Having found nothing in the village on Isla Casayeta we decided to visit San Miguel, the largest settlement in the Islas Perlas. With the winds above 15 knots we had a brisk sail down to Isla Del Rey where we anchored in the lee of a couple of small islands. It was quite choppy so we knew we wouldn’t stay long. We went ashore in the dinghy and dragged it up the beach as the tide was still rising. We soon met a local fellow, Jesus, who became our “amigo”. Despite a complete language barrier he learned we wanted to fill our empty gas can and were interested in buying fruit. He frequently indicated he could get us lemons and papayas. We insisted on getting gas first so he took us through these back alleys until we found someone in a small store prepare to sell us gas. Having agree to sell us 5 gallons the old dude in the store took 5 minutes to obtain a couple of large cans of gas. They then proceeded to siphon the gas from their cans not into ours but into bottles which we then had to pour into our can by way of a makeshift funnel. I think this was their way of measuring the gas. We ended up with less than 5 gallons as we could tell from the mark on our can but our attempts to explain this fell on deaf ears.
Jesus then took us round the town so to speak so we could visit the church. It was a poor town and the church reflected this but we took pictures as we went which we will post when we can. We eventually agreed to let Jesus obtain some fruit for us upon which he took us to a straggly lemon tree in between two houses and proceeded to knock four small ones down with a stick. He then climbed a papaya tree (someone elses we’re sure) and brought us down a couple of papayas. At the beach we tipped our amigo (the implied deal all along) and headed back to the boat with our plunder.
After lunch and a rest we again set sail for the north east side of Isla Del Ray. Our original intention was to anchor at Isla del Espiritu Santo. Just before arriving there we noticed a very calm spot called Punta Matadero. We took a closer look and decided to stop there for the night. From here we could see the anchorage at Isla del Espiritu Santo. In our guide book Isla del Espiritu Santo is noted as a popular anchorage and, probably because of this, we could see four or five boats anchored there. We’ll probably go there today but we were delighted to have Punta Matadero all to ourselves. I swam ashore, walked the beach then swam around some rocks to find another small beach where they had the perfect fresh water streamlet pouring down a beach comprising dark and light sand mixes together interspersed with large rocks. I could not resist building dams between the rocks and diverting the stream across the beach. The sand was fascinating as the two colours had different sized particles and would separate out in any new channel created forming very interesting patterns. John arrived in the dinghy after a while and joined in. The finale of any beach dam building is of course the final destruction whereby a small breach is made and the waters allowed to tear the dams down.
I then swam back around to the first beach to explore the other end and John returned in the dinghy. I was able to see a lot of fish but the downside was the water was quite murky and the visibility only about 10 feet. On the upside, the beach was one of the most litter free I’ve seen outside of those that have commercial interests and presumably have people picking up the trash.
We had a pleasant evening. We’re anchored close enough to the beach that we can hear the birds calling in the adjacent trees.
Leave a Reply