Valentine’s Day

It was an early start for Valentine’s Day as Helen and I wanted to do the hilltop hike. We’d been advised an early start was best as it would be cooler for us and for any animals which have a tendency to hide away as the day gets warmer. It’s probably worth pointing out at this point the difference in weather here. As the crow flies we’re only 50 miles from Boca Chica. Where it was dry there, it is wet and humid here. We see rain showers every afternoon, sometimes quite heavy. It is clammy all the time and the daytime temperature usually in the 90s. But at least it does get cool in the evenings. It really does feel quite different to Panama with so much change in just a short distance. This all has to be considered when off for a strenuous hike.

We were ashore and off by 6:30am. Due to the recent time change it still feels more like 7:30am to us so it wasn’t too bad. We spent nearly 15 minutes hiking along the main road south out of town to reach the gravel track, between a soccer field and a store, which would lead us up into the hill (on top of actually) and to the communications antennae above the town.

We were soon in a relentless climb with the humidity allowing our early morning sweat nowhere to go but into our clothes. The road was of reasonable quality, presumably to allow maintenance vehicles to reach the antennae, so at least our footing was secure.

Along the road we would see and hear many birds. We also could hear many loud insects and see many large iridescent blue butterflies which were impossible to photograph due to their wild flight patterns.

We soon came upon a small trickle of water beside the road. It was a godsend as it was cool and allowed us to splash some refreshing water over our faces.

Shortly after this and perhaps due to the vicinity of fresh water we came upon a troop of small monkeys in the trees either side of the road. There were quite a few including mothers with babies. It was hard getting good pictures of them as they would be tucked away in the leaves. But sometimes they would come out and scamper around and occasionally jump from tree to tree across the road.

The road did have a few stop offs, some with seats, where there were impressive views of the bay. At one such stop a toucan (or something similar) alighted in a tree nearby long enough for me to capture a picture. At another stop we saw another troop of the same type of monkeys as we saw earlier.

In the end, it took us just over two hours to reach first antenna. While it was fenced off there was no gate barring entry into the compound. As we had imprecise directions to the path down I went inside to see if the path originated there. It didn’t but I was amazed at the tangle of wiring connected to the “high voltage” antenna.

Further on, as we approached the second antenna, we noticed what we thought could be the path down the hill. We made a mental note to return here if we found nothing else more like a proper path down. We rounded and climbed the final hill to find a strange looking home which probably predated the antennae. There was a woman watching TV who we hailed and tried to get instructions to where the path started. After a lot of arm waving and incomprehensible language (on both sides I reckon) we think we confirmed our suspicions as to the path we first saw.

This was basically the end of the road so we turned around and headed back. We did find what looked like some concrete steps going down the wrong side of the hill. I checked them out but felt our first choice was better.

We were soon heading down the leaf strewn path, Helen havin switched her flip flops for trainers/sneakers. While the path was littered with obstacles which had to be negotiated it was clear that this was a maintained trail. Fallen trees had chips cut out for footholds and collapsed areas had freshly cut paths (albeit incredibly narrow at times) cut into the slopes we tried our best not to fall down (as in the beginning of Romancing the Stone).

Again we would see birds in the canopy and hear many insects as we descended the hill fairly rapidly. This turned into one of my favourite hikes as the terrain was challenging but not overly and fairly varied. Most of the time we were under the rain forest canopy but at others we’d be making our way over slippery ridges.

At times we would hear the tantalizing sounds of running water but it took us a while before we eventually made it to the side of a stream. By now we were drenched in sweat and feeling very hot. The cool water was an intense relief.

From the stream the path soon passed a water reservoir, fed by the stream, and then turned into a gravel track which soon led into town. Having seen no one bar one chap on a motorbike and the TV lady in four hours we were greeted by barking dogs and typical street activity. Helen felt relieved we’d seen no snakes along the way.

We made our way back towards Land Sea Services stopping off for a bit pricey fast food chicken/chips/chicken burger because needing to fill our ravenous appetites.

Earlier, we’d dropped off our towels in the club house so we went upstairs to take a shower. We bumped into Richard and Christy whom we’d briefly met earlier. They’re on a 27ft sailing boat, Lilith, heading out into the Pacific. It turns out Richard had worked in networking for a while so I started talking about the problems Land Sea had been having and what I’d inferred so far.

We began working the problem together. Helen, having finished her shower, took my stuff back to the boat so I could carry on with the problem. Richard had some software on his laptop which seemed to confirm my suspicions about the problems with one of the wireless servers. I was a little perplexed however why the service was now working for my laptop (every time) but for no one else’s when it hadn’t worked once the night before. I eventually performed a factory reset on the box and set it up again afresh but we still saw the same behavior. I moved my laptop to where I’d sat the night before and realized that it was all down to where you sat and that despite all that we’d done so far, nothing had really changed. I then began to wonder if there was a physical problem with the antenna. I checked it out and found the mounting loose. This made it point a few degrees off target. I tightened up the screws and we called one of the clients on the other side of the bay to test. Nothing.

By now Richard had to leave and John had showed up for a while. We tried a few more ideas out but nothing worked. John headed off to look at nearby restaurants for the evening (as Helen and I were planning a twosome for dinner). I decided again to check the physical side of things this time following the antenna cable from the box to the antenna. I found a power injector which had been unplugged. Could it really be that simple? Turned out it was. Having reconnected this and doing some more tests we again called over the bay. They were now up and running. Problem solved. Even though it took many hours to figure out the problem was simply someone had unplugged a key part of the system I learned a lot.

Looking at the system stats it still looks like some tweaking is required as there is a high error rate between the sides of the bay (timeouts will need to be extended). I’m hoping for our efforts we’ll be able to get our dive tanks refilled for free.

I returned to the boat around five and we soon got ready to go out. Helen and I had a pleasant meal at Fish Hook, a nearby restaurant/marina. John had a burger and fries at the Banana Marina in the opposite direction.

No real plans for today. We’ll take it as it comes.