As you look over the rail, or out the port, at your new neighbor in our floating cruising community, you don’t expect to find a murderer, if in fact you would recognize said character, even with binoculars. The most ‘violence’ I’ve seen in my vicinity, ever, is a heated discussion about anchoring, or with a recalcitrant outboard motor.
But there were two murders in this very cruising fleet in the San Blas last year, and two associated boat thefts. The cases have not yet come to trial, but it appears that one Javier Martin, a Spaniard who ran a boat for backpackers that went on the reef early one morning, got his next boat by murdering its owner. Then an American, Don North, went missing. Eventually Javier Martin was arrested on his way out of Panama with North’s money and passport. North’s body has never been found, but there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence.
Now this episode is being ‘television-ized’ and will be shown on the CBS program 48 Hours, airing February 4 2012 under a title of something like “Dark Side of Paradise”. All my information is fourth-hand or worse and certainly not to be relied upon, but I think there may also be coverage of some other spooky stuff that went on up in Bocas del Toro, Panama involving a character dubbed “Wild Bill”.
Add to this a tale overheard recently about a man whose wife was encouraged to convert her money into precious metal, kept on the boat, and then to take a short trip home, during which time he made plans to sail off with someone else, well, you gotta wonder, what else is going on out here?
Also, it will be fun to watch the race, as cruisers try to get a copy of the program, via various cobbled together bits of technological capabilities (not including adequate internet), or mail drop, or visiting guest. “We should have it by March”, I heard this morning. Well, there’s no rush.
Update to say that Don Winner of the Panama Guide, panama_guide.com, is the man with most of the information available. We also recently April 2012 met a friend in the San Blas who was looking for Don North´´s body, the confirmed presence of which would aid prosecution. Finding it seems a longer and longer shot, though.
Panama
The Swimming Pool anchorage, San Blas, Panama
Ever since we’ve been within radio range of the Southwest Caribbean, we’ve been hearing about the Swimming Pool. It’s one of the best known anchorages in all of the San Blas islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama, the kind of place where people stay for months, even years. The careful radio listener will also hear about the Hot Tub, Bug Island, Green Island, and more, but good luck finding out where any of these places are, because these are the cognoscenti cruiser names, not the Kuna names that appear on the chart.
The Swimming Pool turns out to be in the Eastern Holandes, beyond Quinquindup and north of Banedup (aka Bug Island). The Hot Tub is south of Ukupsuit and Kalugirdup- you can see whyfor the nicknames, but it’s nice to know the real ones as well. The Holandes Cays make a convenient landfall, and to quote our number one source, Eric Bauhaus’s The Panama Cruising Guide: ‘since they are the islands furthest from the mainland, the waters are clear nearly year round. Their natural beauty and easy navigation have made the Holandes Cays a popular destination…a very scenic area of calm, translucent waters and towering coconut palms”. This anchorage is behind an extensive barrier reef as well as the islands, so the wind generator is in its element, whirling day and night to power the watermaker to refill our tanks with non-chlorinated product.
We were so slowed down by current on our 180+-mile passage from Cartagena this week that we had to hang out offshore an extra night, the dark one where the last of the old moon and the start of the new pass their baton under the bright eye of the sun.
The pretty pink tracks on our electronic charts might have been sufficient, even after dark, to get us into the anchorage we had entered several times before. But the story of a boat on the reef at Sail Rock near Porvenir as of Christmas Eve reminded us yet again of how fast things can go wrong. What exactly worries you about this, I asked Doug. He answered – the same thing that worries you, the reefs all around, the dark. Not much more to say, so we hove-to twenty miles away and kept the kitchen timer working all night, admiring the stars and the clouds, and not too far off, some kind of schooner cruise ship all lit up, heading slowly east.
Much of the Pool area is 12 or 15 feet of flat clear white sand, so the namer did a good job. I’ve swum around this Pool before, but when I jumped in the other day during a period of stronger trade winds there was such a current I had a hard time staying in one place, much less progressing. There’s a lot of salt spray on the boat too; the Pool is a nicer place when the wind dies down a touch.
I’d say we’re at the height of the boating season here in the San Blas. The Saturday Jan 28 2012 Panama Connection radio net boat count revealed 128 boats anchored in the western San Blas area this week. Some anchorages had two or three, others had fifteen or twenty, and there were probably 10 or 12 anchorages mentioned.
The present attraction at the Swimming Pool is the presence of Mark on Melody. He makes regular runs to Panama in his 40-foot sloop, carrying backpackers, and also carrying groceries, including frozen stuff, batteries, parts and other cruiser supplies. Some of these he stores on another sloop which he leaves anchored in the PooI, waiting for a buyer.
Send him a list, double-spaced, capital letters of what you’re looking for, and he’ll shop for it in Panama City and bring it back to the Pool for cost plus thirty percent. His main, but not his only, source is PriceMart, where he can be seen with a line of shopping carts, a section of each devoted to one particular customer. When he gets back to the Pool and starts to unload, he calls you on the VHF for you to come pick up. It’s quite a service, and next time, if there is one, I hope I can speak from personal experience of it, instead of just being an envious voyeur. Doug knows about the Peanut M&Ms, so watch out!
PHOTO MELODY, DELIVERING
Or, maybe no photos – trouble uploading. We’re back in the land of very few and far away cell towers and very slow service even at 3AM, so forget that panorama video too. But we’re here, and happy about it.
Technorati Tags: San Blas anchorages
Feliz Año 2012
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| “La Gorda” is a famous sculpture by Botero, Colombia’s best-known sculptor. Every time I pass by, something interesting is happening here. |
The rainy season in Cartagena has been over for almost two weeks now, and the holiday season is in full swing. Lots of new folks in town, the high-rise apartment buildings have many more occupied units, and I can report with secret pleasure that Americans are not the only tourists who sometimes fail to impress.
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| Little bits of masking tape everywhere! |
For us, the end of the rainy season means that work in the boatyard can finally proceed. Masking tape is coming off. Things like canvas and cushions are going back on the boat. We stagger home at the end of the day ready to vegetate. Still can’t quite say when we’ll be out of here, but it is getting closer, faster! And, much as we have enjoyed being part of the city, we’ll be ready for water we can swim in and fish we feel comfortable eating,
New Year’s seems a bigger, more festive, more holiday-like holiday than Christmas. We spent both days in the boatyard, where our celebration was the use of the scaffolding, accompanied by some pretty nice music coming in from the barrio. When we left the boatyard on New Year’s Eve, the children were making ‘scarecrows’ of old clothes stuffed with dry leaves, (using a bottle of Johnny Walker Red as a prop) and today we saw the ashes of same in the middle of the road, custom being to start the new year fresh with new clothes, paint on the house, etc.
Since we were up anyhow, auditing a party around the corner, we walked into town to see the fireworks. It was quite the event, streets full of cars, sidewalks full of people hanging out, from 3-generation families, to golden youth, the girls striking poses for their friends’ cameras in their skin-tight short dresses and impossibly high heels, everyone well behaved.
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| Lots of lights and action downtown. |
I know from last year that there are elegant catered parties set up on the city walls and in certain of the plazas and I’m pretty sure the parties continued for hours. But I didn’t.
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| Party being set up for New Year’s Eve 2010. I’d have stayed awake for this party if only to see how the use of the VIP portable toilet compared to the generic. |
Where we’re staying now is quite near the Club de Pesca in Manga, a residential district which is to Cartagena Centro or Boca Grande as Eastport is to Annapolis. We’re in the back yard of a waterfront house directly across from a small parking area which has revealed itself to be quite the party spot. Kids with cars (so, clearly fairly well-to-do) have tail-gate parties that sometimes last into sunrise. While I am glad I don’t live on the front side of this little parcel, I have to say that there is some fantastic music in this country, even at 3 AM. I wish I could get names, because there are also opportunities to buy CDs on the street, but I’d have to wander out in my nightgown. Also, people are remarkably tolerant. Sometimes I do get up and peer through the gate, waiting for the neighbors to get irate. Instead I see a police officer casually strolling the opposite sidewalk, as the party goes on, really, just like in the beer ads. At daybreak the barraderos/sweepers are out in their orange suits and the morning vendors are calling out their wares, even on New Year’s Day.
The waterfront paseo also features every little kid who got a new bike for Christmas, plus skateboarders, nannies and their charges, joggers, dog walkers, ice-cream vendors, young lovers, and a few older ones too, fishermen and photographers and people practicing some kind of Brazilian ‘judo’. It’s an ever-changing scene and I’m pleased to be privy to it.
So, I’ll wish everyone all the best in the new year, health, prosperity and good karma; and a little extra for me – Spanish verb tenses and some greater understanding of the Mac mind. But don’t hold your breath for big progress in the latter two!
Colon anchorage, Club Nautico
From the water, Colon, Panama is an interesting place to be, especially if you’re interested in ships. At most hours, day or night, something is moving through the harbor. Sometimes it’s crew boats, maybe 40 feet long, but moving through at about 40 knots (the Resident Exaggeration Detector has flagged this number). About 40 times a day we all roll insanely. To be fair, there are a few crew boats who slow down, maybe to watch what happens.We’re watching them too!
PHOTO DRAGONWING ROLLED BY CREW BOAT
One of our neighbors came home to find his galley stove thrown out of its gimballs. *
SCREEN SHOT OF COLON HARBOR CHART
The Club Nautico anchorage is a pretty compact piece of water, between some semi-derelict commercial boats along a piece of waste ground, and the red channel markers for the container- and car-carrier port called Manzanillo. Ninety percent of the time it’s actually a pretty good anchorage. What I like is the constant port activity – ships are coming and going all the time.
PHOTO CARGO SHIP
From our perch in the cockpit, we see them waiting at the breakwater, until the pilot boat comes, then, the tug joins them, and they slowly progress down the aisle of buoys. Will this one be turned around and pushed into one of the slots just opposite us , or is it’s spot under the other set of cranes further down the quay?
PHOTO WALL OF HAMBURGSUD CONTAINERS ABOARD LIVERPOOL EXPRESS
Cranes slide into place, and the containers are clamped and lifted, shuffled and stacked. One ship is entirely offloaded. The next leaves within the hour. It’s not just containers either; we saw one shipful of brand new buses. We haven’t a clue what’s going on, which gives us endless theoretical headroom. Only the choreographer knows for sure. But who is the choreographer of this ballet of titans?
Having read recently that Panamax ships with 13 containers across the stern can be carrying 5000 to 7000 containers, the main question is: how do they make sure the one they want is where they can get at it? What specialty design education teaches that kind of organization? Also, What’s in all those containers? And, imagine, the new SuperPanaMax ships carry 9000 containers. How can a sniffer dog keep up? Cruise ships in St. Thomas have small boats constantly patrolling their seaward sides. But here, with many more ships, there seems much less visible security. This kind of meditation, and a pair of binoculars, keeps us occupied for hours. I’ve got more pictures than any one needs of colorful containers, and industrial machinery – can’t say why it fascinates me so.
Down the channel, near the Colon 2000 shopping center and the big duty-free zone is shipping on a different scale. I wish I knew what was going on here, beyond all the appliances being stevedored out of trucks and on to this small ship.
PHOTO APPLIANCE LOADING, CARMEN II
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As for Club Nautico itself: there is no club, only an office that wants $5 every day we park the dinghy, and never has change. Also in the fenced and guarded compound are a pretty good seafood restaurant, a small marine/fishing store, a fuel dock, and docking for one of the crew-boat services. In the several days we’ve spent here we’ve been in the company of less than a dozen other boats; there’s not space for too many more. You could probably walk to Colon 2000 where there is a super-something-supermarket, but the cab drivers won’t let you!
PHOTO, VIEW TOWARDS SHORE NEAR CLUB NAUTICO
Once upon a time, on the other side of the Colon peninsula, there was a Panama Canal Yacht Club. It was a funky but eminently functional place that, half a dozen years ago, was bulldozed overnight by the juggernaut of the Panama Canal Authority, who apparently needed another container parking lot. You can still anchor at the Flats, and watch the ships passing to and from the locks, but there seems to be nowhere to land a dinghy. You can anchor outside Shelter Bay Marina; not sure what arrangement you’d have to make to use their facilities. That leaves Club Nautico as the best anchoring option.
For a slip in a marina, you’ll find yourself at Shelter Bay Marina. This is a fine facility, and getting better all the time. Located in a sheltered bay (!) at the top of the harbor breakwater, where the US military once kept patrol and maintenance boats, they have nice new docks, good electric, speedy wifi, a pool, small hotel, a restaurant much improved in recent months. They have a popular haulout, but not much in the way of skilled labor, and a storage yard with some ‘boot camp’ type rules, but this may change as the new, boater-friendly manager John Halley, ex-Club Nautico Cartagena smoothes out the user interface.
The downside is that Shelter Bay is half an hour from town on a marina bus; shopping or looking around can be a rushed experience or an expensive taxi ride home. The bus crosses canal locks, which means that sometimes you can get caught on the wrong side and wait another half hour or so as a ship locks through.
PHOTO ROAD CROSSING CANAL
Also, It costs a bit more than I’d care to spend, particularly to be so far out of town. But it’s the only game in town for hauling and storage, although a new marina at Green Turtle Bay near Nombre de Dios on the way to the San Blas, is said to be getting a travelift soon.
When we first got our AIS** , one of the first ships I remember seeing was the Henriette Schulte bound for Manzanillo, wherever that was. So, it was fun to see the same Henriette Schulte being escorted to a dock just across from us, and now I know where Manzanillo is. Then we saw Simon Schulte out in the anchorage. So I Googled and learned that there are nearly 100 other ships in the Bernhard Schulte Ship Management family, (several are quite new); plus a pin-up -(ship centerfolds?) type photo of Simon Schulte in locks of the canal, courtesy of the webcam at MarineTraffic.com. It’s gotten five votes, by what standard, I wonder.
SIMON SCHULTE from Panama Canal WEBCAM
Another sight familiar in the canal transit season for yachts is the Arrival of the Tires. When they land on a neighboring yacht, like the roulette ball landing on their number, we know that tomorrow we that boat might be seen on the webcam. Those tires are cheap insurance against an encounter with the canal walls, and the stock in trade of one particular agent.
GALENA ATTIRED FOR CANAL TRANSIT
Maybe it will be our turn one of these days.
*gimballs: our stove is suspended on ‘pins’ on each side so that it can remain level when the boat rolls
**AIS (Automatic Identification System) is a nifty piece of technology. Ships are now required to broadcast certain details, name, dimensions, destination, course speed and other navigation data, and with our VHF antenna and a display unit we can read it, plus be alerted to their presence up to 13 miles away by a perimeter alarm.
What’s to like about Colon, Panama
Colon is the small Panamanian city at the Caribbean (northern) side of the Panama Canal, and it has one of the worst reputations of any city in my modest sphere of awareness.
PHOTO IGLESIA METODISTA OVERGROWN AND UNREPAIRED
In the early 1990s, when we were arranging transit of the Panama Canal aboard Arion , it was indicated that we should take a taxi between stops, especially when ferrying funds from the bank. I got the feeling that I’d be mugged if my feet even touched the ground! When I ventured into the market for veggies, stashing my money in my bra as I did so, a local woman told me ‘you put your money in there honey, and they just stick their hand in and take it back out.’ Doug took to carrying his knob-headed walking stick when we went to town, and an older gent passing on the street told him ‘yes, you carry that stick and good, you hit them on the head if they bother you.’ We had a friend whose purse was snatched from beneath the partition while she was on the toilet!
We were even scammed in Colon (this story has never been told, due to extreme embarrassment), by a man who told us he could get us beer ‘off the truck’ at half price, but that we had to pay the driver in advance. Dreaming of drinking those three (cheap) cases of warm Budweiser in mid-Pacific, we were eager to pay, but for some reason, our guy never showed.
At the time, crime was blamed on the very recent Operation Just Cause, the US military operation that overthrew Manuel Noriega, the military dictator who ran the country from 1983 to 1989. Popular wisdom indicated that there were a lot of loose guns on the street which had trickled down into, or maybe just consolidated the strength of, a criminal element.
But I gather from recent readings (The Canal Builders, by Julie Greene) that Colon has always been a sort of lawless place. Certainly an early 20th century ‘frontier town’ full of men imported from all over the globe as labor for Canal construction, used hard and put away wet, wouldn’t produce much else. The proverbial drunken sailor temporarily off his anchored ship isn’t a noted law-abider either, nor are those who ‘service’ him.
PHOTO PASTEL FADED PAINT AND TIN ROOF
It’s still hard to find anyone to say anything nice about Colon, except, now, me. From my vantage point anchored near town, off the Club Nautico. I am rather enjoying myself here. While we haven’t been out at night, and actually haven’t walked around much either, and occasionally have seen some pretty rough characters on the street, mainly what Colon looks like is a bustling Central American city, a watered-down Havana, or La Ceiba, Honduras. It has the advantage of good bones, since so much of it looks built to US standards back in the ‘sturdy’ era.
PHOTO COLON STREET TAXIS 3STORY BUILDINGS POWER LINES
One of our taxi drivers showed us around; this park was a highlight, but, despite living across the street as a kid, he couldn’t remember which politicians these were (all white, though!) Several buildings in the vicinity had been restored as apartments by the government and were being offered for rent. Pay for 20 years, and it’s yours forever.
PHOTO POLITICIAN BUSTS IN PARK
Colon/Cristobal may not always be a ‘garden spot’ but its central median ‘parque’ continues down the length of the main road, until it runs into an ordinary, undistinguished, more traffic, shopping center zone.
We always asked (or tried to) our taxi drivers about the security situation. Several drivers told us there had been no problems whatsoever in Noriega’s times; they seemed to yearn for the peace of the dictator. One man blamed TV for changing the expectations of Panama’s youth, for the worse; I can see how he might think that. Personally, I had the idea that the drivers weren’t too worried about their own safety, beyond some precautions about who they pick up at night; professionally, of course, they think people like us should always take taxis, and for the dollar or two most rides cost for door to door service, air conditioning, a chat and some local knowledge, I tend to agree.
It’s a town which, no matter what low-life element it possesses, is also full of normal people (you and I, I was going to say) just trying to raise their kids, keep a roof over their head, a cell phone in their ear, and some fashionable shoes or shirts on their bodies. People bustle about, chat, shop, sweep the streets, do their work. The people who sell lottery tickets, umbrellas, watch batteries, and bits of candy on the street greet each other like old friends at a club meeting. Women and girls walk alone on the street, with purses. People are happy to help us if we ask, but otherwise leave us alone. It just doesn’t feel like a scary place, at least where we’ve been, downtown. Just, as usual, everybody doing the best they can.
One thing that makes me feel better is evidence of a public relations campaign manifested by dozens of street signs
PHOTO PARQUE CENTRAL TOURIST SIGN AT MARKET
like this one: On the Tourist Depends Your Future and That of Colon. Take Care of Them(/it?)
Others say: More Tourism, More Richness; The Tourist Appreciates What You Offer; Offer Your Best Smile to the Tourists.
PHOTO TOURIST SIGN AND STREET LIFE
The Colon 2000 sign refers to a shopping center that was built as a cruise ship destination, not far from the Club Nautico. It has a casino, but is otherwise just a small local-style shopping center; hard to see that being a big draw. But the Canal, the jungle out by Fort Sherman, Fort Lorenzo at the mouth of the Rio Chagres, all are on the cruise ship bus tours. And the tourists in their ‘yachtie’ form hit the big supermarkets and hardware stores like deprived junkies after their months in the San Blas, as they may have been. We ourselves were thrilled to see peanut butter, and kosher salt, and now Doug owns 3000 FLAT toothpicks.
There is also a huge (2500+ merchants and acres of warehouses) duty free zone in Colon. But before you reach for your wallet, know that it’s not really for the likes of us, and nothing like the duty free tourist centers of the eastern Caribbean. It’s meant mainly for the wholesale merchants of South and Central America to procure the goods from all the containers that pass through Panama. Want to buy thousands of caps? Here’s the motherlode, Casa de Gorras.
PHOTO SHOP WINDOW CASA DE GORRAS
No, the real reason I’m presently smitten by Colon has mainly to do with the downtown market. It’s a hive of activity, full of life and happening, vegetables and meat. The few blocks around it which I’ve also wandered are a real hodge-podge of goods, much of it Chinese, as are many of the merchants. You’d have to be really motivated, and optimistic, to want to dig through some of the stuff for sale on the streets. But I love the market and the friendly people therein.
Here are some photos. I know that some of them, being fuzzy, are only worth maybe 250 words, but think of the scribing they still save me!
TEN PHOTOS MARKET SCENES
And there are more photos here.
http://galivant.smugmug.com/Panama/Colon/18840275_d8rvb6/ I hope the captions made it; if not, I’ll be working on it, manana.