This is a quick update to say we’re in the Bay outside Boca Chica and are back connected to the internet. Pics for the last couple of weeks are on their way. Click on ‘Recently Updated‘ to catch up.
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This is a quick update to say we’re in the Bay outside Boca Chica and are back connected to the internet. Pics for the last couple of weeks are on their way. Click on ‘Recently Updated‘ to catch up. John and I decided to use a couple of tanks of air and go scuba diving in the morning. As ever, it’s the preparation that takes far more time than the dive but time is what we have. The point we chose was at the east end of Isla Pango, just over a mile from where Dignity was anchored. The dive itself was interesting. Mostly at 45 feet but descending to a colder and murkier 70 feet at one point. I decided to turn back early because I was a little concerned about some changes in current I felt. Good thing we did as the current became quite strong by the time we reached the dinghy anchor. After lunch we cleared all our gear away and moved Dignity around to the north side of Isla Cavada. Here there is a posh resort if you can call it that. What it is is a few expensive tents. We’ll have to look it up to see what it’s all about. The surprising thing was was that we could pick up an internet connection. Unfortunately the signal was poor and we accomplished little using it. We could have moved the boat but we’re 99% certain we’ll get a good pickup at Boca Chica later today so we left the internet for another day. John and I went out for a long snorkel. Helen stayed behind having received a report from John along the way of seeing a sea snake. The water in places was almost too warm. We swam up to and crossed a nearby sandy isthmus between two sections of the island and continued our snorkel on the other side. Our sea snake and lobster count (dive and snorkel) was coincidentally identical and so for another day we had no lobster for dinner. We were treated to a georgeous horizon touching sunset over the isthmus right between the two sections of island. A simple day. In the morning John and I took the hookah out for nearly two hours. Waters were nice and clear and we saw lots of fish. No lobsters. The air tube which holds the dive flag fell off but we were able to find it by towing John through the water behind the dinghy and covering our tracks. In the afternoon John had a ride up the mast to take pics. That’s about it for the day. Today we’ll head round to the north side of Isla Cavada ready for tomorrow when we’ll set off in the morning for Boca Chica. There had been a little rain the previous night, the first we’d seen in a long while. The preceded a warm an muggy day. Our first excursion was ashore to the nearby beach to follow the trail starting at the stops by the tiki hut. The trail was a mixture of manicured sections (it looked like) interspersed with sections where it was not so easy to see where the path led. The path went up and down several times which with the careful steps we had to take when the footing wasn’t so secure built up quite a sweat. At one point we reached a fork in the path where it looked as though one option took us broadly back towards the boat and the other further along the island. We took the ‘further’ turn and eventually found ourselves in a delightful little lagoon/bay on the other side of the island. We loitered here for a while with all of us spending time in the water to shed heat. On the way back we took the other path and found that it did indeed lead to a beach that we could see from the boat. To get to the dinghy though we had to clamber over some rocks that separated the beaches. That was the morning. In the afternoon we dug out the hookah and set it up. We again headed off to the small island NW of us this time exploring it from below. I did see one lobster in the same place and probably the same one as the previous day. It was way to small to capture though. Helen’s underwater sickness kicked in and she was good to last until we got back to the boat. John and I stayed in the water for another half hour to scrape barnacles off the bottom. More and more it can be seen that Grenada Marine did a very bad job of the paint work as some areas are already down to the primer while others look as it should. I’m now wondering if they even used all the paint we left them. We now know why other cruisers watch the yards while they do the work. Just before going to sleep the weather turned. The wind picked up and it began to rain hard. Hopefully this will mean some of the moisture has been taken out of the air. Hoping to be able to make us of some wind in the day we set off at 6am, before sunrise. The wind was under 5 knots and behind us so there was little point raising the sails. The upside of there being no wind was that the seas were pretty flat with waves measuring a few inches rather than feet. Coupled with exceptionally clear water we were treated to the sight of a couple of lone dolphins who, for a while, swam ahead of the boat seeming to swim in air. We did put out two trolling lines, both with the same favourite lure (green/yellow squiddie with red stripe) but with one modified to have some shiny foil attached. We landed yet another mahi mahi, this one 11.5 pounds, on the modified lure. We found space in the freezer for two more filets. This mahi mahi managed to tangle itself up with the other line which took a lot of undoing. The wind remained under 5 knots up until about 30 mins before we arrived in Islas Secas. By that time it was not worth the bother of raising the sails so we motored all the way in to an utterly delightful spot just north of Isla Pargo. The waters looked clear and the temperature was showing an almost too warm 95F. We were all soon in though swimming round the small island to our NW. While not crystal clear the waters here are by far the best we’ve seen so far here in the Pacific. The number and variety of fish is amazing. We’re seeing fish we’ve never seen before. Again, the basic types we’re seeing are similar to the Caribbean but the species are clearly different. One of our favorite fish are the trunk fish. Here we are seeing bright yellow varieties for example that we’ve never seen before. Great to witness the marvelous and inspiring results of evolution. We lost touch with each other while swimming. John and Helen swam to a beach nearby, and explored there. I couldn’t find them and got a bit worried about the possibility they could be in trouble even though I knew it was likely they’d gone off somewhere. I eventually found their fins/flippers on some rocks by the beach so I knew they were ok. They’d found a path mentioned by one of the guides but didn’t go all the way along it saving that for another day. On the beach was a tiki hut of some sort. Later, it looked like a couple were receiving a private vacation night on the beach set up by an assistant. Perhaps this was set up as an out of the way personal night on a beach far away from everything else. Well – they had to put up with us in the area. We’ve definitely found a place we can rest up for a few days. As far as we know this is not a park where fees can be levied on us like the last spot. The island to our north, Cavada, is private and we’re not supposed to go ashore there. But there’s plenty of other places for us to explore and chill out. In a few days we’ll head north to Boca Chica where we’re pretty sure we can pick up an internet connection and catch up things. From there we can access the town of David for more fresh provisions. We also have the option of heading inland to Boquete where we can hike up to the top of a 10,000 foot volcano from which we’re supposed to be able to see both the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. |
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