourist facilities for its size. We only had time for a little walk around after having a late lunch at a beachside restaurant, and then it was time to catch the last bus at 4:00 pm. It rained for most of the way back to Tambor, in Bahia Ballena, but fortunately it eased off a bit for when we had to row back to the boat. It was a long damp row!

My faltering 'fridge was going downhill fast and was barely doing its job. Eventually, it gave up the ghost. It may have leaked all its freon. I'll try to check it out with my gauges before I leave Golfito. I may be able to get it going again with some new freon, at least for a while. But in the interim, I'm having to use my backup 110 volt compressor system through my inverter. When I'm underway, I switch on the inverter and then plug in the backup fridge to the 110 volt electrical outlet and it freezes the cold plate (eventually!). The cold plate then cools the interior of the 'fridge, but I don't have a freezer with this system. At anchor, I've been running it on the inverter for about 1.5 hours both morning and night to try to keep it cold. But there's not been much sun, so the solar panels are not putting much back into the batteries.

We were trying to plan out our movements down the coast to enable John to easily return to San José when it came time for him to catch his flight back to Vancouver. But it seemed that the further we went down the coast, the more remote were the anchorages and the more difficult and time consuming it was going to be for him to travel back to San José. We thought at one point that we might have to hurry on so that we could get to Golfito from where there was at least a direct bus, even though it would be an 8 hour long bus ride. So we pressed on to Bahia Herradura, on the mainland side of the Gulf of Nicoya. Again we were unable to sail. There were head winds and we had to motor into short choppy seas. So it was relatively slow going. We still had a good supply of fruit, and John was making fruit salads for breakfast.

We only stayed overnight in Herradura and continued on the next day to Quepos. More motoring, but at least the seas were calmer and it was a smoother and faster trip. We again simply overnighted in Quepos. The weather wasn't all that good, either. We had periods of rain at various times, sometimes quite heavy. The swell from offshore was pretty much ever-present, so it was a bit rolly both in the anchorages as well as underway.

Punta Uvita was the next stop down the coast from Quepos. As usual, I timed the run there to get us into the anchorage in the later part of the afternoon. In spite of the regular swell, the autopilot had been able to handle all the steering without any problems. John took to the cruising/motoring quite comfortably and had no real problems adapting to the motion of the boat. He did a number of hours of steering the boat early on, to get the hang of it. It was also nice to have someone else prepare many of the meals, for a change. And a fine job he did, although he was not so keen on the title of “galley slave”. The weather started closing in on us as we approached Punta Uvita, and as we made the wide sweep around the reef and into the bay, it became increasingly apparent that this anchorage was not going to provide us with any protection from the wind and sea. As we approached the indicated anchoring area, the wind picked up, it started to rain heavily, and the swell was just rolling in to the bay creating a lee shore for both wind and sea. The anchorage was clearly untenable. Although it was just after 1600 hrs, we had no choice but to turn around and continue on to Bahia Drake.

I don't like arriving at a new anchorage in the dark, but we had no choice. With the reefs and rocks around the entrance to the anchorage at Punta Uvita, I would not have been happy about going into that anchorage at night. But the anchorage at Bahia Drake was wide and open and had no problematic dangers or obstructions. So I put the waypoint into the GPS and we headed directly for it. Being underway in the dark did not seem to bother John - must have had confidence in his captain! However, I discovered that the forward bow navigation lights were not working. I'd last checked them just before leaving Puesta del Sol, when they were fine. The terminals in the anchor locker were now corroded. So I had to use the masthead navigation lights, which I normally use only when I'm under sail. I later easily repaired the bow navigation lights after John had left the boat.

We entered Bahia Drake around 2200 hrs, after reaching our waypoint. Visibility was good in spite of the dark, and the radar confirmed the layout of the bay. Other than manoeuvring around several small power boats on moorings, anchoring was relatively straight forward. Bahia Drake was one place that John had been recommended by a friend in Vancouver, so he was keen to spend a little time there. As it happened, things worked out quite well in terms of doing a bit of sight seeing and providing him a means to easily get back to San José to pick up his return flight to Vancouver. We went to shore the next day. Unfortunately, a downpour started just before we got to the beach and we both got drenched. And it was hard work, even with two of us, dragging the dinghy with it's motor up the beach to where we could lock it to a post.

We found a nearby beachside lodge, where we had a beer, cleaned up and dried out a bit. The good news for John was that Marisa, day manager of this lodge, was able to book a domestic flight for him from Bahia Drake to San José for the day before his flight to Canada. This would get him there in less than an hour, provided that it didn't rain and the domestic small plane flight was able to actually take off. They apparently don't fly if the visibility is blotted out by cloud.

A highlight of this first shore visit to Bahia Drake was a filet mignon lunch at a restaurant up a hill along a dirt road behind and above the waterfront. It was delicious, particularly as it had been a while since I'd last had a good steak. The lowlight of that first visit was the fact that I wasted some time in the so-called Internet cafe trying to get a connection. I eventually had to give up on the attempt. It was the same when I tried again the next day. We found a grocery store which enabled us to replenish our dwindling stock of beer and soft drinks. This was to the good. Not to the good was having my bagged running shoes disappear somewhere between the beach and the boat. Very irritating, as these running shoes were quite comfortable. My other "good" pair hurt my feet.

The next day was sunnier. The water was quite calm, so I took the opportunity to install a new collar zinc on the propeller shaft. The old worn down one came off just before John arrived when I was cleaning the propeller in Puntarenas. On this visit to shore, we went for a hike along a rugged trail above the rocky shoreline and beach for some way. It was very hot and humid, but the scenery was beautiful. The tropical rain forest skirts this entire coast, and the trail initially took us past several waterside lodges which were now, in the low season, pretty quiet. We saw some very colourful Scarlet Macaws high up in the trees, which I initially misidentified as parrots. They were quite large, and noisy. It was a tiring and sweaty hike, and the beer was very welcome on our return to Jinetes, the beachside lodge we were at earlier.

John wanted to return to the restaurant up the hill for dinner, so this time I had a sirloin steak. I normally like to be back on the boat before dark, especially when at anchor. On this occasion, I was concerned about my cockpit anchor light coming on as the light sensor was malfunctioning. However, when we returned to the dinghy on the beach in the dark, I saw a light which appeared to be my anchor light in the distance - although the water depth was only 22 feet, the boat was quite a distance from the beach. We got the dinghy through the surf and were headed for the boat when I noticed a lot of water in the dinghy. I'd left the plug out after draining it on the beach earlier in the day and hadn't noticed it in the dark. I put the plug back in place. John bailed. So John was getting a first hand look at how Murphy constantly causes mischief (sometimes with a little help from me).

The following day, we were picked up by a launch that John had organised and we were taken to a popular beach and snorkelling area a short distance along the coast. The launch operator, Wilberto, was a local who had "connected" with a Dutch woman, Martine, and they now had a one month old baby boy. They were planning on travelling to Holland for about a year or so within the next few weeks. From San Josecito Beach, we walked along the trail above the beach for some distance until we got to Rio Claro, a small river which emerges at the beach from the jungle. There, we took a small boat paddled by a guide and slowly made our way up the little river. At one spot, we had to get out of the boat while the guide hauled it through a narrow gully or rapid. We made our way as far as a bigger set of rapids, where we left the boat and hiked along the steep jungly sides of the river for a little way. It was around the middle of the day, so we didn't see much wildlife, other than a couple of Boat-Billed Herons - peculiar looking birds with big red eyes and wide flat beaks.

It was hot and humid, although we were in the shade of the trees for much of the time. John was learning about the lethargy that this climate produces, although he said that it was similar to what he'd experienced during his recent trip to Cambodia. Back at San Josecito Beach, John went for a swim, taking the opportunity to use his snorkel and mask at least once to justify its place in his luggage. We had to be back at Jinetes lodge by about 1430 hrs for John to confirm his flight the next day to San José.

This was John's last day on the boat, and it was also the last nice day we've had. Since then, it's been rainy and overcast, with only occasional sunny spells. His last night on the boat was, for me, quite uncomfortable, as there was a heavy swell which was causing the low slung dinghy on its davits to be repeatedly hit by the waves, causing a lot of noise, vibration and stress on the gear. I had to lower it to the water and tie it alongside at about 0130 hrs. The swell had also caused one of my fenders to come loose and detach from the lifeline, disappearing into the night. Then the onshore wind increased and a downpour with thunder and lightning started. So I kept watch until the wind eased.

It was still raining lightly at 0630 hrs, and I was a bit concerned that John's plane might not get away. But it brightened up later in the morning around the time I took John to shore to catch his taxi to the local airport. The bad weather held off long enough for John's plane to take off late in the morning, as I saw the plane heading inland. Later in the day, the weather closed in again, so he was lucky to get off the ground when he did.

I'd planned to leave for Golfito the following morning after John's departure. But the weather was heavy and grey during the night, and a tropical downpour started at about 0600 hrs, just when I was planning to leave. So I decided to delay my departure for 24 hours to wait for better weather. The next morning I was awakened by heavy rain at about 0330 hrs, just when I was planning on getting up in order to leave at 0400 hrs. But the rain eased and I got under way shortly after 0400 hrs. As had been the case since leaving Puntarenas, there was no wind. So it was more motoring through the heavy swell. It was over 65 miles to Golfito, so it was going to be a long day. The early start was necessary to be sure of getting there before dark.

As skipper and author of this Blog, I’m now going to issue an official command, punishable on violation by a keel hauling, that any boaters or other cruisers reading this must skip over the next four paragraphs following this one, leaving them unread. And no backtracking!

The most “exciting” moment of the journey was having the engine stop running without warning when I was over two thirds of the way there. I was just under 3 miles from the rather rocky coastline and it was particularly worrying in that there was no wind for sail power and I was concerned that I might be washed onto the shore. I already had the Main sail up as a steadying sail in the swell. I unfurled the genoa, but all it did was flap about. Fortunately, I was able to quickly discover the problem which, for once, was not caused by Murphy. I'd run out of fuel!

Circles within circles. When I'd refuelled in Puntarenas, I was concerned about putting too much diesel into the tank because I wanted the boat to be as light as possible for when it is later hauled out of the water on my return to Puntarenas. The reason for this is that the Travelift at the Yacht Club is at its upper weight limit for hauling my boat. So I kept the last 20 gallons of fuel in my jerry jugs on deck, to be used as needed. Since leaving Puntarenas, to help blow out the carbon and crud which has built up in the engine over the previous months, I've been running the engine at around 2600 - 2800 rpm rather than my usual 2200 - 2400 rpm. This uses a disproportionate amount of additional fuel for the speed gained. I'd also been using the engine exclusively, without any opportunity for sailing. But I ought to have been keeping track of my fuel consumption, as I usually do. At the very least, I should have simply put more of my jerry jug fuel into the tank along the way. It emphasises the importance of sticking to one’s regular routines.

When the engine stopped and after unfurling the genoa, the first thing I did was check the primary fuel filter housing. As suspected, it only had a small amount of fuel remaining in it. With a marine engine, curing this out-of-fuel problem is not a simple matter of putting more fuel into the tank and starting up the engine, as it is with a car. The fuel system must also have the air bled out of the fuel lines all the way from the fuel tank to the engine. I put 10 gallons of diesel into the tank. I restarted the siphon effect in the line from the tank to the primary filter by sucking out the air (diesel fuel doesn't taste very good) to get the fuel to flow. I filled the secondary filter housing with fuel. I then bled the air out of the secondary filter on the engine. But the hard part was bleeding out the air from the fuel injection pump. The engine was hot, and the bleed screw on this pump is behind hot pipes and hoses and is hard to reach at the best of times. All the while, I was keeping an eye on the boat's position relative to the shore, via the radar. I was not at my most relaxed, particularly as it was very difficult to get my spanners to the necessary places on the fuel pump. I was hot, pouring with sweat and quite anxious.

However, I finally managed it and completed the bleeding process up to the injectors on the engine. And best of all, the engine then started at first attempt. It was a big relief that the boat didn't drift towards shore. It just remained a similar distance away for the hour it took me to complete the refuelling and bleeding process. Once underway and back on course, I put the remaining 10 gallons of diesel into the tank. Although I'd lost an hour, I still managed to get into the anchorage at Golfito before dark.

I'm loving this anchorage after the rolly ones up the coast. It's flat and dead calm here, so I'm enjoying the comfort. I've also caught up with fellow cruisers Candy & Gene, of "Passage". I first met them in Nicaragua, and then again in Puntarenas. They are in Banana Bay Marina, which is a somewhat expensive spot. They will be shipping their boat back to the USA from Golfito in late June (actually, to Ensenada in Mexico, just south of San Diego) by the Dockwise Transport ship. So, other than some road trips inland and possibly down to Panama City, they are hanging around here until then, after having cruised a bit of western Panama.

Yesterday was tankage day. I filled my water tank with an additional 47 gallons, and added another 47 gallons of diesel to the fuel tank. Diesel is expensive here, at US$3.05 a gallon. Today, I need to do some shopping. I'm planning on leaving here for western Panama on an overnighter early next week. It’s another trip of over 62 miles. So a morning arrival will guarantee me lots of daylight and time to get checked into the country. I'll probably hang about in a small island group for several days and then head back to Costa Rica and Puntarenas. I don't know my precise timing at the moment.

Golfito, Costa Rica

2006-05-20T13:38:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Golfito in southern Costa Rica a couple of days ago after a day long motor sail from Bahia Drake. I'm presently anchored close to Banana Bay Marina, in the well protected bay. It's a relief to have the boat hold steady after the heavy rolling from the swells at Bahia Drake. The rainy season seems to be now establishing itself, and it's now a bit of an effort to keep things dry in the boat.

I will post a fuller update very soon, including an account and some photos covering the visit of my old friend, John, from Vancouver. He returned home earlier in the week after two weeks of learning a bit about the mundane life of a cruiser. I now need to do some reprovisioning of the boat after being away from "civilization" since leaving Puntarenas. This includes obtaining more diesel fuel (I've used a lot more than I expected) and fresh water.

Puntarenas Scenes

2006-03-30T13:33:00.000-06:00

Puntarenas is on a long narrow peninsula in the Gulf of Nicoya, Costa Rica. The estuary on its north shore (left) is shallow and boats accessing the Costa Rica Yacht Club may only enter or leave close to the rising high tide. This is quite an old photo, and does not show the "new" jetty. To the right is the beach fronting on the Gulf of Nicoya. Skirting that beach is the Paseo de Turistas.

The estuary at the Yacht Club is well protected, and is calm even during strong winds.

Horizons (brown canvas on both main and staysail booms) can be seen about the third mast from the left, with the mangroves in the near background and the cloud forest mountains in the distant background.

This is the view I have from my galley porthole as I make my breakfast.

A container ship at the "new" jetty. which is also used by cruise liners.

The lifeguard has a beautiful view of the Gulf of Nicoya.

View to the south, looking down the Gulf of Nicoya

One of the beachside picnic areas.

Two views of the Paseo de Turistas.

Beach vendor.

Restored old church in the centre of Puntarenas.

Modern new church near the point on the peninsula.

One of the ferries which leaves from near the end of the estuary side of the Puntarenas peninsula, to cross the Gulf to the Nicoya Peninsula.

Some of the fish docks just upstream of the ferry dock.

More Costa Rica Travels, Part 2

2006-03-26T18:12:00.000-06:00

As we headed further south from La Fortuna and the mountainous cloud forest region, clearing skies contrasted with the large banks of cloud which continued to envelope the areas around the Arenal volcano. We saw more scenic beauty from the bus windows all the way to San José. From the top of the mountain ridge overlooking the Central Valley we had excellent views of the valley, San José and its neighbouring cities as well as the Gulf of Nicoya on the distant Pacific coast.

One convenience I’ve used on several visits to San José is the combined Internet café and Laundromat, in the centre of the city close to Gran Hotel Costa Rica. This we used the following day, in spite of the frustration of having to use computer keyboards with numerous punctuation keys which did not correspond with their key symbols. The rest of the day we spent generally sightseeing on foot – Mercado Central, Parque de España, Parque Morazón (with its large gazebo, the “Music Temple”), Parque Nacional, National Legislative Buildings, etc. On the walls of a cosy hotel in a nice residential area near the National Botanical and Zoological gardens was a series of about eight or nine interesting ceramic tile murals depicting aspects of traditional Costa Rican life. Late in the afternoon, we saw and heard the very animated swarming of the large numbers of green parakeets in the Parque Central, an event repeated each dusk.

Following the quashing of a revolution in 1948, the Costa Rica legislature took the revolutionary step of disbanding the national army. The headquarters of the army, the Old Fort (Bellavista Barracks), being no longer required for military purposes, was later refurbished and turned into the National Museum. Bullet holes from the 1948 revolution can still be seen in many of the exterior walls. Carol and I spent a few hours seeing its exhibits and learning a bit about Costa Rican history, from the early indigenous and Pre-Columbian times through the colonial era to the present.

Particularly interesting were the displays of gold and jade ornaments and figurines, pottery and ceramics, and the many ornate varieties of three legged ceremonial “tables” carved in stone. Lithic spheres, or stone balls carved out of hard granite by the early Diquis tribe of south-western Costa Rica, are also on display in various sizes. These spheres have been found in diameters up to six feet and weighing several tons. Their purpose is still unknown.

The large inner courtyard of the museum was attractively landscaped with tropical trees, shrubs, cacti, old cannons, some lithic spheres and a collection of old coffee bean processing machinery. The surrounding tiled galleries contained old colonial wooden benches and potted plants.

A day excursion trip from San José seemed like a good idea, so we caught a couple of connecting local buses to the artisan village of Sarchí, Costa Rica’s most important crafts centre about 30 km from the capital. Sarchí is particularly well known for its highly decorative traditional wooden oxcarts (carretas). Last November, UNESCO declared these traditional oxcarts part of the world’s intangible heritage. They came from Spanish colonial tradition, and the designs are believed to have originated in Andalucia. Being originally working carts used by the campesinos for transporting all sorts of cargo, they became a form of expression when painted and decorated with increasingly colourful and intricate designs.

The centre of Sarchí is dominated by a church described by one guide book as being of a “birthday cake” design. We found one of the larger artisan markets nearby, with a greatly oversized representation of the decorative wheel of a traditional oxcart in the forecourt. The market itself had on display numerous colourfully painted oxcarts of various sizes – the smaller sizes being simply souvenirs. There was also a huge volume of craftwork intended for the tourist market, such as colourful plaques, pictures, masks, wood carvings, decorative hardwood boxes, hand-painted feathers, necklaces and numerous other souvenirs.

The hilly countryside around Sarchí is very scenic. Just below the artisans’ market was a restaurant which overlooked part of the surrounding gardens. On display at the entrance to the restaurant, much as a tourist venue in Canada might have a wooden carved Indian chief, was one of the colourful oxcarts, complete with matching ox yokes. However, there were no oxen in attendance.

Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, on the Caribbean coast, was our next destination. We checked into a nice beachside hotel a short (according to Carol) walk outside of the centre of the village, to the east. It was the last of the series of beachside accommodations along the dirt road leading out of Puerto Viejo, in a very nice location surrounded by forest. The sound of the surf was ever present and it was only a few paces from our door to the beach. It was very peaceful and well out of earshot of the hustle and bustle of the centre of this tourist village (Carol tells me).

It was getting to be late in the afternoon, and close to refreshment time. As an alternative to the bumpy dirt road with its trucks and bikes, we walked back to the village along the trail through the trees, just above the beach. Puerto Viejo is not very big. It has a main street and a parallel secondary main street beside the beach, plus numerous dirt sidestreets. Accommodations for all budgets are available in and around the village. Puerto Viejo and some of the nearby beaches have been becoming increasingly popular with the surfing crowd. So young people with boards were very visible segment of the tourist crowd.

I had good memories of an excellent lunch I’d had at a Thai restaurant when I was last in Puerto Viejo last September. So Carol and I thought that we would forgo rice and beans just this once to try something different. Chile Rojo is owned and operated by Andrew Bacon, an Englishman, and his Japanese partner Ikuko Nagasaka. Andrew lived in Thailand for a while, where he studied the local cuisine. He obviously studied it well, because the memories of my great September meal were equalled, or even surpassed.

It’s exceptional for me to review meals I’ve had, but my tastebuds were so scintillated by my meals in Chile Rojo that I can’t hold back. If you find yourself in Chile Rojo, the first item you should choose from the menu is the Thai fish & coconut soup with rice noodles, lemon grass and chile, which also includes a perfectly cooked julienne of vegetables. This cost 2,000 colones (about US$4.00) plus 13% tax. Also superb was the Thai green curry with coconut milk, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaf & mixed vegetables, and rice and chicken, for 3,200 colones plus tax. I enjoyed two varieties of this dish on two occasions. It also comes with fish instead of the chicken, or, for 3,000 colones, there is a vegetarian version. Carol also enjoyed the Thai tofu sesame salad, with rice noodles, lettuce, julienne vegetables & Thai peanut dressing, for 2,000 colones plus tax. Now look what I’ve done – my mouth is watering.

We ate at a couple of other restaurants in the village but concluded that we were wasting our dining budget by not working our way through Chile Rojo’s menu at lunch and dinner times.

The pancake and fruit salad breakfast by the beach at Parquecito Cove (near the centre of the village) the following morning was good preparation for our rental bike ride along the bumpy dirt road to Manzanillo. However, a few big bags of pancake mix strapped to the bike seat would have offered some protection from the potholes. The dirt road follows the line of the beach all the way (about 12 kms) to Manzanillo, although narrow to wide bands of forest separate the two.

Playa Cocles was our first pause. It has a beautiful palm tree fronted beach and reputedly offers some of the best surfing on the Caribbean coast. I’m not qualified to comment on that, but we did watch several surfers trying to confirm the claim. We pushed our pedals onwards towards Punta Uva, where we took a muddy pooled side road from the main dirt road through the trees to the waterfront. Another beautiful palm lined beach by the point - ideal for all the things people like to do on beaches.

Back a short way from the beach and through the trees was a sort of jungle resort bar/restaurant, Ranchito, located perfectly for much needed refreshment. Several small palapas, designed to cover individual tables, were scattered around the grounds in the general vicinity of the thatch covered main palapa. It was an Italian restaurant operated by an Italian couple, whose small son, Eduardo, was charming some of the customers.

Continuing on towards Manzanillo on the bumpy road, I was using the bike seat less and less, preferring to reduce discomfort by standing on the pedals. I expect that a tropical tree and shrub expert would have been in top gear identifying all the exotic varieties we were riding past. But there was one distinctive flowering plant I was able to subsequently identify – the Heliconia plant.

Manzanillo is on the edge of the Refugio Nacional Gandoca-Manzanillo, an extremely rich and diversified ecological environment with over 5,000 hectares of land and over 4,400 hectares of ocean, which extends to the border with Panama. Reefs stand off the shore along most of this stretch of coastline, including off the beach at Manzanillo. Rain forest makes up over 65% of the park, which also includes wetlands and a rare red mangrove tree swamp. Unfortunately, we would have needed much more time than we had available in order to explore the park.

On our return ride back to Puerto Viejo, on the veranda of a roadside restaurant where we stopped for drinks, we encountered a young trio of siblings we had met earlier. We had earlier all been looking for accommodation at the same time, having arrived in Puerto Viejo on the same bus. Their home was in Victoria, BC. Gary had been travelling in Costa Rica and his sisters, Nikki and Carleen, had joined him for a short visit. San José was next on their itinerary, where they were going to meet up with their parents who were flying from Canada to join them. They were excellent representatives of their generation and we had a very enjoyable chat. One of the more pleasant aspects of travel is meeting nice young people such as these three.

We explored the trails by the beach on both sides of the village the following day, including another visit to Playa Cocles, and generally took it easy. After a disappointing breakfast at a restaurant we hadn’t tried before, we avoided a repeat of that mistake by returning to Chili Rojo for our remaining meals of the day. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Cahuita is only about half an hour by bus from Puerto Viejo, to the north west. After a leisurely late breakfast the following morning, we took the 11:30 am bus to Cahuita and checked in to Cabinas Safari, close to the centre of the village. We explored the village from the park entrance on one side to Playa Negra on the other during the afternoon, and filled in some of the time doing essential things such as buying T-shirts (Carol), having a beer (me), doing e-mail (Carol), having a beer (me), etc.

We had arranged to have dinner that evening at an Italian restaurant with Ed and Doreen, a lively English born Canadian couple we had met at lunch time. Our first mistake was not taking with us our plastic rain ponchos. It began to rain as we walked to the restaurant and then the heavens opened shortly after we arrived and we were entertained by the loud noise of a tropical downpour for most of the time we were having dinner. Fortunately, it eased off by the time we were ready to leave.

Our second mistake was having control of our budget pre-empted, as our individual orders (we all ordered the same meal) were then combined into a joint order, followed by our companions adding more ingredients. They then added further dishes which also ended up on our share of the bill. It was a nice meal but overpriced for what it was.

Cahuita National Park was our reason for being in Cahuita. The park was set aside in 1970 and became a National Park in 1978. The land area, part of which is on a small peninsula, covers 1,068 hectares. Included also in the park are 600 hectares of coral reefs and a total of 22,400 hectares of marine area. The coral reef is the most developed and important on the Costa Rica Caribbean coast, and contains about 35 species of coral. The land area is home to howler and white face monkeys, sloths, and coatimundis, among others, as well as a wide variety of birds such as toucans and hummingbirds.

Carol still hadn’t seen a monkey during her visit. We were counting on Cahuita to fill the bill. And we weren’t disappointed. We entered the park at about 08:00 am and walked along the beachside trail. The tide was quite high and was washing over the trail in places. At one spot where a creek runs across the path from a small lagoon into the sea I had to remove my shoes and wade across.

There was much activity going on around our feet – crawling hermit crabs, numerous ghost crabs darting for cover down their holes, lines of marching load-carrying leaf cutter ants, lots of small lizards and geckos, and a large green lizard with prehistoric looking fins on its head and back. Butterflies fluttered, including the blue morpho and the glass winged butterfly. Later, near the exit, there was a viper hiding in the brush and a large gold thread spider in its web waiting for dinner.

But the monkeys were the stars of the show. Carol finally got her wish. First, I saw one isolated white face capuchin monkey high in the branches. Not far away, we came across a group of them resting high in the trees. Not much movement. After watching them for a short while, we walked further down the path. About 5 minutes later, we saw another group of capuchin monkeys on the trail ahead of us. They then came bounding down the trail towards us without any concern for our presence. They paused at times and then continued until several of them had scrambled near and past us, taking positions on low branches and looking around in utmost seriousness.

Perhaps they had become accustomed to getting tidbits from visitors to the park. Feeding the monkeys is strongly discouraged by the park rangers. One problem is related to the bad effects this has on the health of the monkeys. Many things they are given by misguided tourists are not natural food sources for these monkeys. The internal damaging effects can sometimes be seen externally in the change in colour of the normally white portions of their fur, which turns yellow or darker. Rangers have reported on the increase of sickness in some groups.

Giving food which is not necessarily foreign to their natural diet, such as certain fruits, is also harmful to them as it changes their behaviour patterns and potentially disrupts their social structure. For example, proffering a piece of fruit can result in several monkeys fighting over it. Monkeys can also get aggressive towards humans when they are not given tidbits they have come to expect. There is abundant food for the monkeys in the forest without them having to fight for it. They have all they need. Tourists are told not to endanger the monkeys for their own entertainment.

In addition to my month touring Costa Rica last autumn, I had been in the country about 2½ months at this point. During that time, I had heard on many occasions the distinctive sound of howler monkeys. But I’d never seen one. I don’t think that they are particularly shy, but they have been elusive to me. I thought that this was going to continue when Carol and I heard a couple of groups of howler monkeys having a howling contest. As the dialogue continued not far away, we tried spotting the source of one side of the argument. Clear loud howling emitted but only trees could be seen. However, on walking further towards the second protagonist, we came upon the entire tribe in the trees above our heads.

I managed to get some decent video sequences, taking advantage of the power of the zoom lens on the camcorder. I’ve copied a series of still frames from the video. After the glowering first frame (“Who are you looking at?”), the series shows “the boss” in full throated howl. The group ranged from mature to infant, with two or three of the little ones having fun play wrestling. It was a great way to close our visit to the park.

Next morning it was time for the return visit to San José. It had rained heavily all night but it eased off by the time we got on the 07:30 bus. But that didn’t last. The bus ploughed through lots of rain and heavy low level cloud and fog for much of the way back to the Central Valley. We had a very brave driver who probably spends much of his spare time in casinos. He had no fears when overtaking on double yellow lines or blind curves. Nor did he worry about keeping his foot on the accelerator when the visibility ahead in the heavy fog dropped down to about 10 feet. But once we got onto the valley side of the mountain ridge, the weather cleared up and it was partly sunny as we entered San José.

Lunch and shopping, including a visit to the Artisans’ Market (where Carol drove some hard bargains), filled our time before catching the 14:30 hrs bus to Puntarenas. Back to the Pacific coast heat, refreshment at the Yacht Club was called for.

For Carol’s final day in Costa Rica, a Saturday, we relaxed and explored a bit of beachside Puntarenas along the Paseo de los Turistas and around the end of the peninsula. The 07:30 bus the following morning would get Carol to the airport near Alajuela in good time for her afternoon flight back to Vancouver.

We both enjoyed our whirlwind tour to some of the highlights of Costa Rica. The convenience and reasonable cost of the excellent network of buses made travelling through the country pleasant and easy. And although the security of one’s personal property is always an issue when travelling in Costa Rica, I didn’t feel quite as tense about it as I had when I toured the country last September. Perhaps I’d adapted and became more accustomed to the situation.

More Costa Rica Travels

2006-03-17T15:48:00.000-06:00

[Double click on any photo to enlarge.]

Much of the period following Tony’s return to Canada was taken up with general domestic and boat chores – topping up fuel and water tanks, laundry, refilling propane tank, cleaning, polishing stainless steel, futile electrical troubleshooting, new zippers on a sail cover and the sun awning, genoa sail repairs (as described earlier), paying Vancouver property taxes online, renewing my townhouse mortgage via e-mail and fax, various equipment repairs, changing engine oil and filters, etc., etc

One particularly bothersome chore was trying to renew my boat insurance. I was expecting to simply complete and fax the renewal forms to the Vancouver agent and pay the premium to cover another year, as I had done in previous years. But I was told that my current underwriter was no longer insuring offshore boats and that I would have to get a new policy from another underwriter. The quotes I then received offered much less coverage for higher premiums, on top of which I was required to have an out-of-water (US$400 haul-out) hull and rigging survey (US$500 survey) and comply with all survey recommendations (US$x,xxx.00 repairs/replacements, if such were possible or available).

The boat is currently in need of a haul-out and comprehensive standard maintenance, and I was planning to begin this work in June. Some of the additional hull maintenance requires that the boat dry out for several months, so completion would not be possible pursuant to the new insurance requirements without major changes to my plans for the Spring and the coming year. Fortunately, after a series of e-mail exchanges and negotiations between myself, the agent and the current underwriter, it was agreed by the current underwriter to extend my current policy to June 15th of this year. So my present insurance will continue until my planned haul-out. More later, on further complications to this plan.

During this period, Carol (“Yoo hoo, I’m from Canada!”) managed to get flights for a two-week visit with me in February, arriving in just over a week. She doesn’t hang around once she’s made up her mind. Her last visit to Horizons from Vancouver was when I was in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, in early 2002. That time, we spent a week in La Paz enjoying the company of other cruisers and the Carnaval, and a further week cruising in the islands near La Paz. On this visit, she wanted to see some of the attractions of Costa Rica by land.

The International Airport for San José is actually on the doorstep of nearby Alajuela, Costa Rica’s second largest city. I met Carol there at the appointed time and we returned the next day to Horizons in Puntarenas for a short organizational stop-over. Then we were off on our travels.

Monteverde

There is a bus which runs conveniently from beachside Puntarenas direct to Santa Elena, the village close to the Monteverde Cloud Biological Forest Preserve which acts as the centre for visitors in the area. It is not a luxury bus. It was a slow, multi-stopping journey high into the mountains, the latter part of the ride being over suspension-challenging (what suspension?) dirt roads. But the scenery was beautiful, and increasingly magnificent the higher we climbed. The clear sunny weather was perfect for the trip, and some of the vistas were perfect for glossy coffee table books. Unfortunately, bone-shaker buses are not the ideal platform for photography.

The first chore on arriving in a new place is locating suitable accommodation. In Santa Elena we had no worries. On getting off the bus we were immediately surrounded by about half a dozen English-speaking operators of local cabinas. It was a bit overwhelming, but they were all very pleasant and good humoured in offering their competing accommodations and distributing to us their coloured glossy leaflets. There was not much to distinguish between the various facilities as they all appeared to offer the same attractions for the same US$10 per person price. We ended up choosing the hotel of the first person who had approached us. Cabinas El Pueblo was down a rough and rocky short and steep road just around the corner from the main street.

Carol and I spent some time going through the wad of glossy pamphlets and information leaflets given to us by our enthusiastic hostess. The star attraction was the Cloud Forest Preserve, so we noted the time of the first shuttle bus going there the next morning. The earlier the better, for seeing some of the wildlife.

An early small version of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Preserve was initiated in the early 1950’s by a group of Quakers who had left the United States in protest over the military draft for the Korean War. They settled in an area near to Santa Elena and developed their own community. They also set aside a section of their land for the benefit of all. This area was expanded in 1972 and in subsequent years, and made into the current Preserve of 5,000 hectares owned and administered by the Tropical Science Centre (http://www.cct.or.cr/). See also http://www.cloudforestalive.org/ and http://www.fccmonteverde.org/.

One hundred species of mammal can be found in the four different life zones of the Preserve, along with 400 species of bird, 500 varieties of butterfly and more than 3,000 species of plant, which includes 420 types of orchid. Animals include jaguars, mountain lions, two toed sloths, howler, spider and white-face capuchin monkeys, armadillos, anteaters, coatimundis (also known as pizotes, of the raccoon family), kinkajou (a tree climbing member of the raccoon family) and numerous other species.

Costa Rica is also well known for its numerous species of brightly coloured frogs and toads, many of which are found (and some, like the golden toad, are no longer found) in the Preserve. (The rainmaker harlequin frog is also thought to have recently become extinct as a result of the effects of global warming, according to a study published in the British scientific journal, Nature.) Birds to be seen in the Preserve include the endangered Three-wattled Bellbird (birders are very imaginative in giving names) and the rare Resplendent Quetzal, usually referred in the guide books as elusive.

Carol and I must have been living right, as the first thing we became aware of on our arrival at the entrance to the Cloud Forest Preserve at 6:30 am was a number of Resplendent Quetzals in the trees above our heads. They seemed completely oblivious to their mystique and rarity as they fluttered around the fruit bearing trees having a good early morning breakfast.

The Resplendent Quetzal, with its bright and exotic plumage, is frequently described as the most beautiful in the New World. Of the five species of quetzal, the Resplendent Quetzal is unique in having a train of long feathers, sometimes incorrectly described as a tail, which flows down from its back. The bird was a prominent feature in the mythology of pre-Columbian Indians, such as the Aztecs, whose royalty used the feathers as adornments. The quetzal is the national bird of Guatemala, but unfortunately it has become so endangered in that country that a sighting is exceptionally rare. Fortunately, there is still a lot of cloud forest habitat in and around the many national parks in Costa Rica which enable the Resplendent Quetzal to survive in this country, although much is increasingly under threat.

Seeing these Resplendent Quetzals sitting in the branches and flying above our heads was quite a thrill. There must have been about five or six of them, mostly males - the female does not have the long feathers trailing from its back. Their favourite food is the small wild avocado and in the Monteverde area they eat about 18 species of it. They swallow them whole and then later regurgitate the seed. The remaining 20% of their diet is made up of other fruits, insects, small frogs and lizards.

Getting photos of these quetzals was not a snap. In the trees, the light was not very good most of the time. So crisp photos were not possible. The 3 to 1 zoom lens on my little digital camera was significantly underpowered. I also had to boost up the “film” speed, introducing a bit of added grain to the images. But I did get a small number of “barely acceptable” shots which I’ve cropped and blown up and included here. I also got a couple of almost reasonable shots through the tripod-mounted monocular of a guide who appeared on the scene.

My video camera was a better bet, with its 20 to 1 optical zoom lens. But where was my chunky tripod when I needed it? (It’s like an umbrella – it only rains when you don’t have one.) But I did get some reasonable if slightly shaky telephoto video of the quetzals. I’ve captured some still frames from parts of the video, which I’ve also included here. Due to the much lower definition of the video digital images, the quality of the still frames leaves much to be desired. So I’ve also included one professionally taken photo to give a clearer image of the bird.

Into the park we went. Another reason to start early, in addition to possibly seeing some of the wildlife foraging for their first meal of the day, is the fact that there is a limit on the number of people allowed into the park at any one time. We were up there with the first arrivals – no problemo. On top of the entrance fee (US$11), we decided to pay the extra (US$17) to have a guide. So we joined a small tour which, overall, we found to be worth it for getting the best out of our visit.

The tour started off with a short slide presentation about the Preserve, which included a section on the now-extinct golden toad and its indiscriminate sexual practices – the ancient Romans would have been shocked. Nearby was the Hummingbird Gallery which had a number of feeders hanging around the patio. I lost count of the numerous varieties of hummingbird which darted and flitted to and from the feeders in the short time that we were there. Many different sizes and a multitude of bright colours.

We then proceeded along various trails, with the guide educating us on the life of the cloud forest and pointing out various indigenous birds, such as the black turkey bird (also described as the crash-landing turkey bird) and identifying some of their birdsongs (listen to some of them at www.cloudforestalive.org/library/sounds.php). He explained how much of the forest grows from the top down, with the seeds lodging high in the forest canopy as a result of bird activity and then growing long roots down to the ground.

The strangler fig is one of the most notorious and successful exponents of this process. From its beginnings, several of its increasingly thick woody roots extend down to the ground from the upper parts of the host tree, where they take root in the forest floor. These roots, both above and below ground, grow thicker and gradually encircle the host tree and its roots. Over many years they grow closer and tighter around the tree, eventually strangling it to death. The dead host tree ultimately rots away, leaving the strangler fig tree with a hollow centre where the original tree used to be. The power exerted by strangler fig trees over many years has also caused much damage to ancient Mayan ruins in various parts of Central America.

Colonies of leafcutter ants are also a feature of the cloud forest and we saw the exterior of some large ones, not to mention major highways of these ants carrying their cut up green booty back to the nest.

At a clearing on one of the trails, we had a magnificent view of the Gulf of Nicoya in the distance, including the long skinny peninsula of Puntarenas.

Towards the end of the guided tour, we were shown the lair of an orange kneed tarantula. It was in quite a deep hole in a clay bank. Parts of the fuzzy legs of the spider could be seen just over the top of a small ridge deep in the hole, with most of its body being concealed below the ridge. Nobody in our group could be persuaded to provoke the tarantula with a stick in order to get it to reveal more of itself.

A number of coatimundis (raccoon family) were wandering about near the beginning of the trails and further inside the Preserve boundaries. They seemed to be used to people and were quite unafraid.

After a snack in the restaurant, Carol and I continued our visit by exploring some of the trails we did not cover with the guide. It was enjoyable to be able to now take it at our own pace. By one of the trails we came across an “atmospheric” waterfall in the dense vegetation – a convenient Kodak moment. We had been looking for monkeys, both with and without the guide, but didn’t spot any. And it appeared that the two-toed sloths were actively avoiding us.

Back in Santa Elena, we then booked an evening guided forest tour in the hopes of seeing the many nocturnal creatures of the cloud forest so prominently featured in the brochures. This tour (US$17 including round trip transportation) was in the El Refugio forest just to the north of the village. But it was a disappointment. We didn’t experience much more than we had during the daylight tour that morning. With the aid of his powerful spotlight, the guide manage to locate a spotted owl, a kinkajou climbing in the trees, a leaf disguised insect, and a large lizard sleeping on a tree branch. He also showed us another tarantula lair – it’s a good idea not to wear open sandals on forest walks. At the beginning of the walk, we also were shown a toad in its hole – I know it was not ceramic because I saw it move.

We had also booked a Canopy Tour for the following day. I was of two minds about this “attraction”, as it seemed more of a Disneyland/Adventure Park novelty ride designed more for thrills than sober wildlife and nature observation. I didn’t see how riding on a pulley down an aerial cable through the trees at high speed from one elevated platform to another was going to advance my opportunities to see sloths, monkeys and jaguars. I suspect that the areas where these adrenalin rides are located are studiously avoided by any self respecting forest animals.

A change in the weather resolved the issue. After a stormy night, we arose to find the area soakingly enveloped in heavy cloud accompanied by strong winds. This was the cloud forest at its cloudiest. When we went outside onto the muddy street, it was like standing in a gale force horizontal downpour. The winds must have been in excess of 30 knots. If this was a common feature of local weather, it’s no wonder that they have rows of wind turbines on the ridge above Lake Arenal, near Tilarán, not far to the west. The air temperature was even cooler than it had been the day before. Canceling the Canopy Tour in these conditions was not a difficult decision.

Our morning alternative was a visit to the Butterfly Garden, outside Santa Elena to the south east and easily reachable by taxi. We were initially given a presentation on many of the various insects of Costa Rica. This included an introduction to their pet orange kneed tarantula, which by this time I’d learned could not do me much harm. Fuzzy it was, cuddly it was not. Our timing was also perfect for watching a Blue Morpho butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. We then had a very enjoyable and interesting guided tour through the four separate butterfly habitat enclosures.

Two children were in our small tour group and they were each given a newly metamorphosised butterfly to release from a box when we entered the first habitat enclosure. The little girl released the bewildered Owl butterfly from her box. Then her young brother opened his box to release a Blue Morpho butterfly. But it was at first reluctant to move. The boy shook the box and the butterfly fluttered out and flew right at me, clasping its spindly legs across my mouth and sitting there. Not used to being kissed by butterflies, I instinctively shook my head to dislodge it. Everyone thought it was hilarious.
After lunch, the strong winds and even stronger gusts continued to blow the drenching heavy cloud droplets horizontally. Those who know Carol will be aware that gravity does not have a lot to work with in keeping her in contact with the ground, and a few heavy rocks in her backpack may have been a sensible precaution in these strong winds. As it was, my flimsy plastic rain poncho got shredded as it was constantly blown around my neck. But it was not a very long walk to the Frog Pond from the restaurant, and we then received some further education.

It was an interesting although not enthralling visit. We saw mostly very small and brightly coloured frogs as well as some larger toads. A good number of them were poisonous in various manners and to varying degrees, which is probably why they were all contained in large glass enclosures. In the circumstances of the displays, photography was not feasible.

The weather continued stormy overnight, and the electrical power was cut off several times. When we got up, the power was off and there was no hot water for the shower. Given the chilly air temperature, cold showers were vetoed. Time to move on. Still gale force winds and horizontally driven cloud spray. 07.15 am bus to Tilarán and then, after a windy and chilly wait, on to La Fortuna by way of the slow route around the north west end of Lake Arenal. I traveled this same route last September, but it appeared that they had paved the dirt road section since my last transit.

No surprises. It was drizzling on our arrival in La Fortuna. But – halleluja – the wind had dropped. I was here last September in the hopes of seeing the Arenal active volcano. But on that occasion it was enveloped in cloud for my entire visit and I never got to see it. This was strike two. The rain continued. Arenal volcano remained in obscurity. We bought new plastic rain ponchos, and wore them. We had a few meals, a few drinks. Volcano still socked in. Drizzle persisted. Watched a TV movie in the hotel room. Did some Internet.

Carol wanted some sun. Me too. Time to move on. So the next day we caught the 12.45 pm bus to San José.

Low Tides in the Yacht Club

2006-02-03T12:46:00.000-06:00

Tony caught the 1230 hrs bus from downtown Puntarenas to Alajuela and the airport for his flight later that evening. On my return to the boat after seeing him off at the bus station, I was quite dismayed to see that Horizons was aground on her moorings. The bow was tilted down and the boat was leaning to starboard. The weight of the boat seemed to be on the aft part of the keel and, worryingly, on the rudder. The shallower water seemed to be at the aft. With a draft of 6 feet, I measured only about 4'9" of water at the stern of the boat.

We were going through several days of minus (unusually low) tides. Not all boats in the Yacht Club were affected, and I hadn’t expected that Horizons would be in a location where a low tide would result in a grounding. I requested to be moved to where the water was a bit deeper but it didn’t happen for a couple of days. So I was again aground the following day, although not quite as badly. I finally got moved on a subsequent high tide to a moored floating platform where I was tied alongside in the same way as to a dock. I’m still there. One bonus over the simple mooring is that the platform has a piped supply of potable water, which makes filling my water tank very easy.

I now thought that my problems with low tides were over. But I was wrong. Another boat was (and still is) tied up on the other side of my floating platform. During the next period of minus tides at the end of January, I discovered that my neighbouring boat had a deeper draft than Horizons – one foot deeper. Consequently, as the tide continued to ebb to the minus level, my neighbouring boat began to lean over in the direction of Horizons when its keel hit bottom. This leaning continued to increase in severity as the tide continued to ebb, and I became quite concerned as the mast of this boat leaned closer and closer towards Horizons’ mast.

At one point, the instruments at the top of this neighbouring boat were only inches from the instruments at the top of Horizons’ mast. And the tide continued to ebb. It now appeared that the masts would not come into contact. But as the neighbouring mast continued to lean further, it now became a threat to Horizons’ backstay (the wire cable which supports the mast from the rear). The only solution was to try to move Horizons forward on the platform, against the tidal current, to increase the distance between the backstay and the neighbour’s increasingly leaning mast. If the keel of Horizons had been resting on the bottom, this would not have been possible. Fortunately, the manoeuvre was accomplished and Horizons was secured in a position with much more clearance between the masts. There was still a safe distance remaining between mast and backstay when the tide turned.

On the following high tide, Yacht Club staff also moved and secured the neighbouring boat a little further back on the platform, giving even more clearance between the masts. The consequence of this was that the repositioning of this boat’s keel in relation to the bottom caused the boat to then lean over in the opposite direction on the subsequent low tide. This was good news for the masts, but it caused that boat’s dock lines to drag the platform askew of the rapidly ebbing tide. This resulted in Horizons being pressed up tightly against its side of the platform, squashing all the protective fenders as flat as pancakes. But the fenders of the other boat had been pulled up above the level of the platform due to the leaning angle, and the scraping and squeaking of that boat’s hull against the platform were not pleasant sounds to listen to.

Further down the estuary can be seen the effects of the low tide on some other boats.

Forward into 2006

2006-02-03T12:25:00.000-06:00

The reason I’ve been living on a 37 foot sailing boat for 8 years and am presently cruising in Costa Rica goes back to 1993. That is the year when my old friend Tony (I think he still prefers to be called Anthony) invited me to join with him and a couple of his other friends on a two week charter of a sail boat on the south west coast of Turkey. A new experience! Something I’d not done before. I was a complete novice, although I had been a passenger on a sail boat on a couple of occasions years before. Great idea! I jumped at the chance.

What a place to have your introduction to cruising. The Turkish coast was magnificent, both culturally and geographically. My experience sailing in this area was like having a door open into a completely new universe. I was hooked. From then on, I absorbed everything I could about sailing and particularly cruising. I took sailing courses and later took a sabbatical from work which enabled me to experience sailing across the Atlantic as crew, between Florida and Gibraltar. That voyage convinced me as to the kind of boat I wanted to own – an offshore cruising boat. Horizons appeared on the horizon in January 1998, only about four months after my return from my sabbatical.

Tony earned his Horizons crew shirt in the first summer I owned the boat, on a trip to Desolation Sound north of Vancouver. He again joined Carol and I on a subsequent trip up the inside passage to the northern part of Vancouver Island. And he was wearing that Horizons shirt when he climbed aboard at my mooring in the Costa Rica Yacht Club at approximately the appointed hour on Boxing Day.

The following day we went shopping to add to the on board provisions. We then left the Yacht Club on the 28th, after topping up the water tank, and crossed over to a very peaceful anchorage in a well protected bay on Isla San Lucas, only about 4 miles from Puntarenas in the Gulf of Nicoya. It is a former prison island which has largely been abandoned. I think that there are a few people remaining on the island, but there seem to be more howler monkeys. They reach full voice in the early mornings and in the evenings. We could hear them in the trees, but we couldn’t see them.

Other than the rusting hulk of an old wreck jutting out of the water in the middle of the bay, the only other boat in the anchorage was Gitano del Mar. We spent a peaceful relaxing first day there and didn't do much except that I repaired the non-functioning windlass “Up” button on the foredeck. More relaxing in the cockpit the next day, except for the time I spent tracking down and resolving a problem in the electrical circuit of the cabin fan. (A boat owner’s work is never done.) The new cabin fan brought by Tony was now functional.

One of the pleasant aspects of having guests visit the boat is the introduction of imported new menus. As I tended to be the early bird each morning, I looked after the coffee grinding and brewing, as well as the breakfasts. Tony took care of the dinner menus. I’ve now added some of his menus to my own repertoire. My favourite was chicken stew – only one pot to wash up!

From Isla San Lucas, we then moved on south down the Gulf to Bahia Ballena, motoring all the way. No useable wind, and then wind on the nose in short, choppy seas. There were about 6 other cruising boats there during our stay, which was the most we saw throughout the whole trip. It's a very large bay but still very rural. It also has access to some interesting places nearby, which I'll try to visit when I go back there. We went to shore several times, a couple of times by rowing, and then by motor after I finally got the outboard out of the lazarette, connected it to the new gas tank and got it working again.

On New Year's Eve, we went out for dinner with the other cruisers to a really nice Italian restaurant run by a couple of genuine Italian-minted Italians. The other cruisers were Dwight & Jan, of Mira, Philip & Leslie, of Carina, Jay & Danica, of Alkehest, and Bruce, of 5th Element. The occasion was also the 61st birthday of Philip, of Carina, so we celebrated that as well by (with the aid of some accessories) making Philip look ridiculous for the cameras. The food was good and very reasonable in cost. As seems to be usual, the wine ended up costing more than the food! However, we all returned to our boats before midnight - cruisers don't seem to be a late night lot. Small fireworks were let off at midnight in various places on shore, including a couple of resorts in the bay. We could even see some fireworks across on the other side of the Gulf on the mainland.

We had a good sail a couple of days later from Bahia Ballena to Bahia Herradura, on the mainland side of the Gulf. All three sails were flying. The wind was steady and from a good direction and the seas were quite calm. It was sunny, and we had an ideal wind driven crossing. Bahia Herradura is a medium sized bay - much smaller than Ballena. There is also a very high priced marina on the northern edge of the bay.

With the crew of Mira, Jan and Dwight, who had arrived there the day before us, we dinghied to the marina with the intention of taking the bus to a nearby town to do some shopping. But the marina wanted us to pay $40 US to leave the dinghy at the dinghy dock for the day. So we declined the opportunity. We were told that a panga guy on the beach could ferry us to our boat from the beach. Mira dinghied back to their boat and Tony & I went to some nearby shops for some groceries and beer. The panga guy took us back to Horizons alright - about a 3 minute ride - for 5,000 colones, which is $10 US! They are positively highway robbers in Herradura. But we had a nice dinner and social on cruising boat 5th Element that evening. Bruce, a single hander, had caught a large dorado that morning on his way across the Gulf to Herradura. He grilled the fish and the rest of us added the other ingredients in a pot luck.

Our last full day out in the Gulf was a 27 mile trip from Herradura to the anchorage we'd started out in at Isla San Lucas. Not much useable wind until we were about two thirds of the way there, when it got quite strong - again on the nose (starboard nostril) - with short choppy seas. This slowed us down quite a bit, and with the currents also introduced a significant 15 to 20 degrees of leeway. It was a bit of a push keeping the boat on the correct course and getting around to the leeward side of the island. Later that evening, in the calm but windy anchorage, it was gusting frequently between 30 and 40 knots and I even recorded one gust at 45 knots. But by dinner time it eased off and we had a comfortable night.

The short trip the next morning into Puntarenas was quite routine and we got into the Yacht Club on the morning high tide. It was a relief that the winds had moderated overnight, as I had been a little worried that continued strong winds might have prevented us from getting back into the Yacht Club that day. Tony’s return flight to Canada was that evening and even a short delay might have resulted in him missing the flight, as a short delay would have meant missing the high tide. The Yacht Club can only be entered on a high tide.

Playa Panama to Puntarenas, Costa Rica

2006-02-03T12:08:00.000-06:00

The Costa Rica Yacht Club in Puntarenas was to be the rendezvous point with Tony on Boxing Day. So it was time to set about getting there. Pleasant though it was, I left Playa Panama on December 20th to cover the 140+ nautical miles to Puntarenas via day sails. My first overnight stop was to be Bahia Potrero, at the outer north western beginnings of the Nicoya Peninsula. This was to be one of my shortest hops, being only 18 miles. But suitable anchorages are relatively few along this stretch of the coast, so it’s a matter of picking the most practical ones for making the best use of the daylight on each leg.

The wind was a bit of a tease for the beginning of this leg, giving me a good sailing breeze as I passed Playas del Coco. I was able to get all my three sails up and flying, and was doing between 6 and 7 knots without the sound of any engine interfering with the experience. I still had all my sails flying as Mira passed me going in the opposite direction. Dwight and Jan had been anchored in Bahia Guacamaya (I always seem to call it Bahia Guacamole) a short distance to the south, and were headed back to Playas del Coco to reprovision at the excellent supermarket. It was nice to hear Jan say on the VHF radio during our chat how “pretty” Horizons looked with all sails flying.

But the breeze did not last. Like having your date close the door in your face after walking her home, the wind departed about the time I was rounding Islas Brumel, where I was to change course for my Bahia Potrero destination. So I had to furl the sails and start burning diesel fuel again, all the way to the anchorage.

The next hop was to be the longest, at 56 NM, so I was up shortly after 0400 hrs the following morning and underway at 0515 hrs. It was still dark. But a little over an hour later, after sunrise, I was entertained by numerous manta rays jumping out of the water and flipping over like pancakes before hitting the water with a loud splat. There was no wind and I seemed to be pushing into a current of about 1 knot or more, as my boat speed over ground (as opposed to through the water) was slow for the 2500 rpm the crankshaft was turning at.

From about 0930 hrs I did manage to get an hour of sailing without the need for assistance from the engine. But for the rest of the way to Bahia Carrillo, my next anchorage, the engine was the primary source of boat progress. Bahia Carrillo is not an ideal anchorage when the winds or swells are from a southerly direction, as the bay is open to the south. Consequently, the swells roll right into the anchorage causing the boats seeking refuge there to rock and roll quite uncomfortably. And so it proved for a while, after my arrival. I dropped anchor at about 1700 hrs in the most westerly part of the bay, hoping to get some protection from a reef which extends partly across the mouth of the bay from the western point. And to some extent, it worked.

As it was getting dark, Moonsong arrived and anchored closer to the centre of the bay. Moonsong had been anchored close to me in Bahia Potrero the night before, but left after I did. Once they were securely anchored, Nola called me on the VHF radio and invited me over for “happy hour”. Nobody turns down such invitations. As their dinghy was already in the water (as they had been towing it), and mine wasn’t, Gerry picked me up and we had a very enjoyable social evening which included dinner. But their location seemed to be rather more rolly than where Horizons was anchored.

The next hop was to be only 47 NM, so I was able to have a comfortably late 0630 hrs departure. For non-boaters, the usual ritual before starting up the engine each time is to check the coolant level (ie. anti freeze equivalent), oil level via the dipstick, tightness of water pump/alternator belt (like the fan belt) and (for me) to wipe up the oil drips from the drip tray under the engine. On this occasion, I decided to install another water pump/alternator belt as the old one seemed to be quite worn - leaving black rubber dust on parts of the engine - and was constantly slacking off, requiring me to adjust the alternator each time.

After another brief tease of breeze, it was to be another day of burning petroleum products. At least it slows the onset of UV degradation of the sails. This leg was to take me in a south easterly direction to the southern point of the Nicoya Peninsula at Cabo Blanco and then north east to Bahia Ballena. I’d again left ahead of Moonsong, but as I was closing in on Cabo Blanco and the rocky island just off its point, I saw them behind and gaining on me. Moonsong is a bigger boat with a longer waterline than Horizons, which means that it has a faster speed through the water than Horizons. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I made a wide sweep around Isla Cabo Blanco to give it lots of clearance, and Moonsong cut inside of me, closer to the island, and passed me. There were strong head currents – probably 2 to 3 knots - at the point, so this was not a high speed rounding. But the water was almost glassy calm.

Isla Cabo Blanco is merely a large lump of rock with a rare navigation light tower at its highest point and a lot of guano over much of its surface. It’s actually quite dramatic in appearance – almost hypnotic. But best steered clear of.

Bahia Ballena is an expansive bay, open to the south east. Long sandy beaches skirt the head of the bay, with rocky shorelines on either side of the general horseshoe shape. The primary anchoring area is in the southern area, off Playa Tambor. There are a number of small shops and restaurants in Tambor, with some low key but posh hotels and resorts scattered around various other parts of the bay. On the south shore near a cluster of shanty-looking structures is an old and run down concrete dock which juts out into the bay. Moored around this pier in a network of mooring lines are numerous small boats used by local fishermen - sorry, fishers (in my four years in Mexico and Central America, I've yet to see a female "fisher"). On my subsequent return to Bahia Ballena with Tony, we found it to be an almost impossible place to land by dinghy, and we resorted to the time honoured practice of maneuvering through the surf and landing on the beach.

I dropped anchor at about 1530 off Playa Tambor for the night and then rewarded myself with a beer and the last of the taco chips and salsa. The last leg of the trip to Puntarenas was only a little over 20 NM, so I was able to have a much more relaxing morning before leaving Bahia Ballena at about 1015 hrs the next day. The Costa Rica Yacht Club is a few miles down the estuary which runs to the north of the long peninsula of Puntarenas. But there is a problem of access due to the shallowness of the channel. It’s therefore necessary to enter only at high tide.

But my timing for hitting the high tide travelling directly from Bahia Ballena was bad, as the first of the day was early in the morning and the second high tide was in the early evening after dark. So my plan was to anchor outside Puntarenas overnight in the location indicated in the cruising guide and to get the Yacht Club panga guide to lead me in on the high tide the following morning. A simple and effective plan.

But after rounding Islas Negritos, islands jutting out into the Gulf, my trip up the Gulf of Nicoya during the afternoon was in a building tail wind (from the south). By the time I got to Puntarenas, the wind was pretty brisk and, more importantly, the seas were very choppy and bouncy, with 4 foot close-together rollers passing through the area where I'd planned to anchor. So it was impossible to drop my hook there, and there were no alternatives in the vicinity. So I called the Yacht Club asking where I could stop for the night. They told me to go down the first part of the channel in the estuary as far as the area behind the market and wait there and they would send a panga to help me.

When I got there, they told me that the panga would not be there for another hour. So I had to turn around and point into the flood tidal current and hover there in the channel. The panga didn't arrive for about another hour and twenty minutes, by which time it was getting quite dark. I followed the panga into the darkness down the shallow channel, which was not helped by the fact that the panga guy didn't have a light. So it was difficult to see where he was at times.

When we approached the mooring area of the Yacht Club, the darkness was punctuated by lots of bright lights on shore which were also reflected in the water. So it was very difficult to see anything in the glare. The panga driver didn't speak English, so I didn't know what he wanted me to do or where he wanted me to go. There was some confusion before I finally saw something in the water nearby - a mooring buoy. With hand signs and much waving, I finally got the idea. But maneuvering my heavy long-keeled boat in the current in narrow confines was not a snap.

I passed my mooring lines to the guy in the panga, who was now being helped by another panga guy. We finally got the stern line secured to one mooring buoy and then the forward line to a second mooring buoy. It was one of the most awkward and confusing arrivals I've made anywhere – and a predictable demonstration of why I didn’t want to arrive there in the dark.

The panga guy took me ashore to check in at the Yacht Club office. I met some other cruisers in the restaurant that I'd previously encountered and we had dinner and some beers while we caught up with our news.

One of the constant underway problems I have is storage of my dinghy. Most cruising boats store them on the foredeck, between the mast and the forestay. But I also have a staysail stay, and the staysail is on a boom. So this takes up the space which otherwise would be used for storing the dinghy. So what I have to do is deflate and roll up the dinghy and stow it on the floor of the main saloon, along with its plywood floorboards. This takes up a lot of space down below.

Since the problem with the disintegrating stitching my genoa, I was having the additional difficulty of storage of this huge sail. Rolled up and enclosed in its sail bag, it was too big to fit in any of the lockers. The Yankee which was temporarily replacing it is much smaller and there was insufficient space in its locker. So when I was at anchor, the genoa was having to sit in the aft part of the cockpit out of the way. When under way, it was joining the dinghy in the main saloon. So the main saloon was an obstacle course when underway. The first order of the day following my arrival at the Yacht Club was to heave these two items out on deck.

I spent much of Christmas Day cleaning up the boat and lemon oiling the cabinetry in preparation for the arrival from Canada of Tony on Boxing Day. I may even have listened to one of my two Christmas CD’s. My Christmas presents were going to be a day late, as Tony was going to be bringing me various needed items from Canada, mainly for the boat. But Christmas dinner was shared in the afternoon in the Yacht Club restaurant by all the cruisers present, which included the crews of Music, Windsong, Gitano del Mar and Today, with Horizons completing the group.

Puntarenas, Costa Rica

2006-02-01T12:08:00.000-06:00

January 31st, 2006

09º 58.95' N, 084º 47.81' W

Horizons and I are now sitting somewhat comfortably and safely in the mooring area of the Costa Rica Yacht Club in Puntarenas, on the mainland side of the Gulf of Nicoya. It’s been a relatively active several weeks since my time in Playas del Coco. My stitch- challenged genoa leech tape has been restitched and various other maintenance items having been taken care of.

One of my spare jibs, called a Yankee by salty types, got me to Puntarenas from Playas del Coco, in the absence of my ailing genoa (see one of my earlier postings). This Yankee sail is a much smaller jib and is cut quite high above the deck. It is designed to be deployed along with the staysail, which is also a small jib carried a little behind the Yankee. The Yankee and staysail together don’t provide as much power as my big genoa. But they are better suited to stronger winds, when a full genoa would be too much sail area to carry.

While I remained at anchor at Playas del Coco, Philip, of Carina, again controlled the bosun’s chair halyard and helped me to reinstall the set screws in the forestay extrusion tubes. I was then able to put the Yankee onto the roller furling gear and roll it up – a relatively simple job. Except that I then discovered that I needed to make a pennant (connecting line) to connect the head (top) of the sail with the furling gear swivel near the top of the mast as the Yankee’s luff (leading edge of the sail) was about four feet shorter than the luff of the genoa.

I ended up making a temporary pennant from some spare rope, which performed well until I got to Puntarenas. After receiving needed parts brought from Canada by my Christmas visitor, Tony, and with help from Dwight (of Mira) and his crimping press, I was able to make a proper wire pennant.

(This paragraph is for boaters only. Other readers can jump directly to the next paragraph.) Another consequence of all my trips to the top of the mast was that I discovered that the professional (in the sense that they did this job for money) riggers in Vancouver who originally had installed my roller furling gear had installed one of the components incorrectly. In brief, the halyard wrap stop component (the black round object near the top of the photo) is supposed to be installed near the top of the forestay extrusions in such a position that the blue coloured link plate attached to the swivel (which holds the top of the sail) is adjacent to it, to prevent the halyard attached to the link plate on the swivel housing from wrapping around the forestay when the sail is being furled (rolled up). The riggers who installed my furling gear fitted the halyard wrap stop device about twelve inches too high. The link plate therefore is too low when the halyard is tightened and can’t be raised any higher. It can’t connect with the halyard wrap stop device. Therefore, it is the knot in the halyard which is adjacent to the wrap stop device performing the wrap stop function rather than the link plate.

I liked Playas del Coco, particularly for the wide variety of things in its well stocked supermarket. The anchorage was a bit rolly from time to time, but I didn’t get too wet landing on the beach through the surf in my dinghy. Security is a problem in Costa Rica, so I chained the dinghy to a palm tree each time I went to shore. I also carried my oars with me rather than leaving them in the dinghy, which was rather less than convenient. But the guy in the Internet café let me leave the oars in his care until I was ready to row back to the boat.

Just in case any non-cruisers out there are unaware of it, water is very heavy. I carried 15 gallons of it from a tap near the beach to my dinghy on the beach, and then to the tidal line down the beach. The tide was not high. The beach was expansive. Then I dragged my dinghy down to and past the water line. Then I loaded the 15 gallons. Then I dragged the now even heavier dinghy from its water line beach location through the surf into deeper water. Refreshed by these exertions, I then rowed against the wind back to Horizons. Lifting the 15 gallons up to the deck from the dinghy was a minor detail in comparison. I was ready for that first cold beer onboard!

Bahia Huevos is a beautiful and peaceful anchorage only about 7 miles from Playas del Coco. That’s where I motored to on December 17th. There was only one other cruising boat anchored there on my arrival. The bay is a haven of tranquility. Only the sounds of the birds, and the howler monkeys on shore. And the sunsets are magnificent.

The water was very clear and it was a good opportunity to dive under the boat for a look-see. The propeller had a lot of tiny barnacles developing, which probably partly accounted for my slow progress under engine power from Playas del Coco. I scraped the three prop blades clean. I also set about doing the same for the rest of the hull, a job I completed the next day. I’ll be really glad when I can get a couple of new coats of anti fouling bottom paint on the hull. Although I suppose I need the exercise, scraping the hull is quite tiring work. But a few cold beers and nibblies are good reward after it’s done.

The next day, a number of other cruising boats began showing up, until the total numbered seven. December 18th is also my father’s birthday. He reached his 86th this year. So I was able to toast his health during Happy Hour. I hope that he had more energy than me on that day. I had defrosted some fish for dinner, but fell asleep at the dinette table before I had a chance to cook it. As I said, scraping the hull is quite tiring work.

Huevos is the Spanish word for eggs. Bahia Huevos is named for a couple of egg shaped islets at its entrance. The next morning, after having scrambled huevos on toast, I upped anchor and motored to another nearby anchorage. Playa Panama is only 6 miles from Bahia Huevos. I had rounded the prominent islet rock of Viradores Norte and was making good progress at about 5.5 knots for a short time (what a difference a clean propeller makes) when a squally headwind of about 20 – 25 knots was suddenly in my face along with disagreeable and most unhelpful waves, dropping my speed down to about 3 knots – and occasionally to 2 knots. Fortunately, it wasn’t far to the anchorage. The wind whistled through the anchorage for a while, but the water was calm and the holding for the anchor was good.

There is some development around the bay at Playa Panama, with a condominium complex on the north edge and some small but modest and discrete tourist clusters, mostly hidden in the trees. So it lacked the serenity and isolation of Bahia Huevos. But it was quite protected from north and east winds although totally open from the west.

The Christmas spirit was something I had not yet gotten into, in spite of it only being a week to go. One of the advantages of cruising is that you never get into the annual shopping mall Christmas frenzy. Temperatures in excess of 30º C in palm tree environments also don’t promote the traditional festive mood. So when my cassette stereo player became brain dead, I was considering e-mailing my soon-to-arrive visitor from Canada, Tony, that he would be pleased to know that he would not have the benefit of my Christmas tapes during his stay. So it would indeed be a silent night. However, I did experiment with a hand held cassette recorder coupled to a pair of computer external speakers. It worked, in a sense. But I decided not to be cruel and retired the arrangement without any further word.

Photos of Marina Puesta del Sol

2005-12-15T14:16:00.000-06:00

Beach House Palapa Pool

This is the view of the pool and the mouth of the estuary from under the palapa. All boats enter the estuary by following the channel which is well marked by buoys all the way to the marina. There is a good current during the ebb and flood tides, and care must be taken to avoid being swept ouot of the channel at the bends in the estuary.

Beach House Palapa

About a 10 to 15 minute walk from the marina (unless ferried there in the marina mini bus) takes you to the beach on the outside of the peninsula formed by the estuary. The Beach House Palapa has its own pool, bar and kitchen and is a beautiful spot to enjoy good company and the sunset.

Nicaragua Sunset

This was taken from the Beach House Palapa.

The Marina

This marina was one of the nicest facilities I had stayed at since the start of my travels. It certainly matched the nicest yacht club I stayed in when I was in San Diego, but with the addition of its magnificent estuary and beach setting. Another dock is under construction off the photo to the left.

Marina Pool

This view is looking in the opposite direction to the previous photo. The facility includes a hotel, which can be seen overlooking the pool and view of the estuary.

Storm

The rainy season usually brings a number of squalls, with strong winds and heavy rains for periods of an hour or a little more. However, we seemed to experience far fewer squalls in north western Nicaragua than was the case during the two summers I was in El Salvador. This photo shows a squall approaching the coast and heading directly for the vicinity of the marina. The big cabin cruiser and the sailing boat on the left belong to the marina owner, Roberto.

Roberto & Nathape

Roberto (centre) is a principal owner and the visionary behind the development of the marina at Puesta del Sol. He is here with Swiss cruisers Nathalie and Hanspeter, of the sailing vessel Nathape, who were just about to leave the marina after a stay of several months.

Maria Laura & Gene

This photo shows Roberto’s wife, Maria Laura, with Gene, who has worked closely with Roberto on the development of the marina. Gene was the organizing and guiding hand behind the construction of the marina.

Dorian

Warm and friendly Dorian was virtually an ever present staff member in the office which was mostly used by the cruisers. He made sure that we didn’t miss the mini bus on the shopping trips to Chinandega. He was also always ready to help the cruisers to sort out their various little needs and queries.

Marlon

Never without a warm and happy smile on his face, Marlon was always full of energy and enthusiasm. In addition to his work at the marina, he was also taking school courses in Managua. He has a real thirst for knowledge and is ambitious to do well in his career. It was Marlon who introduced me to my present Blog site. Both Marlon (marlonreyes.blogspot.com) and Dorian (dorianesp.blogspot.com) have their own Blogs. In fact, Dorian has a second Blog (mygente.blogspot.com). Two really nice young guys.

Domestic Water System

A short walk down the dirt road from the marina gates is a small tienda, where one can pick up a few emergency provisions, such as beer, bread, eggs, beer, chicken filets, fresh (?) vegetables, beer and soft drinks. The operators live on the premises. This photo shows their domestic water system, with well, hand pump and pipe.

Campesino Child

This girl is one of the children of the family which runs the little tienda.

Photos Around El Viejo, Nicaragua

2005-12-15T13:11:00.000-06:00

(Click on any photo to see a larger version.)

El Viejo is a small and quite old town very close to Chinandega. We sometimes passed through the town on our way to or from Chinandega, if our driver Luis had any business to conduct there on behalf of the marina.

This street passed between the basilica and the Central Parque and on through a small market area.

Many of the side streets were either not paved or only partly so.

A couple of local pedestrians.

Time to go home after school.

Laundry day in Nicaragua seems to be seven days a week. Whenever we were out and about or going to or from Chinandega, we would always see the lady of the house at the homes we passed, or one of her daughters, with her hands in the huge outdoor concrete sink and scrub board set up, hand washing the family’s clothing. This back yard was in El Viejo. We also saw the same scene repeated many times over in the rural areas.

The essential domestic equipment can be seen in this campesino home. The well can be seen in the centre of the photo, with its hand pump. Often, the outhouse was on the property, not too far from the well. Behind the well in the photo is a woman at an outdoor laundry sink – a common sight.

This photo of a field of sugar cane was taken on our drive back to the marina. It shows, as in the name of the rum, the flor de caña, the flower of the sugar cane, in bloom.

There is no such thing in Central America as an overloaded bus. If there’s no room inside, you just hang onto the outside.

We frequently encountered cattle drives on the dirt road to and from the marina. Horses and pigs also wandered about randomly.

Photos of Chinandega, Nicaragua

2005-12-14T12:14:00.000-06:00

My most enduring memories of Nicaragua will be of the wonderful people. I found them to be almost invariably warm, friendly and good natured, and with an openness and spontaneity which belies the tragic recent history and the present poverty of the country. There is much natural beauty in the countryside of Nicaragua, as well as historic sites in abundance. But I really preferred seeing the ordinary, down to earth, unpretentious, grass roots towns, villages and rural areas which gave a true flavour of how the regular Nicaraguan people lived. Chinandega is just such a town. No tourist attractions and no tourists. We cruisers from the marina were usually the only gringos to be seen, although we came across the occasional small group of missionaries.

The high water mark for me was the youth of the country - the children and young people born mostly after the revolution. The common theme was fun, joyfulness, optimism, openness, curiosity and playfulness. They were always very friendly and almost always very quick to break into huge smiles. I don’t recall ever encountering aggression or a negative demeanor in any of the kids I saw or interacted with. They were just a delight.

This is the main bus terminal area for local buses close to the centre of Chinandega. Noisy, active, alive, with lots of vendors and sidewalk stalls, as is usual near bus terminals. The couple on the horse and cart look like they have just bought the bed at Mercado Bisne, where there are several vendors.

One of the main streets in the centre of Chinandega, in the vicinity of the central market.

There are always lots of these “push” taxis available close to markets. They are cheap and carry almost anything.

Not much high speed traffic passes through the streets around the central market.

Count the teeth on these market boys.

This is across the street from the main bus terminal for local buses.

This corner on the main street is were two or three photographers usually hang out with their historic equipment.

Horses and carts like this can be seen in great numbers throughout Chinandega. Many of the horses don’t look too well fed.

Chinandegans get a lot of mileage out of pedal power.

There are two main locations where street money changers hang out. One is on the main street, close to a concentration of several banks. The other is at this location, near the other market, Bisne, on the edge of the town.

This delivery cart stands outside its associated hardware store awaiting its next delivery. On some parked (and mis-parked) delivery carts, I’ve seen the equivalent of locking a vehicle - the driver of the cart ties together the forelegs of the horse so that it doesn’t wander off. However, these horses all seem so incredibly docile that they never seem to wander from the spot where they are parked.

The kids I frequently encountered wherever I went in Nicaragua were invariably friendly and good natured, and occasionally a little shy. These boys were lively and definitely not shy.

Bikes are very popular modes of transportation in Nicaragua, and often can be seen carrying an entire family – dad riding, one child on the crossbar, mother on the carrier behind the seat holding another small child. One one occasion, I saw a guy riding down the road with a wriggling, squeeling piglet tied across the carrier behind his seat. People carry just about anything on their bikes. There is one area near the Bisne market where there are numerous stores and stalls with bike parts and equipment. This is one of the often busy, but very simple, bike repair shops.

This vendor operated a small street refreshment stand near Mercado Bisne.

Papier Maché decorations were made in this workshop.

The finished product.

When school gets out, the streets of Chinandega are swarming with school uniforms.

On one of my trips into Chinandega, I went in with Gene, who was instrumental in the construction of Marina Puesta del Sol. On this occasion, we had lunch with Anna, the wife of marina employee Dorian, and her friend Maria, who worked for a local radio station.

My spectacles had got broken when I was rescuing from potential destruction a sail which had come loose on the boat of the owner of Marina Puesta del Sol during a gale. Roberto was very appreciative and ultimately paid for my replacement glasses, but I took the broken pieces of my original glasses to this guy for an interim and temporary repair as there was going to be about a 6 week wait for my new glasses. He soldered the frame back together again for just over $2 US, but it lasted for only about three weeks and I had to get the repair done again in San José when I was travelling in Costa Rica.

I saw street corner monuments like this one in several towns I visited in Nicaragua. This one commemorates three local “heroes y martires” who died fighting against the forces of the dictator Samoza during the revolution.

In the early months of my stay at Marina Puesta del Sol, there would be a shopping run from the marina to Chinandega every Tuesday and Friday in the marina’s air conditioned mini-bus. Later in the year, particularly during September and later, the rainy season had done so much damage to the dirt road which accesses the marina that it was no longer possible to use the mini-van. I therefore made several trips into town in the marina’s flatbed truck. Our excellent driver was almost always Luis, and a more helpful guy you could not find anywhere. Luis knew all the locations where cruisers could find what they were looking for, and he would ferry us around on all our errands – hardware, electrical, paint and accessories, etc, not to mention the markets and grocery stores.

This was my last shopping trip to Chinandega in November. On that day, Luis and another employee had a lot of stuff to pick up for the marina in preparation for an upcoming fishing tournament to be held from the marina/hotel in early December. You can see beds and mattresses on the truck, along with other stuff. As is common here, the employee rode back to the marina in the back of the truck with the cargo.

Our shopping trips usually took us to the Super Selectos supermarket. Roberto worked in the appliances section of the store and, as he spoke English, I would often stop and chat. He also helped me in checking out DVD movies I bought on occasion by testing them on a player to ensure that they worked properly. This photo was taken on my final visit to the store.

The various churches around Chinandega seem to be colour coded, possibly to make directions easier to understand. There’s a blue church, a beige church and an orange church (seen in photos near the central market). This one is the yellow church and is the first one you pass as you arrive in the centre of town from the north west.

This friendly group of schoolgirls (everyone in Chinandega seems to be friendly) was assembled in front of the yellow church and seemed keen on having their photo taken.

Mercado Bisne is on the edge of Chinandega, close to the inter city bus terminal. It’s also close to the “On The Run” convenience store (like a 7-11 store, at a gas station) where we usually obtained cash from the ATM. This is the market where the cruisers usually did their shopping for fresh fruits and vegetables.

Half a block away from the Super Selectos supermarket we usually used was a street with several hardware stores (ferreterias). Like love and marriage, cruisers and hardware stores go together like a horse and carriage. These horses and carts are delivery vehicles for the ferreterias.

For only a little more than $1 US, an excellent haircut could be obtained from this barber shop on the main street, immediately across the street from Super Selectos supermarket – very convenient.

The first part of the journey from the marina to Chinandega was over a rough dirt road. The second leg was on a road with so many potholes that driving on it was like doing a slalom course, with the vehicle having to use the whole width of the road trying to drive around all the potholes. Often you would see urchins, boys and girls of about 6 or 7 years old, standing by the side of the road with their arms raised saying “Un Peso”. They were shoveling dirt from the sides of the road to fill the potholes, and then asking drivers for money. On this trip, a great chunk was taken out of one of the tires (tyres, for Brits). Luis can be seen putting on the spare wheel.

This may be the one horsepower equivalent of the family station wagon.

I don’t know if this guy at Mercado Bisne was involved in transporting any of the cabbages piled up behind him, but he seems pretty happy.

We passed this multiple trailer train carrying freshly cut sugar cane on one of our trips to Chinandega. A major producer of rum, Flor de Caña, in located close to Chinandega, and there are many sugar cane fields in the region. It’s possible that this truck train belongs to the Flor de Caña factory. Incidentally, they produce a first class rum, mostly of the dark rum variety.

Shortly before arriving at Chinandega from the marina, we always drove past about three or four roadside gravel making operations. They are kind of reminiscent of the old American chain gangs. Several workers are wielding hammers and breaking large rocks down into smaller rocks, and smaller rocks into even smaller rocks, and so on until they make piles of stones small enough to constitute gravel. I think that they are told when they take on this job that it will be good training for becoming a drummer in a rock band.

I love walking around the markets in Central America. They are so full of life and vitality. There is a real humanity there, with families eking out a very modest living on their stalls day in and day out, morning to late afternoon. Everyone helps, including the youngest children. This beautiful little girl was sweeping out her family’s stall in Mercado Bisne – another adorable little angel I could very easily have adopted. I struggled to decide which photo to include here and solved the problem by including them both.

Playas del Coco, Costa Rica

2005-12-11T11:16:00.000-06:00

December 8th, 2005

10º 33.39' N, 085º 41.78' W.

I’ve just finished re-standing all my canned food and other tipped over items in the galley lockers after my short trip to Playas del Coco from Bahia Potrero Grande, northern Costa Rica. It was a relatively simple leg of about 20 nautical miles across the Gulf of Papagayo, for which the Papagayo gales are named. Fortunately, the strong winds forecast for the day of my crossing never really materialized and a north easterly 15 to 20 knots was all that showed up. This was not a problem with my reefed mainsail and staysail, although I could have used some of my genoa at times, for extra speed. But it was unavailable, as I will explain below.

I enjoyed my stay in San Juan del Sur. There was only one other cruising boat at anchor on my arrival, “Pearl” from Alaska, which had earlier also been at Marina Puesta del Sol. But they left the following day. So I was able to move to their better anchoring spot. I used the so-called water taxi to get to shore (when I could attract its attention) rather than launching my dinghy. I call it “so-called” as it looks more like a stretched log boom jockey, enveloped by old tires and dirty fenders. And it bounced around like a cork. Boarding from my boat was onto the tiny bow deck in front of the pilot house, and that is also where I remained standing for the trip to shore.

San Juan del Sur is on a beautiful flattened horseshoe shaped bay facing west. Being surrounded by hills, it is almost bowl-like, but open to the sea. Watching the sun slip below the horizon is one enjoyable pastime during the “Happy Hour”. The sunsets are magnificent. This village is one of the few tourist venues in Nicaragua which sees any gringos. A number of foreigners who have come to San Juan del Sur over the years have decided to stay, some of whom have opened businesses (cafés, restaurants, stores, Internet cafés, etc). But the village remains small, although quite a busy real estate market is developing in the region – primarily aimed at foreign investors and retirees. It’s proving to be an attractive and inexpensive market for those who don’t want to pay the huge US-like prices for property in Costa Rica.

I eventually linked up with Eric, a cruising friend I got to know during my time in El Salvador, where he keeps his boat. Eric is a Canadian married to a local woman and now makes his home in San Juan del Sur with his delightful young family. After over two years of research, he is now on the point of publishing the first comprehensive cruising guide for the Pacific side of Central America. It will be an invaluable resource and will likely be instrumental in opening up the Pacific coasts of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua to cruising sailors and coastal travellers.

My departure from San Juan del Sur was not exactly as planned. A couple of weeks before my arrival there, they had closed the local Immigration office and moved it to the Nicaragua/Costa Rica border crossing, about 15 or 20 miles away. So I had to get taxis to the border and back in order to complete checking out of Nicaragua. At least the collectivo taxis were not expensive – about $2.30 US each way.

I sailed out of San Juan del Sur a week ago Wednesday (Nov 30th) headed for Bahia Santa Elena in northern Costa Rica, a distance of about 23 miles. It was an enjoyable sail in easterly winds of about 15 knots, plus gusts. Bahia Santa Elena is a huge and beautiful bay in the Santa Rosa National Park. It is in a dry tropical wilderness area with no buildings or other development anywhere to be seen. On my arrival, I was the only sailing boat in the bay. There was a couple of fishing pangas doing their stuff, but nothing else going on. There was plenty of bird life, with ospreys, vultures, egrets, curlews and groups of small and noisy green parrots. Howler monkeys can sometimes also be heard. The occasional small sting ray could be seen jumping out of the water, and there were often shoals of fish splashing in a frenzy.

After one full and peaceful day in Bahia Santa Elena, I pulled up the anchor and headed out of the bay into strong headwinds. As I exited, I noticed a sail a few miles to the north coming in my direction. It turned out to be “Songline”, a British registered boat I’d first got to know in El Salvador and later, in the early part of this summer, in Puesta del Sol. John & Barbara had been spending time in San Lorenzo, Honduras, in the Gulf of Fonseca, and were now headed for Bahia Santa Elena and beyond. After a brief radio chat when they were close, I turned around behind them and followed them back into the bay.

We had some enjoyable visits, including a couple of excellent meals on “Songline”. It was good to catch up on the news and hear their enthusiastic report on San Lorenzo. We also made a dinghy foray up the two creeks which flow out of the mangroves into the bay.

Barbara took some photos of “Horizons” as they were heading past me into the bay, and I’ve included a couple here (if they upload, that is). They show “Horizons” motor sailing against the wind with a single reef in the mainsail (reducing the amount of sail flown). On the headstay, forward of the mast, is the rolled up genoa (a large jib). The staysail is still tied down to its boom, also forward of the mast.

Last Sunday (4th) was to be departure day for me, as I wanted to get around Cabo Santa Elena before any significant winds developed. But “Horizons” would not co-operate. The engine turned over but would not start. I spent the next 6 hours working on the fuel line, from the tank to the fuel injector pump on the engine, trying to clear out any fuel blockage. I guess that the earlier bouncy sea conditions had shaken up any collected dirt in the bottom of the fuel tank and clogged up the filters and/or system.

After replacing both fuel filters and cleaning the sedimenter, I still could not get any fuel into the filter on the engine, no matter how long I pumped with the fuel lift pump. So I removed the fuel lift pump and connecting copper pipes from the engine, including a check valve, and cleaned them all out. The pump itself had good compression and seemed to be working properly. Once reinstalled, I had no further problem bleeding the fuel into the engine filter and the air out of the system. But still the engine would not start. Final throw was to loosen the nuts connecting the fuel pipes to the fuel injectors and crank the engine. Good news. Fuel came out of the loosened fuel pipes. Air expelled. Tightened them. Cranked engine …. cranked it some more …. and it sputtered to life. Back in business. But I smelled like a diesel-soaked rag.

Last Monday (5th), I headed out of Bahia Santa Elena and west towards Cabo Santa Elena at the tip of the peninsula, a spot noted for its robust winds. A couple of warnings from different sources to securely tie down everything on deck had given me a little apprehension about rounding the point. But as it turned out, this was one of the Cabo’s gentler days – nothing much more than about 15 knots. The anchorage was a few miles to the east of the point, on the south side of the peninsula. Not the greatest anchorage, but it had protection from the prevailing north or east winds. And it was quite windy for most of the time I was there.

One night was enough at Key Point. Bahia Potrero Grande was the next anchorage in a large bay only about 10 miles away to the east, upwind. It had been quite windy overnight at Key Point, and also for part of the morning. But the wind eased as I got ready for departure. Unlike my big genoa, my staysail is not on roller furling. So it is a lot of work, away from the helm, to raise and lower it. Included in this work is controlling the staysail boom, in addition to the sail itself. In strong winds, my little underpowered autopilot is frequently unable to keep the boat on the course I’ve set while I’m up on deck working the sails, which means that I’m often running back to the wheel mid-operation to get the boat back to the correct angle to the wind for working the sails.

Operating the roller furling gear to let out and take in the genoa means I do not have to leave the cockpit, although I usually have to leave the helm briefly while I haul on the appropriate line. For only a 10 mile hop to Bahia Potrero Grande, I decided to go with a reefed mainsail and the genoa unrolled only as far as the reef line, given that the wind had eased. Off I went. Main up. Genoa partially rolled out. Picking up speed. Just as I started to pass an island to the east, a sudden howling gust on my beam from the east heeled me over to the starboard side. I guess that I’d just emerged from the wind shadow of the island. Poor forethought on my part.

With the wind pressing on the sail, I could not roll any in. I headed up into the wind to remove the pressure on the sail. I was then able to roll some in. But the little autopilot did not keep the boat on my set course and the genoa backwinded (for non-boaters, this means that in this case the wind was now blowing into the starboard – right hand– side of the genoa instead of the original port side) – an unintentional tack.

Back on the wheel, I couldn’t get the boat to turn back into the brisk wind, so I went all the way round, with the wind, in a controlled (!) gybe, mainsail sheeted in tight, doing 360º but getting back on course and in control. Very embarrassing, even without an audience. But the gods conspired. I noticed a few miles behind me the sails of “Songline”, who had just come around the Cabo from Bahia Santa Elena. They must have been having a good chuckle.

The wind was now brisk and fairly consistent, and I was heading right into it. I then noticed a strange bouncing shadow on the mainsail – possibly of a genoa sheet (sail control rope). On closer inspection, it was the stitched-on hemming from the leech (trailing edge) of the genoa, which was now no longer stitched-on. About half of its length was detached. So I rolled in the remaining genoa to prevent further separation.

This explains why my genoa was not available to me yesterday (7th) for the crossing to Playas del Coco. The sail is now about 6 years old, and after 4 years in the tropics, the stitching on the UV protective strip on the edge of the sail has badly deteriorated, as it has on other fabrics on the exposed parts of the boat. The little tussle with the wind resulted in the much weakened stitching giving way. I will have to take the sail to a sailmaker, probably in Puntarenas, to get the entire UV protective strip re-stitched. It will also be a good opportunity to have some general maintenance done on the sail.

This morning, before the wind came up, I tried to remove the genoa from the forestay. But one third of the way down, the swivel fitting which holds and controls the sail up at the top of the mast snagged on a furling gear extrusion as I was lowering it. So I can’t get the sail down until I go up the mast to release the sail from the swivel. This has happened once before and the cure is relatively simple in settled weather conditions (i.e. no wind). A set screw has loosened and backed out from one of the extrusions (one of the series of connected tubes on the forestay holding the forward edge of the sail), preventing the swivel from sliding over it. The set screw needs to be tightened (preferably using Loctite – a kind of glue - to secure it) so that the swivel will slide over it.

“Songline” arrived here in Playas del Coco at the same time as me, so as soon as we were anchored they kindly picked me up on their way to shore so that we could check in to Costa Rica with the Port Captain, Immigration and Customs. There was one moment of unexpected excitement for the lady who was doing the paperwork in the Port Captain’s office. She pulled from a shelf a huge loose leaf binder full of documents and clumped it down on her desk in front of me. Sitting on the cover of the binder was a scorpion, tail flickering on having been disturbed. I almost had to unclamp her from the ceiling. Another staff member took care of the scorpion with a broom. When my hearing had returned to normal, she explained that she had been stung by a small scorpion when she was a child. The paperwork was then completed without further incident. We now have three months in the country before we have to apply for a further three month extension.

One pleasant surprise when shopping in the supermarket here was seeing bottles of Guinness draught, as well as several brands of strong (up to 8.5% alc.) Belgian beer. Expensive, but one deserves a treat every once in a while.

Tomorrow (9th), I will launch my dinghy and row to shore to do e-mail, shopping and, in particular, to find a new gasoline tank for my dinghy outboard engine. Just before I left Puesta del Sol, I noticed that the new tank I had bought about 9 months ago in San Salvador had a crack on one of the bottom corners and was leaking when placed in its operating position. So I’ll have to use my oars until I find a replacement.

December 9th, 2005

I didn’t get my dinghy launched today after all. Early this morning before the wind came up, with the help of Philip of “Carina”, I went up the mast to try to get the genoa down. My theory was correct, that the swivel of the roller furling gear could not get past a loose set screw which had backed out of the extrusion on the forestay. The sail was ultimately lowered after I was able to release the head of the sail from the swivel by removing the pin from the shackle. Sounds easy, except for the fact that I was in the bosun’s chair hanging on to the forestay with one arm while working the very stiff shackle pin with pliers in the other hand while dangling about 40 feet above the deck. I had tried to tighten the two offending loose set screws with an Allen wrench, but they wouldn’t go back in. I later found out why.

On one of my trips back to Vancouver, I had bought several spare set screws from a rigging company. I sized the Allen wrench I was going to use to one of these spare set screws before I went up the mast, to ensure that I had the right size. When the loose set screws would not screw back into the extrusion, I removed one completely, by hand. When I later compared this one with one of the spare set screws, it was obvious that the rigging company had sold me the wrong set screws. So the Allen wrench I had used was too small. When I next dangle from the forestay in a day or two, I’ll have the correct size of Allen wrench.

San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua

2005-11-27T16:56:00.000-06:00

11º 15.33' N, 085º 52.56' W. At anchor. I've just about recovered from my 26 hour trip from Puesta del Sol to San Juan del Sur. Pulled away from the dock on Tuesday at 1000 hours and motored for the first few hours. But then the wind came up and I had an excellent sail for the rest of the day until about 1½ hours after dark, with all sails flying. Then it was back to the motor, although I left the full Main and staysail in place. The mistake I made was not reefing the Main while there was no wind, given that this is the beginning of the Papagayo gale season in this area.

And sure enough, at about 0100 hrs on Wednesday morning, the wind came up again, this time as an Easterly from shore. With the movement of the boat, the apparent wind direction was therefore on the nose, port nostril. I then went through a rather slow and laborious reefing process in the dark.

Things never go smoothly in the dark. Not counting the irritation of constantly trying to avoid being tripped up or entangled by the two tethers of my safety harness. it was difficult to see what the various Mainsail lines were doing when I was at the mast. Being unable to get the clew reefing cringle down to the aft part of the boom, in spite of cranking on the reefing winch, I discovered that the dangling leech line had somehow got wrapped around the flailing 2nd reefing line and both had got jammed in the 1st reef block on the boom, along with the 1st reefing line.

It was blowing a bit at this point. The 1st reef tack was already on the reefing hook at the mast and the loose bottom part of the sail was now being a bit unfriendly, especially as I had to work on the downwind side of the boom. After freeing the 1st reef block, with the help of some ungentlemanly language (it's amazing how strong you become when you're really pissed off), I finally managed to complete the reef. But when tying up the loose area of sail at the reef points, I managed to trap a small stowaway insect which was constantly flashing like a white LED light. It eventually crawled its way to "freedom".

The good news was that my little fair weather autopilot kept the boat on course while I was out on deck, in spite of the wind and increasing waves. In fact, the autopilot never faltered throughout the trip, and held its course in 25 plus knots of wind, with short steep seas. This was good consolation for the lack of success I'd had earlier in the day trying to get my wind vane self steering to work. I guess that I don't have enough patience for the wind vane. The thing seems to work mechanically to some extent, but doesn't seem to turn the auxiliary rudder sufficiently to keep the boat on course. I'll have to try it again but using only the staysail and Main. The boat balances better in stronger winds when not using the big genoa.

The next 12 hours were under headwinds between 20 and 30 knots. I was between 5 and 7 miles from shore initially, trying to avoid the unlit fishing boats closer to shore, which I could see on the radar. As the seas started to get bigger and steeper, I tacked in nearer to shore a couple of times, although I had to tack back one time to avoid a small fleet of well lit fishing boats.

The bow got buried in waves constantly, and I think I took on some water through the chain locker as I had to pump out the bilge a couple of times. I need to find a way to make the two anchor chain hawses water tight. The cap on the secondary rode (anchor chain) hawse is OK for rain but not for when buried in a wave. And the plastic bags tightly stuffed beside and around the chain at the windlass hawse is inadequate. Possibly disconnecting the chain from the secondary anchor and dropping it into the chain locker when under way might be one way of enabling that hawse to be completely sealed. I'll have to think of something else for the windlass. But it's also possible that water was also getting in through other places. The forward cap rail was constantly awash, so there may be some recaulking required in that area. I also discovered after anchoring here that the steel plate on the cap rail under the anchor chain between the windlass and the bow roller, which protected the cap rail, had been torn off by the waves. There's just the three holes left where the bolts had been.

I really like staysails. With my boomed self tacking staysail and the deeply reefed Main, both being sheeted in tight on a close haul, tacking when needed was simply a matter of disengaging the autopilot and cranking the wheel. This sail combination works well in strong winds. My 2nd reef in the Main, for even stronger winds, brings the sail size down to that of a trysail. My hanked on staysail can also be reefed, bringing it down to a storm staysail. But I'd hate to have to reef that, given the severe conditions which would require it.

When I arrived at Bahia San Juan del Sur, the wind was still blowing briskly, but the water inside the bay was quite flat. As I entered the bay I passed the cruise liner, “Regal Princess”, which was anchored at the mouth. I had earlier seen this cruise ship at the dock as I passed Corinto, about 14 miles south of Puesta del Sol. It had passed me during the night.

Last night, when I climbed into my bunk, my batteries were down 17.4 amps from full. This morning when I got up, they were only down 11.5 amps, and this with the amp guzzling fridge running. It normally uses about 20 amps overnight. It was quite windy last night, so finally I'm getting some value from my wind generator. Today it has been blowing through the anchorage between 20 and 30 knots all day. So my batteries have been full all day, with the regulator cutting off power from the wind generator. I even cranked up the fridge a couple of notches to take advantage of the extra power.

Leaving Puesta del Sol

2005-11-21T18:08:00.000-06:00

12º 37.50' N. 087º 20.52' W. These are my coordinates in the marina at Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua. Tomorrow I leave the marina and head south east along the coast on the way to San Juan del Sur, not far from the border with Costa Rica. I’ve been slowly, but with increasing intensity, getting the boat ready for departure over the past couple of weeks after almost 7 months here. I’m also preparing myself mentally for becoming a cruiser again.

This is the longest period I’ve spent in a marina since I left Vancouver in August, 2001. But it was a very enjoyable luxury immediately following my almost two years at anchor in the same spot in Bahia del Sol, El Salvador. The hull has now been scraped of all marine growth. The propeller, likewise. The tarps have been removed from over the decks. The deck house and decks have been hosed and scrubbed. The fuel tank has been filled. The diesel jerry cans have been filled. I’ve just filled the main water tank, to be quickly topped up in the morning just before I leave. Additional water jerry cans have also been filled.

I installed a new zinc anode in the engine heat exchanger and then checked out the operation of the engine. All looks fine. The wind generator was scrubbed down and put back in operation. But there are still many things left to stow away in secure places inside the boat.

I have just checked out with the Port Captain and Immigration officer. As I plan to check out of the country in San Juan del Sur before then heading for Costa Rica, I have only obtained internal check-out documents for Nicaragua. I will get my international zarpe when I check out of San Juan del Sur.

So far, the weather looks good for the next several days. South west winds over the past five or six days, coupled with swells from the same direction, have delayed my departure a little. San Juan del Sur has a harbour which is open to the south west, which makes it very rolly and uncomfortable when the winds are from that direction. By the time I expect to get there, the winds and swells will have moved to another direction. I’ll update my progress as the opportunity arises.

Estelí, Nicaragua

2005-11-12T17:50:00.000-06:00

[I'm continuing to have problems uploading photos. So I'm going to publish this posting now, and update it as time permits.]

The rainy season is entering its late stages in Central America and it’s time to start thinking of moving further down the coast of Nicaragua and into Costa Rica. Horizons has been based in Marina Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua, since the end of April and it has been a very enjoyable stay. Some necessary work was done on the boat during the early part of my stay, but mostly I’ve been doing other projects.

I visited Granada, the island of Ometepe and León last year, when I was based in El Salvador. I also fit in a short visit to San Juan del Sur on the way back from my recent visit to Costa Rica. But I couldn’t leave Nicaragua without first taking a trip to the northern highlands.

Estelí was my first destination, by way of Chinandega and León. Except for the InterAmerican Highway section, the road was rough and slow. Estelí lies at an elevation of 2675 feet and is located about halfway between Managua and the Honduran border, on the main highway. It is primarily an agricultural town, with the addition of the production of livestock and cheese. Cotton, tobacco, sesame and various fruits and vegetables make up the agricultural production. As in most rural and many urban areas, horses are relied upon for much of the personal, public and business transportation and haulage. On one street in the southern part of town, not far from one of the market areas, is a concentration of saddleries which make and repair all the necessary hardware for equipping the horses.

As in other parts of Nicaragua, the people were very friendly. But I found the street kids to be more “friendly” than most I’ve encountered, often sticking to me like glue and remaining with me for many blocks as I walked around. It was sometimes very hard to shake them off. One even accompanied me uninvited into a restaurant and sat at my table while I had lunch. They also all seem to think that they know my name. But “Juan” is not my name. Nor is “Peso” my last name. “Juan Peso, Juan Peso!” they call me. Sometimes it’s “Juan Córdoba”. Persistent they may be, but generally they are quite good natured. And for security reasons, I keep some space between us.

Unfortunately, poverty is a widespread condition in Nicaragua with little in the way of social benefits. It’s impossible for individual tourists and travelers to alleviate the problem. One can give small amounts of money to some from time to time, but there are just too many.

Estelí was one area which saw a lot of heavy fighting during the Revolution which in 1979 overthrew the American-backed brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last Somoza of the 46 year dynasty. Much of the centre of the town was left in ruins, and there are some buildings remaining which can still be seen with pockmarks of bullet holes from the fighting.

One of the places of interest in Estelí is the small Galería de Héroes y Mártires operated by the Madres de los Héroes y Mártires. These are mothers who lost sons, daughters and other family members in the fighting during the Revolution. There are many photos on all the walls of a number of those local men and women who died, most of them being very young. Each photo has the name and the date killed printed underneath.

Guillermina Meza, now aged 59, was the mother in attendance at the museum when I visited. Her two sons were killed on April 10, 1979. The older son, Efrain Rugana Meza, was 17 years old, and the younger one, Juan José Blanco Meza, was only 15. The accompanying photos show Guillermina beside the photos of her sons, which are the ones above her head with the red flowers. The impact of these and all the other photos was quite moving. Guillermina herself was very friendly and warm, with a mixture of pride, serenity and sadness – even now, after so many years. She was genuinely appreciative of the interest I was taking, and spontaneously hugged me before I left.

One of the many photos in the gallery was of José Benito Escobar, one of the leaders of the GPP (Prolonged People’s War) tendency of the Sandinistas. Of the three “tendencies” of the Sandinistas, the GPP focused on the guerilla war in the northern mountains. Gioconda Belli, a Nicaraguan poet, author and revolutionary herself, describes her meeting and positive impression of Escobar in her 2001 (translation: 2002) book, The Country Under My Skin. Escobar was killed in Estelí in July,1978, while fighting against Somoza’s National Guard.

Augusto César Sandino was a passionate patriot who organized and led a military campaign in 1927 to oust American control from Nicaragua. Persistent American intereference in Nicaraguan internal affairs from the mid 19th century, including several invasions by US Marines, fostered a nationalist movement in the early 20th century. The US Marines finally withdrew from Nicaragua in 1932, and Sandino's forces laid down their arms in 1933 after the signing of a peace agreement with the government. Sandino was assassinated on the orders of the dictator Anastasia Somoza Garcia in 1934.

Sandino's silhouette in stetson and riding breeches has become a national symbol in Nicaragua.

Other exhibits in the museum include photos and paintings of some of the national revolutionary heroes, some remnant weapons and accessories, and some murals on the external walls. Posters of Sandino and Carlos Fonseca are shown below.

Murals are a prominent feature of Estelí. They can be seen in many places around the town, often in unlikely places. Some have powerful political themes. When I visited the Casa de Cultura, I met a mural artist who has painted murals in a number of towns and communities around the country. He showed me a binder/portfolio of photos of many of his works, which were very impressive. Some murals appeared multi-layered, with different images appearing, depending on how you viewed them and how far back you stood. Mural painting as a means of expression, as well as political expression, is a popular art form in Nicaragua. I saw many during my first visit to León early last year. This binder/portfolio also contained a fairly recent photo of this artist with revolutionary leader and former President Daniel Ortega during a visit by Ortega to this cultural centre.

The Casa de Cultura provides courses in art and music to its students. Guitar lessons were taking place in one room; and in another, a kind of mosaic art using what looked like dyed palm leaves or the outer leaves from corn ears. These dried leaves were cut up into small pieces and assembled into pictures by gluing them onto a board.

The political mural below is one example of many to be seen around Estelí and other locations.

Children of Matagalpa

2005-11-03T16:40:00.000-06:00

Princessa & her little brother

The family run a tiny tienda from their humble home in Barrio San Francisco, a poor neighbourhood in the steep hills on the east side of Matagalpa. I can't remember the names of the children - I should write everything down. But I think that Princessa perfectly suits the little girl.

2005-11-03T14:35:00.000-06:00

Ninas

2005-11-03T14:34:00.000-06:00

Nina

2005-11-03T14:32:00.000-06:00

Nica Youth

Picture Perfect

2005-11-03T14:29:00.000-06:00

Mona Lisa

"The eyes have it."

I continue to be amazed at the striking beauty of the children of Central America, and it's particularly noticable in Nicaragua. This child leaves the original Mona Lisa well in the shade.

2005-11-03T14:26:00.000-06:00

Local Boys

Cool for School

2005-11-03T14:06:00.000-06:00

Cool hair

This young lad obviously takes great pride in his appearance. I've noticed that many of the young schoolboys are very conscious of hairstyles, and they really like the gel look. As with most of the kids in school uniforms in these photos, this boy was a pupil at the local primary school in Barrio San Francisco, Matagalpa.

Costa Rica Tour

2005-10-22T19:00:00.000-06:00

When I returned to Horizons after my month long trip to Costa Rica, the boat was a bit dusty inside, with a little light decorative mould on some of the wood surfaces from the high humidity. But otherwise, all was fine, with no unpleasant surprises. A few dead ants here and there - it's virtually impossible to keep insects off the boat in the tropics, especially the flying varieties. So I have to use the regular killer sprays and powders to keep the little creatures to a minimum.

I enjoyed my month in Costa Rica and feel quite reinvigorated by it. It was just the medicine I needed after several months of being cabin bound here in the marina while I worked on video DVD projects. My starting point was in the capital, San José. I found it to be considerably cooler in San José than in Puesta del Sol and the coastal areas of Costa Rica. San José is in the Central Valley of the country, where the bulk of the population lives. It's at about 3,600 feet elevation, between two mountain ranges. The day times were quite comfortable - warm but not too hot (probably in the mid to low 20's Celsius most of the time), and no significantly high humidity. At night it was relatively cool - border line short sleeved T-shirt comfort. I had to put my fleece over me when sleeping as it was a bit cool overnight and only a light sheet was provided by my budget hotel.

I saw most of the few attractions of San José, including the interesting National Museum (which also has an exotic butterfly enclosure) and the Gold Museum (no cameras allowed), and later in my visit, the Jade Museum (ditto). One morning I also strolled through the well worn and somewhat tired Botanical Gardens with its small zoo containing a number of aged caged animals, until the predictable mid day deluge had me run for cover. For the best part of a week during the early part of my sojourn, I was nursing a very painful right foot, which was making it very difficult to walk. I was only able get about slowly, with a pronounced shuffle/limp. I had suffered a heavy fall on a visit to the Irazú Volcano, about 1½ hours from San José. I must be getting old and clumsy and turned over my ankle on the edge of the path. I was off balance with my pack and my video camera around my neck, and went crashing hard to the ground. Somehow, I painfully injured my big toe. This put a bit of a crimp in my plans for further exploration for about four or five days, most of which usually involves walking.

I soon discovered at first hand how much more it rains in Costa Rica in the rainy season compared with Nicaragua and El Salvador. It was partly or totally cloudy for most of the various times I was in San José, except for some occasional short sunny periods in the mornings. By noon, the camera was put away and the umbrella was readied. Fortunately, the clouds delayed rolling in for long enough for me to get some good photos of the craters of Irazú Volcano. It's the highest volcano in Costa Rica, at 3432 metres. The Principal Crater is live but dormant (its last eruption was in December, 1994), and has a vividly green lake at the bottom. The other two much older craters are extinct. My video camera seemed to survive my fall, but the motor now sounds noisier than previously. It continued to work throughout the rest of my travels, but I hope that there's no latent damage - especially after all the troubles I had with my previous video camera.

San José served as my base during my time in Costa Rica. From there, I branched out to different parts of the country, near and not so near (nowhere is far). After Irazú, I visited Poás (2574 metres), another active volcano about 55 Kms from San José. Apparently, it has one of the largest active volcanic craters in the world. It last erupted in 1989, although it's been active since then. Poás is quite demonstrative, with lots of steam, sulphur smell, geysers and moonscape terrain in and around the Principal Crater, which also contains a light yellow sulphurous/acidic, steam covered lake. Got some good clear photos and video before the clouds started to roll in. The countryside on the way to these volcanoes is beautiful. Lots of agriculture takes place on the sides of the volcanoes, particularly coffee plantations, but there was also a lot of other varied farming. You could smell the onions in some locations. It almost looks like a tropical version of Tolkien's Shire.

I next went to Puerto Limón, which is quite a rough little town on the Caribbean coast with few redeeming features, including the fact that I didn't feel too secure. I pay heed to cautions in my guide book, but I also often get a sense of a place from just walking around. I explored the central part of the town, with its new large concrete unfinished church, as well as the disappointing beach waterfront. But I stayed off the relatively deserted streets at night except to go across the street from the hotel for dinner. The town's one claim to fame is that Columbus landed on a small island just offshore from Puerto Limón on his last voyage. Unlike many other places I visited in Costa Rica, Puerto Limón doesn't seem to get too many foreign tourists other than, inexplicably, some large cruise ships. It's still an active commercial port but gets no yachting traffic. In fact, Costa Rica's Caribbean coast does not lend itself to yachtie traffic.

From there, after one night, I then took the half hour bus ride south to Cahuita, where there is a small National Park. Cahuita has a funky little village next to the park, but once again, I didn't feel very secure there. I suppose having to fend off an attempt on my wallet during a contrived scrum as I was trying to get off the bus didn't enhance my feeling of security. Costa Rica was living up to its reputation for theft and crimes against tourists, given the atmosphere in many places and my general experiences. It's a pity about this reputation, but it creates a very unfortunate mindset.

This reputation is reinforced by the constant warnings everywhere, from those printed in the capital's English language newspaper, on signs in bus stations, inside buses, on the backs of bus tickets and in guide books and other tourist materials, to verbal warnings from hotel concierges and others. Some hotels I stayed at had security gates which required you to be buzzed in. Travelling on the bus to see the Arenal volcano, a security officer told me before the bus left the San José bus station that I had to take my pack down from the overhead rack and put it by my feet where I sat, even though I'd buckled one of the shoulder straps around a rack post. Bus luggage racks are frequent sources of theft. And I've heard stories of the experiences of other cruisers who have had boat equipment, bags, packs and other personal property stolen. I even heard one story of a cruiser whose backpack disappeared from a supposedly safe store paqueteria (a place where you have to check in your bags when entering a store). One evening in San José a restaurant operator recommended that I take a taxi back to my hotel rather than walk. On my way back on foot to my hotel another time, also in San José, I was similarly warned about the risks by a local guy.

So in Cahuita, I had some concern for security in the Park as I'd also heard some stories of muggings. After assurances of its safety for a lone walker from the park ranger, I did take a morning walk into the Cahuita National Park, which is a typically beautiful and atmospheric Costa Rican tropical rain forest which extends right to the beach. There are lots of various kinds of birds and colourful butterflies such as the big blue Azul Morpho (Morpho Azul?), an amazing variety of flora, and I particularly enjoyed seeing the groups of White Faced Monkeys - everybody's favourite - up in the trees above the trail.

After Cahuita, I moved on to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, a bit further south and not far from the Panamanian border. It was quite a nice, laid back little community although a bit touristy. But it felt a bit safer and more secure than in the other two places. It just so happened that it was Carnaval time, and it was very noisy and lively around the little fairground they had erected just above the beach. Took some video of the loud drum beating parade, with the kids doing their repetitive little jump dance. English is spoken by many on the Caribbean coast so it was nice being more easily able to communicate with the locals and the service industry people. And the children, as usual in Central America, were a delight to see. Its much more of an Afro-Carib Rasta and Reggae cultural environment which reminded me of Belize, although there is still a Latin Salsa element ever present.

The road connecting San José with Puerto Limón and Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the north coast crosses the continental divide, over the central mountain range, which meant passing through the cloud forests of Braulio Carillo National Park. It was typical high level tropical jungle scenery with plenty of the promised dripping clouds swirling about. Costa Rica is a strikingly beautiful country, lush and green everywhere you go. A bit like British Columbia in the sense that for all this to exist requires a lot of rain. My experiences confirm my advice that December to April or May are the best times of year to see this country, when the precipitation is reduced, particularly in the north and on the Pacific side.

After a brief interlude in San José, my next excursion was to the Tortuguero National Park on the north Caribbean coast in the direction of Nicaragua. It's a major turtle nesting area. Large numbers of turtles come ashore at this location to lay their eggs, often several times a year, but not en masse and always after dark. It was interesting gettting there, as there are no roads into Tortuguero. The bus goes only so far to the north east about 2 hours from San José, the latter part through large banana plantations (we had to disinfect our shoes at a checkpoint before entering that area), and the final leg of the journey is a fascinating 1½ hour trip by boat down a twisty, bendy river through various kinds of tropical rain forest. We saw large green lizards and a wide variety of small and large tropical birds. Also heard but didn't see the Howler Monkeys. On the early morning return journey we saw a lot of White Faced Monkeys high in the trees crossing the river in front of us by jumping acrobatically from overhanging branches on one side to overhanging branches on the other. We also came upon a crocodile basking in the sun on the river bank. As soon as it became aware of us, it slithered into the river in traditional menacing crocodile fashion, ending up with only eyes and nose visible above the water. National Geographic stuff.

On the day of my arrival in Tortuguero, I took an evening tour to see some turtles on the beach well inside the park area. Our group saw several large Green Turtles (about 6 feet from head to tail) laboriously crawling back to the sea after laying their eggs. We also saw one large turtle in the actual process of laying her eggs in the deep hole she had dug at the top of the beach. The turtles enter a kind of a trance when they are actually laying the eggs and are not conscious of the observers. However, no one was allowed to have white lights, and cameras and flash were not allowed. These would seriously disturb the turtles. But the guides had what they called infrared lights, which seemed to be just low level red lights, so that we could see what was going on without upsetting the turtles. It was a fascinating experience. The following day I walked on the beach adjacent to the village to see the numerous turtle tracks and nests in daylight. Unfortunately, there are lots of natural predators, plus an alarming number of marauding stray dogs and even people, which prey on the eggs and baby turtles both inside and outside the protected park area. Apparently, of the many eggs laid, only about 3% of turtles make it to adulthood. The village of Tortuguero, just outside the park, was very relaxed and slow paced and had a nice atmosphere. I took photos and video of different kinds of lizards, butterflies and large strange looking insects when walking just above the beach. Also saw more White Faced Monkeys in the trees behind the beach. It was a good visit.

My trip from San José to see the famous Arenal active volcano, near La Fortuna, was not very successful, although the bus ride there was again through some beautiful idyllically scenic countryside and made the trip worthwhile. Same for the return trip which I made via a different route, around Lake Arenal. But I only got to see the lower half of the volcano as there was heavy low overcast at the times when it was not actually raining. There are other attractions in that vicinity, such as rain forest canopy tours, hot springs, horseback riding, nature walks, etc. But all these tours were quite expensive and probably designed for the normal rich, freespending three week holidaymaker from North America. Given the weather, there was not much point in exploring these options anyway. I bypassed the Monteverde National Park on the way back to San José for the same reason. Possibly I'll make another attempt when I have Horizons in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica's Independence Day intervened on Sept. 15th (as in other Central American countries). Lots of flag waving and a big, slow, lumbering noisy parade in the centre of San José. I then headed to the Pacific coast to check out Puntarenas on my way back to Nicaragua. More security concerns in Puntarenas, according to the woman running the hotel where I stayed. But I hiked around anyway and ultimately located the Costa Rica Yacht Club. Talked to the manager and inspected the boat haulout facilities and yard. I also bumped into a cruiser in the club house I'd last seen about 2½ years ago in Mazatlán, Mexico.

I then continued on back to Nicaragua, where I had an unplanned stopover in San Juan del Sur, not far from the border. My bus was late arriving at the connection point in nearby Rivas, Nicaragua, so I had missed the last bus to Granada, which I had wanted to visit for the second time. But it was an enjoyable stopover, as I was able to visit with a Canadian I got to know in El Salvador who lives in San Juan with his Nicaraguan wife and beautiful and delightful children. He's been working on a much needed cruisers' guide for western Central America for the past couple of years but is being a bit slow about getting it to the market. It looks like it will be a very useful book and should help to open up this part of the coast to a lot more cruising boats. I'm looking forward to stopping in San Juan del Sur again, this time with my boat on my way to Costa Rica.

As I've said, Costa Rica is a strikingly beautiful country - almost a Garden of Eden - but I have found that for tourists its main problem is personal security. You have to be on your guard all the time in many places. This was confirmed to me by a Canadian I know who has lived in the country for the past several years. Most of the experienced travellers I met there were very security conscious. In the almost four years I have been in Latin America, I have never felt unsafe or insecure (not counting the incident in Guatemala when I was shot at by banditos) except since arriving in Costa Rica. It's ironic that this should be the case, given its relative wealth compared to other countries in this region. The contrast with the other Central American countries I have visited is that Costa Rica is virtually a First World country whereas those others are clearly Third World. The Central Valley of Costa Rica in particular is highly developed, with a strong American influence. Lots of US franchises and brand names everywhere. But I have to say that I've felt more safe and secure in the places I've visited in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and even Guatemala (subject to above comment) than in Costa Rica. It really is too bad.

When I started my visit, there was a concern at the increasing incidence of dengue fever, a 150% increase over 2004. It's a mosquito borne disease, or two diseases as the rare hemorrhagic form can be fatal very rapidly. There were 14,000 cases of classic and 20 cases of hemorrhagic dengue fever reported up to mid August. It has many symptoms similar to malaria, but unlike with malaria, there is no protective pre-medication for it. I don't like using the stuff, but I bought a bottle of mosquito repellent (although I didn't use it very often).

I finally made my way back to the marina from San Juan del Sur via Managua, where I stayed overnight. On the previous times I've stayed overnight in Managua, I've always found a cheap hotel close to the coach line bus stations so that I didn't have to walk far with my backpacks. I've always been conscious of security, as Managua has been getting increasingly unsafe in some areas over the past few years, according to the accepted wisdom. On previous visits, I've gone for walks to nearby places of interest without feeling any discomfort. On this occasion I also went for a walk. I'd passed the new cathedral in the taxi on my way to the hotel, and thought that I'd take a walk to see it. It was about a 30 or 40 minute walk each way. This cathedral was built after the old cathedral near Lake Managua was severely damaged in the devastating earthquake of 1972, which also destroyed most of Managua. This new cathedral looks quite interesting from a distance, with its roof of numerous partial spheres rising in a pattern to a shallow pyramidical peak. But up close, the building is nothing more than a large concrete cube shaped box with little detailing or adornment. I suppose that it's functional, practical and earthquake resistant, and must have been relatively cheap to build. But it's quite ugly, particularly inside. But I'm not a fan of modern concrete churches anyway. I did take several photos on the way to and at the cathedral, discretely. But I didn't feel unsafe during this walk.

When in San José, I bought a few books at the English language book store. One of those books - praised by Salman Rushdie - was written by a woman, Gioconda Belli, who came from a well to do family in Managua but who became a feminist, poet, author and revolutionary. She joined the Sandinista movement in the years leading up to the overthrow of the dictator Somoza in 1979. I'm still only part way into the book, but it was stimulating to be reading it while I was actually in Managua. Another book I bought was a very well known one in Latin America, The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano. Its subtitle is Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, which gives you a good idea of its theme. The well known author Isabel Allende was influenced by it when she was young, and wrote the Introduction to the edition I bought.

My current plan is to leave the marina in Nicaragua sometime in late October or early November. The rainy season will not yet be over, but I need to get past the Gulf of Papagayo, in northern Costa Rica, before the Papagayo gales start blowing in late November. I will then have to decide on the best time scale regarding hauling out the boat in Puntarenas, Costa Rica, for maintenance work, so as to accommodate the arrival of a visitor over the Christmas period. The anti fouling bottom paint job is not difficult for calculating a time frame. But I've discovered some small blisters in the underwater areas of the fibreglass hull and the time frame for the blister repair job is a bit harder to assess.