Thanks to a random comment over eight months ago that our friend Jessica Avila made regarding our little boat trip, I have had the ‘80s Van Halen hit, ‘Panama,’ stuck in my head nearly 60 percent of my waking moments in this country. If we ever make it to Perth, she will pay, pay, pay. In a way I suppose, it helps to keep the sheer awesomeness of the place in check.

A person could spend a lot of time here. Every anchorage we nip into for the night–just for a rest and we’ll be off first thing next morning—has a view of at least three other golden gleaming beaches lined with coconut palms that look like they might be worth a little exploring. Also, I’m not sure if it’s just not the season or whatever, but there are hardly any people. It’s hard to feel like we have to keep moving on.

We arrived at the national park Isla Coiba the night before last and anchored in a cove on the eastern side of Coibita/Rancherita. The main island used to be a penal colony until the environmentalists stepped in and all our outdated guides say things like: “Be sure to keep a 24-hour watch on deck at any of the outlying islands,” “Get a guard with a large gun to escort you on hikes,” “Do not pick up anyone floating in crudely constructed rafts begging for help,” or “We have personally seen escaped inmates on this [outlying] island.” (We have been told that Isla Rancherita is now home to a Smithsonian Research station and the penal colony is no more.) The cove is densely jungly with no human structures or debris in sight; it also has great sandy holding (many of our anchorages have been steep with a lot of coral debris mixed with the sand).

Yesterday morning we awoke to Billy and Paul duking it out on channel 16. Billy, the captain of the sportfisher “Typhoon” was supposed to go get live bait for a little fishing party and the fish weren’t biting, “There are NO fish out here; not even Pesca Panama is catching anything” (I find that hard to believe, but…) and Paul, the organizer/redneck was not pleased. We could watch out of our cove as the Typhoon charged all over the place burning up fuel and looking for bonito, and we could hear Paul drawling at the radio, his irritation coming through in careful enunciation if not always complete sentences, “So, let me get this straight. There is NO live bait at all anywhere?” (Again Billy assured him there was none in several different ways.) “Cause I got fifteen people here and we’re just sittin’ here pickin’ our butts.” (An oft-used expression.) “If you can’t get any live bait I guess we’ll have to just take ‘em snorkeling.” (Pronounced with considerable distaste.) This went on for over an hour until Paul went snorkeling with the tourists and chatter was replace by the incessant rapid-fire hailing between the ranger station on Coiba and “TRESTRESTRES!!!” and we decided to head over there ourselves to get checked in.

We eschewed snorkeling for land lubbing (actually, a small cruise ship called Sea Voyager had about thirty people paddling around Granito de Oro, rumored to be the good snorkeling spot in the area) and anchored off what might have been Donald Trump’s yacht, the R.M. Elegant. (I thought time and time again about starting a gallery of horrors featuring yacht names and photos of some of the beasts we see on our travels but have not when time after time, we meet some really nice couple on some Morgan called ‘Tide N Knots.’) Anyway, this R.M. Elegant is one of the uglier things we’ve ever seen, it looked like it cost a zillion dollars and probably looked a hell of a lot snazzier on a piece of paper laid out on the design table. There were jet skis and various satellite craft whirring all around it like fleas and we were pleased when they left shortly after our freaky-looking little sailboat dropped the hook. Not much later the cruise ship charged off too, leaving the entire area free of craft aside from ours.

After a chaperoned hike around Isla Rancherita (we had no choice) we decided to ride the last of the wind back over to the quiet little cove for the night. But it died. And there was a gnarly current (which was ferocious enough to actually see on the surface of the water). And the motor wouldn’t start (water in the fuel, dagnabit). For a while it was a bit dicey when we were actually sailing backwards (outrageous!) and down onto an ugly looking reef. We eked away on a puff of wind here and there and tacked, slowly, about in the dying wind. The water was almost to the silver sheer stage and we were getting nervous. Finally we lost the wind altogether and as I locked the helm in the straight position, Joshua got one of the kayak paddles, straddled one of the amas and started rowing; I joined him on the other side and damn if we didn’t make at least two knots. Impressive. We got another puff here and there and made it into our anchorage right as the sun went over the hill. We dumped buckets of water over our heads to cool off, then sat in the cockpit and drank pink rums.

The next morning we were booked for snorkeling, after we, er, Joshua, fixed the motor (carburetor full of water, requiring disassembly and many, many swear words). We ate egg tacos en route and anchored in an aqua section off the tiny rocky outcropping Granito de Oro. I keep hearing about the crystal clear water and I have never seen it. Here was, again, someplace where the water was supposed to be superb. It was okay. The coral was cool though, when you got close enough to it. We dropped into the water right onto about six turtles! They are much cooler when viewed from under the water and look like they are flying when they swim. They were all giving us the eye. Highlights included a wider variety of different corals than I’ve seen previously, many pairs of moorish idols, clouds of sergeant majors, various velvety damselfish, a school of barracuda (which, they weren’t big but there were like fifty of them), and then (gasp) SHARKS! Well, three of them, and well, white-tipped reef sharks, and well, we saw them only one at a time so it wasn’t really that dramatic. Joshua came over to me as I was happily regarding some sort of inanimate bumpy mushroom coral thing and grabbed my wrist telling me when we surfaced: “there are sharks, but they are harmless reef sharks.” I was actually more interested to see them than I was freaked out by the fact that the words “shark” and “harmless” were just used in the same sentence. They are really very pretty and move about in a fluttery manner (with all those fins), and they are rather small (thankfully); plus, they kept mostly to the bottom. I don’t know how well I’d react if I saw anything larger swimming in that side-to-side sharky way at me on the surface of the water. Du-duh… du-duh…

After swimming around the island twice, we had to swim the back out to the boat against the current. It took forever. By the time we made it I was tired and had to pee badly (I read somewhere long ago that sharks are attracted by the smell of blood and, yes, urine in the water and I have refrained from peeing even in lakes and rivers ever since). Plus I was wearing a body suit I tried out for the first time; I seem to always get jellyfish stings which cause an icky rash and sunburns even after laying on the greasy SPF30 thick (it used to belong to Sundi—Hey Sundi! I have your wet suit thing if you need it. You have to come and visit us to get it though). It worked quite well even if I nearly fell overboard as I was staggering around trying to get it off. It’s black with all sorts of 80s-looking neon stripes. I feel like I look really cool in it.

We are currently anchored on the northwest side of the island and are planning to search for a waterfall in the manana. With any luck we will not have to endure a friendly Panamanian park ranger as a tour guide making sure we don’t fall off a cliff or whatever the hell it is they think we gringos are capable of and will have the benefit of a freshwater bath to boot.

On Isla Venado I stabbed myself in the foot during a shellfish collecting accident. Lots of blood. Blood on the rocks. Shellfish abandoned. We had to paddle about a mile back to the boat with my foot wrapped up tight in my t-shirt to control the flow. Sadly it wasn’t bad enough for the captain to issue vicodin and I had to make due with the usual rum ration (and lentil soup for dinner).

We’re now in Ensenada Muertos were I’ve been on coco detail. I’m usually too lazy and too afraid of heights to climb the trees so we mostly just collect ones that have fallen on the beach. Something usually gets to ’em before we do though. Not counting the ones obviously opened with a machete they have small holes torn in the top with all the milk and meat gone. I don’t think the hermit crabs are strong enough so it must be the monkeys. I’ve seen one with it’s hand in one of those little holes. Looking guilty. We don’t have a machete which makes it really hard for this monkey to get the goods. I’ve been using the emergency hack-a-hole-in-the-hull hatchet and the back end of a framing hammer. It’s a lot of work.

Oh yeah, too much coconut gives you the runs so take it easy.

It’s not all wounds and work, of course. Western Panama turns out to be what I had in mind when we left San Francisco. Gentle sailing among many gorgeous uninhabited islands. A tan and topless Cheyenne at the helm. Lush jungle, warm water and cool nights. Really uninhabited, I mean we haven’t seen anyone in 3 days.

Golfito is set in a very protected little bay with steep wooded hills rising directly out of the water. The dramatic topography was rather a surprise after having gazed at it so much in our paper charts. The town itself is broken up into little chunks here and there strung out along the water where the hills aren’t too steep. There is a little runway at one end of town populated by a dilapidated shed that serves as the Alfa Romeo office and we went there to watch Mom’s plane land last Saturday.

Mom looked good and was obviously extremely happy to be back on the ground; we took a cab back to Marina Samoa where our attempts at ordering a celebratory cerveza were thwarted by a weekend-long ban on alcohol sales. Local elections in Costa Rica are a sober affair even for those who do not participate evidently and so we settled for warm beers over ice aboard the boat while we motored down to Las Gaviotas hotel where mom would stay. This end of the bay, cryptically labeled as a place where “unsavory activities” take place by Mrs. Margo Charlie’s Charts, is quiet and decidedly unpopulated and we anchored right off Mom’s hotel room. We kept our eyes peeled for said activities but actually never saw any other boat aside from the sport fishers taking off from the Gaviotas dock.

The next day we headed out for some jungle action and hopefully some birdwatching; bordering the runway is the Golfito Wildlife Refuge and a hike to a waterfall. While we heard the tucans’ sweet cries and saw many cool butterflies and insects, what hijacked our little trek was the fer-de-lance. He was coiled up on one side of the grassy path and just sitting still, looking remarkably like a pile of dead leaves; every few seconds his tongue would dart out. He was very well camouflaged but I’ve had my snake eyes peeled since Bahia Santa Elena and spotted him right away. Dangerous snake (and freakish tropical malady) experts—and this one certainly had that poisonous look about him—we had him correctly labeled and decided that it must be a young one since he was maybe only 16 inches long. After about five minutes, he uncoiled and slid back up into the woods; the tip of his tail was yellow (we looked this up back at Mom’s hotel and discovered that young male fer-de-lances have a yellow tip). Mom, above all, was extremely pleased to have nearly stepped on one of the more poisonous snakes living on this planet and deferred trailblazer privileges to Joshua afterwards. Of course, once you’ve spotted one snake, all piles of dead leaves from there on out look startlingly similar to coiled snakes and our grassy adventuring slowed to a nervous crawl while we picked our way back to the ‘safer’ dirt paths.

Convinced that the jungle was fraught with danger, Mom decided to take her chances on the boat and so we sailed across the gulf to check out Puerto Jimenez. (Actually, after having a chance to eyeball the Puerto Jimenez ferry, it is fairly clear that the Time Machine is the more seaworthy vessel.) The wind and seas behaved beautifully for Mom with 5-10 knots and we made it across in a couple of hours. We found a great room in the Cabinas Jimenez for Mom—it was extremely clean and well furnished, the bathroom was ginormous (with a shower that was probably the awesomest shower we’d experienced since the one in the Santa Barbara Yacht Club), and it had a small porch overlooking the bay. The owner is an American ex-commercial fisherman named John who was happy to give us all sorts of recommendations about what to do and see in the area and was generally a very nice guy. We did a lot of sitting around on the porch gazing out over the water and enjoying the fruits of the mini-fridge and coffee maker that came with the room.

[There is a large shallow shelf in the Puerto Jimenez bay before it drops off and gets really deep; anchoring the boat was tricky. Inevitably, it would be low tide when we had to go back to the boat making the trip always a long muddy slog.]

Although the election-drinking ban was still in effect (on my birthday the day before, fer crying out loud, we hung out at Mom’s hotel room and furtively drank a bottle of wine before heading out to dinner), we were able to convince one of the local tiendas to sell us a six-pack only after we promised not to stagger through the streets, dropping crushed cans in our wakes, and generally making it known to the larger universe where three people of obvious voting age had obtained the contraband. We had an epic walk up the coast the first day and then sailed the boat to check out a botanical garden on the mainland side. It is sort of an interesting story really: the couple traveled all over Central America and bought the land some 30 years before and started a garden, knowing nothing really about plants; they intended to grow fruits and vegetables for themselves and sell cocoa for extra money. Costa Rican soil is good for growing things and eventually, they had elaborated and diversified, collected interesting plant samples from all over the area, and now they are extensively knowledgeable about local plants and their garden is flat out impressive. They support themselves by giving daily tours in the mornings and all other times, give you literature to take yourself on a self-guided tour. We took about a zillion photos.

For Mom’s birthday, we went out to what was touted as being the best restaurant in all of Central America and I believe it. Jade Luna is located just outside of the main part of town and the setting is very tranquil. So often I feel that the ‘fancy’ ambiance (like, linen napkins sculpted into reposing swans and whole families of forks and knives) of restaurants so rarely lives up to the quality of the food, certainly in Central America—with tourist resorts being a glaring example, but this one was perfect. The place was run by an American culinary graduate from New York and she has good taste. The French bread was dense and chewy and the butter served with it was ice cold and actually incredibly good (butter in Central America is just bad), they brought out complimentary conch fritters with a curry dipping sauce (bonus points!!), our martinis were icy cold and enormous, and everything on the menu was well-described in detail and looked excellent. We all split a salad with golden fried goat cheese (I am a sucker for any salad that boasts warm goat cheese), pears, and pistachios with a mango dressing. Mom and Joshua had the pork chops that were rubbed with coffee, among some other more conventional meaty ingredients (which I forgot), and grilled. These were excellent, as was my chicken breast served with a curry yogurt sauce over a tangy chutney. The portions were very generous and we ate everything and then ordered ice cream for dessert. We ordered one scoop of rum raison and a slice of one of her pies (kahlua and coffee ice creams I think); the rum raison was definitely the standout, ice cream-wise but the piecrust was delicious. Anyway, the place is highly recommended. (Our bill was in the ballpark of $25 per person, including tip and tax.)

Mom flew out from the teeny Puerto Jimenez airport back to San Jose where she would catch her flight back to the states the next morning. Joshua and I spent the rest of the day walking all over town trying to find anyone who would sell ice and the next morning, headed back to Golfito to get checked out of the country before the weekend started.

We had a bit of excitement last night when a Dockwise yacht transport cargo ship entered the bay and anchored right next to us during the night. In the dark with this towering thing lit up bright as day it looked pretty close but when we poked our head up the next morning, the Time Machine felt seriously menaced. We watched it for a while and finally decided that it was at the end of its swing and wouldn’t get any closer so we took off to get chores done for the day. The ship is pretty interesting; they transport yachts (as one might guess by the name) and to load or unload them, the ship sinks itself midway so that the boats can float on or off. Throughout the day they unloaded a dozen or more big fancy sportfishers, which charged across the bay throwing up huge wakes in their haste to get tied up safely at the nearest marina docks. By the time we got back to our boat after running our butts off all day, it was around sunset and we were disconcerted to find that the ship had either moved or dragged anchor a few hundred yards until it was lined up parallel with us and only 100 feet away. Now it was clear that if it swung towards us on the anchor, it would cream not only our boat but possibly take out the docks at Samoa. Yeeg! We had been planning on taking off at first light (we still had to get gas and some more veggies) but it took us over an hour to reanchor in the dark to a spot where we felt safer. We were irritated and tired by the time we got settled and here we are, next morning, drinking coffee and still in Golfito. The ship finally left and here comes another dock transport not thirty minutes later. Now that they’ve anchored, it looks again like it’ll be somewhat nerve-wracking when they swing our way. I’m going to freak out when we see all the tankers around the canal!

[Time Machine stands his ground against the big mean Dockwise bully! Actually, this photo was taken when we left the boat in the morning, when we felt we were still well enough away from the ship’s anchor radius.]

Trying to show off our fishing prowess, but we actually only caught 5 fish in Costa Rica. 4 dorado and one big eyed jack. All were tasty and it at least made the $24 fishing license worth while. When we asked around in El Coco for the INCOPESCA office to get a license everyone laughed at us and said we didn’t need no permiso de pesca. We tracked them down and bought one anyway because they weren’t too expensive and we hope they use the money to perserve their fisheries.