BOUND FOR COSTA RICA V: Bahía Honda
At sea between Bahía Honda and Rio Santa Lucia, Panamá, Saturday, 12 December 2009

We were at Bahía Honda nearly two years ago and remember its sheltered beauty well. It is a huge bay with even a large island in the middle. There are no roads to it and the residents, if they need to get out, go by lancha or by horseback. We arrive by early afternoon and watch as a heavy tropical rain squall sweeps down from the high hills to the north. We are hoping to be anchored and collecting rainwater ourselves, soon. We pull around Punta Miel and anchor in a tiny, palm-lined cove rather than head to the top of the bay near the village; as much as it would be nice to spend a couple of days everywhere we stop, Kathleen is starting to come under time pressure to reach Costa Rica in order to start her trip back to Germany. We need therefore to get another early start in the morning. We are also running out of fresh foods (veggies, fruit, etc.) and even beer and red plonk.

We swim to cool down. A lovely breeze is coming over the jungle-covered hill from the sea. The hills themselves are covered in flowering trees, some yellow and some purple, some mauve. The afternoon is somnolent. Later, as night falls we hear the howler monkeys and certain melodious birds. As the beach expands at low tide we see a pure-white, great egret and a pair of snowy egrets wading near shore. I set the fish for dinner into a marinade, and as dusks arrive, get ready to fry the pieces.

At this point the not-unexpected little wooden lancha powered by an outboard puts slowly around the point heading towards us. Kathleen remembers that we met the people two years ago: Kennedy, his wife Olivia (their two children, Kennedy and Melanie, are not with them this time). Domingo, a better-known character and Kennedy’s father, also plies his trade on the bay, but he is not as nice, in my opinion. “Separate accounts,” says Kennedy in Spanish.

We chat for a while. They have a hard time getting stuff from town and are always eager to trade fruit or even fish for things like adult and/or children’s clothing, sandals, baseball caps, flashlight batteries (Ds or AAs), fishing lures (mainly for tuna), weights and line, powdered milk, laundry detergent, etc. Cigarettes were of no interest to them; we didn’t ask about alcohol since we are almost out anyway. You will wind up being generous and not really getting a great bargain. Now that they use an outboard (a 4 hp Yamaha about which Kennedy has nothing good to say for its reliability), they need cash for gasoline. They need a lot of gasoline to run the kids back and forth to the village school each day or to run out to yachts for trading. They might be out in the outback but they still want access to the cash economy. Too bad! We all know where that leads. There is no work locally, so if you want ‘things’ and you don’t have family member in a city remitting cash back to you, you do this kind of quasi-begging. Primary education, at least is compulsory. What will these kids be doing in ten or fifteen years? It’s the old conundrum of the simple life in paradise with fewer ‘things’ versus ‘development, i.e., a high-maintenance, capital and time-intensive life style that allows you have mutually-agreed upon important ‘things’, i.e., frequently items you can well do without and maybe don’t even have time to use.

Kennedy asks about the absence of cruising boats this year. We tell him that we have heard variously that fewer cruising boats will be coming to Panamá this year. The government is limiting visits by persons and boats to 90 days, and to get another quarter-year visa or cruising permit you have first to take yourself and your boat out of the country. On the Pacific this means only Costa Rica (200 Nm) or Ecuador (600 Nm). Renewals were never a problem for boats in the past: some capitanías just automatically renewed upon application or, if there was difficulty, you got a fixer and paid a bribe. It altogether less hassel and inconvenience than taking your boat out of the country. The Martinelli government however wants ‘zero corruption’ and all the laws administered as written. He is also trying to sort out the public-finance mess in the country and to start collecting the taxes. Ecuador has also now become more bureaucratic and limits cruising visitors to 90 days. It seems stupid since you can hardly leave in the hurricane season to go north and it is almost impossible to get south of Ecuador due to adverse currents and winds.
Panamá is also by no means a cheap country to check into.

Many boats from Ecuador for example, are going straight to Mexico, we heard, and bypassing Panamá altogether. After decades of hassle, the Mexican government finally woke up to the tourist potential of visiting yachts. They have simplified the check-in procedures and you can import your vessel temporarily for ten years at no or almost no cost. The government took an interest and got behind the Escalera project of new marinas up and down Baja. Whether they have overbuilt and whether these projects actually pay off, cruising guests at least feel welcome and not set upon as they invariably do in Panamá and Ecuador. Kennedy is perturbed about the lack of visiting boats.

We have a nice visit and send them off with a number of things. Olivia promises to return between 0730 and 0800 with frutas, which she does. It is Saturday morning and this time she has the two kids with her. Kennedy, Junior sets the basin of oranges, a pineapple, some papayas, a stalk of bananas and some big avocados up onto the side deck. They are mostly still a bit green, but will ripen as we go along. We chat some more. There are few vegetables grown locally except platenos (green bananas or plantains) at Bahía Honda. You can buy potatoes at the village store but they cost over one dollar a pound, i.e., more than double what they cost in town, Olivia tells us. Once weaned, the children are not raised on milk since there are no cows or goats nearby, even though much of Western Panamá has been cleared to ranching. None of the local people are large, but they all seem quite healthy-looking with good skins and strong white teeth.

Eventually we bid our adieus and they motor slowly back to the village. I realise afterwards that we had forgotten to give the children boiled sweets (aka hard candies), but we did give Olivia our small bills and loose change so that at least the gasoline is covered. I don’t suppose you really get a bargain here (I reckon we gave them about $30 worth of ‘stuff’ in return for a batch of fruit) , and I am not really sure in my mind that this is the right thing to be doing. I rationalise that I would rather give be giving them these things and even cash than be paying increasingly outrageous charges to the grasping marina operators in Panamá City. As I said, rationalising.

There being nearly no wind at all this morning (this is turning into a motoring trip!) we head out of Bahía Honda under power, but deciding rather than to go out and around Isla Meridor, to go through the interesting channel that separates it from the mainland. We check out a number of interesting future anchorages if one wants to avoid the detour into Bahía Honda.

It’s then 20 Nm to Rio Santa Lucia where we want to spend the night. It is sunny and hot, but we rig a small sunshade for the cockpit. At one point we have a moment of panic because there are small flames shooting occasionally out of the exhaust pipe where the muffler joins the pipe. Apparently the “caulking” has fallen out. No wonder that damned engine gets so hot! Not only is the engine hot, the exhaust pipes radiate heat terribly. Not sure what one can do about it. No worry, but something else to work on before we leave tomorrow. For the moment, the sea is flat calm and, if we can stay in the shade, it’s a cool place to be.