Western Holandes Cays

First day of the new decade saw us all waking a little tired and, at least in my case, feeling a little worse for wear. I took a couple of bags of trash up to the morning fire on BBQ island. There’s a cruiser who has been there for years who grooms the island every morning burning all the fallen chaff from the trees. It’s not his island but he does this all the same. He is letting grass grow across the island too. It makes it look nice and feel nice to walk on but chatting to Gerald while burning trash I learned the other other side of all this. The kuna are a bit pissed at him for doing this. They think, and are probably right, that burning the fallen palm fronds is killing the island. The natural state of the islands is to let the fronds rot into the ground providing nutrients for the trees still standing and growing. This is not happening. BBQ island may be a little paradise now but one day it will become lifeless.

After dropping off the trash we immediately set sail for the western end of the Holandes Cays. We had the sails up in lightish winds on flat seas. This enabled us to have lunch of soup and bread on the move. We arrived shortly after noon.

John and I went for a long snorkel while Annie and Sam took to the shore. We’ve found the best reef snorkeling so far. Being on the leeward side of an island which is also protected from the north by the reef we find a lot more fish diversity and fragile coral. We are also protected from the current that was raging through the swimming pool area. That being said there is a bit of a surge which makes snorkeling the reef extra interesting as it pushes us in and out through the channels in the rocks – a bit nerve wracking though when surrounded by fire coral. I had my speargun with me while snorkeling and at one point saw a long pair of lobster tentacle poking out from under a rock. I shot the lobster between the eyes but ended up disappointed as it was quite a small one. Back on the boat we didn’t cook it but used it’s flesh for bait on hook left hanging over the side of the boat. This morning there is a fish on the hook but it’s unfortunately dead. If it’s an eater we may cook it up. I’ll leave it there until the kids are awake so we can look at it together.

Dinner last night was home made pizza – very tasty even though it welded itself to the tray.

Whiskers are here too. We’ll be saying au revoir soon as our paths will separate and it’s not clear when we’ll next meet. It could be somewhere on the west side of Panama but my guess is that it will be in French Polynesia somewhere. We’re both heading to New Zealand by November and following roughly the same track and timetable. We were going to stay here just for one day but we’ve decided to stay one more day as the place seem popular and we weren’t in the best state to enjoy things to the maximum yesterday. Today we may even get the hookah out.