The World ARC rendezvous at Chichime was a great afternoon. It was my first 'Pot Luck' get together and we were a bit short on fresh supplies, but my pizzas seemed to go down well. The local Kuna put on a wonderful, if exhausting, display of dancing, and the handicrafts were impressive. The ladies all wearing their finest and their children beyond cute.
There was also coconut rum punches right out of the shell, so it all got started quickly and soon listening to some classic tales of the, what I am sure will become, legendary Caribbean crossing. My vote for the best one came from Glamorous Galah, it had everything, blokes up for a surf adventure, dramatic mid crossing breakages and an unexpected early morning cockpit bath when they were swamped by a wave.
Quote of the day from Caroline of 'Peat Smoke'. "I love the Kuna, its the first time I have ever felt tall"
The next day we headed off to a tiny customs outpost on the island of Porvenir to register with local immigration. The island is in the process of upgrading their tiny runway, but it does boast a basic hotel, a restaurant and the government building and that is pretty much it. Everything had to be typed out on an old electronic typewriter so was a bit of a laborious process, but fortunately we were at the front of the queue having been advised to get there when they opened at 7am.
The anchorage was quite tight on a very windy day, so being the newbies to anchoring like this we were a mite nervous. However we had enough courage after formalities had been done to dinghy over to the nearby island/village of Wichibe where there was rumoured to be a mini-market. We parked up at the concrete wharf-ette next to the dug-out canoes and small sailing boats, feeling like we had been dropped into another world. Everyone was very friendly though and we soon managed to procure some basic groceries. The village/island itself is made up of attractive tightly packed palm frond constructed houses with a large central meeting house. The Kuna are a matriarchal society and it did very much appear that the women were ruling the roost, although difficult to tell as most of the blokes seemed to be out on their boats or by the wharf drinking beer.
After that we headed off to the Eastern Lemon Keys and are now anchored between a series of small palm tree covered islands, one of which even has a restaurant of sorts. The snorkeling is reasonable, although we have spotted a few scorpion/lion fish, which is bad news as they have only relatively recently been spotted in the Caribbean Sea and are causing havoc with the local sea life. Last night we met up with another World ARC boat, Southern Cross, for dinner at the restaurant. It consisted of a bar in a palm hut with makeshift tables and chairs (mostly sawn logs) underneath the palm trees looking out to the other islands and boats. In other words it had more ambiance than a place that had millions spent on it. The menu was limited, even more so with our lack of Spanish/Kuna, but we had the freshest sea food and a bottle of red at a very reasonable price.
Most of the other World ARC boats have already headed off to Shelter Bay as they have their canal transit before us (we are in the last batch). However as we need to sort out the autopilot, another Hydrovane rudder to collect, our generator keeps cutting out AND we are picking up a new dinghy (the old one that we inherited just cannot cut it), not to mention the provisioning for the Pacific crossing, we feel we ought to get there with a few days in hand. In addition, and I am rather ashamed to admit this, we get easily bored of palm trees and sand with not much to do - I know this is hard to understand for those suffering the winter weather - we are definitely the undeserving!
As mentioned before, we will be in the last transit, rafted against Sapphire II (the largest boat in the fleet) with the other HR42 'Trompeta' on the other side - why do I have the feeling we are there as glorified fenders...