We both woke up early this morning and soon had the Christmas music going on the boat. We relaxed, read and I got the dinner rolls rising. About 10 AM we headed into shore with some nice clothing in a bag along with the rising roll dough. Bill sat at the kitchen counter in Ornen’s kitchen using one of Ginny’s computers to check e-mail and purchase more books for the Kindles. I helped Ginny with some of the food preparation and finishing the set-up for her mid- afternoon party.
People started to arrive about 2 and at 3 we all loaded up our plates with too much food and sat down for a very nice Christmas dinner.
There were 19 people at the table, mostly from the island but they were all interesting and we enjoyed a lovely afternoon eating and visiting. Soon after dark most of the guests left but Bill and I helped with the clean up and stuck around until 8PM visiting. Two of the guests returned to join in the conversations. All and all – a very nice Christmas.
Last Wednesday we traveled the 17 miles north to Isla Contadora where we were planning on meeting up with other cruisers for Christmas on the island. Ginny and Werner (from Ornen) have moved ashore and have a home on the island and they invited some of their cruiser friends to come out and celebrate with them. Because of the bad weather the last few weeks only Lanikai showed up. Of course the weather has now improved and we are enjoying mostly sunny days with NW winds.
We went ashore yesterday in the early afternoon with the makings for pizza. Ginny was cooking for the celebration that is planned for Christmas Day and Doreen helped some with the dicing of vegetables. Bill spent the afternoon on his computer taking advantage of their internet connection. We enjoyed many beers that Werner kept opening for us when he saw that our prior one was empty. About sunset, when Bill completed what he wanted to accomplish with the internet, we put the pizzas together and sat down with more beers to enjoy the Christmas Eve dinner. Werner and others told of Christmas traditions past. Werner even mentioned that when he was a child in the “old country” the tree was lit with little candles and the children all watched with baited breath while they were lit before they could dance around the tree and be seated to open the presents. We had a very enjoyable evening and returned to Lanikai launching the dinghy thru the small surf in the dark without any problems.
Last night Bill got up at about 2:30AM and noticed that it was too dark for a full moon night. Thinking that the clouds had thickened he went outside to check and discovered that the shadow of the earth was taking a large bite out of the moon! He got me up and we both watched as the shadow of the earth moved across to moon and the stars came out bright like a new moon night.
The wind picked up just after sunset last night and blew most of the clouds away. It also kept the bite-y insects off Lanikai. Yesterday, having been a mostly cloudy day but calm, I enjoyed a nice kayak paddle in the late afternoon’s high tide exploring a lagoon that is dry at low tide.
Our second day anchored off Rio Cacique a local, paddling a wooden cayuca, stopped by with some fruit from his small farm. Bill purchased half a stock of bananas from him, about 50 bananas. Of course they were very green so we hung them in the cockpit from the mizzen mast. Two days ago some of them started to yellow up and yesterday the entire group of bananas was yellow. So now we are enjoying bananas in our morning oatmeal and liquados made by blending the bananas with another fruit juice to make a nice thick drink.
There is a small village on the south end of Isla del Rey, mostly of fisherman but some of them have small farms up the Rio Cacique where they grow bananas, papaya and pineapple. The cayucas can travel up the river but some of the farmers use motor powered pangas that can only get up the river at high tides, so they usually leave them anchored off the beach.
The weather here is still mostly calm but also mostly cloudy. We get some sun each day and the occasional passing storm bring rain, wind and sometimes both. This morning we were awoken at 4AM with strong winds and a following downpour of water. Lanikai remains fairly clean as a result of the rains.
Today is the third nice day in a row so we upped the anchor and headed off to the anchorage behind Isla Espiritu Santo, about 5 hours away. We have spent the last week anchored in a well protected anchorage off the Rio Cacique at the south end of Isla del Rey in the Perlas Islands of Panama. We left Panama on a fairly nice Tuesday morning and anchored in a favorite spot on the west side of the island group. We left the city in one of the few nice days in the preceding two weeks. We had nice light NE wind for our journey but not enough to sail so it was a motor sail all the way. We anchored off a favorite spot on the west side of the Perlas group but by nightfall the wind had shifted and increased making the anchorage not very comfortable. Wednesday morning we moved on the the Rio Cacique anchorage where we holed up for the next week of bad weather, lots of rain and strong NW winds.
Bill and I spent the time reading lots of books and just enjoying the calm of the anchorage with the wind whistling in the rigging and the rain washing the boat clean. Then the weather improved on last Thursday and I got the kayak out and went for a paddle around the bay. Bill climbed the mast and got the anchor light working again with a new working bulb. The next day was just as nice and we swam, I kayaked and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. Then it was pretty out again today so we moved on. Closing about half the distance to Isla Contadora where we plan to spend Christmas.
We got several nice rainbows as the rains lessened and the sun appeared.
