Ready To Go

Red Frog Beach

Ariel is ready to go and so are we. Our slip rental ends today so tomorrow morning we will slip our lines and once again be disconnected from shore. Hooray!! When we returned to Ariel, we found her in the worst condition ever, but actually not as bad as we were expecting. We had noticed the condition of the unattended boats before we left last April so we were expecting the worst. The tropics with the high heat and almost constant rain at times is very harsh. Ariel, normally beige in color, was now showing a nice green hue.  After a solid week of cleaning, and the use of a friend's power washer we were able to restore Ariel back to the condition we had left it. The hull was just as bad as the topside, sporting four to eight or more inches of soft growth. I spent a full two hours scrapping the bottom to remove not only the soft growth, but a incredible number of barnacles. I attracted a large gathering of fish. They acted like children, they just had to be right at my scrapper.

In between cleaning chores we made several trips to town to re-provision. We had purposefully exhausted our provisions before leaving. During the next few weeks we will be in an area where it is necessary to bring everything that is going to be needed, so we have provisioned to cover about six weeks. We plan to supplement that with fish, lobster and fruits that we will buy from the locals. We also filled our jerry cans with diesel and gasoline so we should be good to go. We hope to top off the propane tank we have been using at our next port.

Our plan is to get underway Friday, going east.  Remember Panama runs east and west.

During the next two months our internet access will be sporadic but we will do our best to provide updates.

Bus Adventures

There are easier ways to get to Bocas del Toro, but we opted for adventure.  The typical bus route would be from San Jose, Costa Rica to Changuinola, Panama and from there a one hour water taxi ride to Bocas Town. 

Our Amazing Travels By Bus

As you can see we took a much longer route, one that took us along the Pacific Coast.  We had stopped earlier in the week at the Tracopa Bus Terminal and purchased our tickets on the 7:30 am departure for David, Panama.  We arranged a taxi at the hotel to get us downtown to the bus terminal in plenty of time.  Our bus seats were 1 and 2 in the front row right behind the driver, so we had a great view.  We have noticed that they generally put foreign guest in the front rows on buses in Central America.  Costa Rica is absolutely beautiful so we were quite mesmerized taking in the views.  At places we were literally running along the Pacific seashore.  We had one stop for lunch, still in Costa Rica,  We expected confusion at the border and it could have been very difficult.  The one big problem traveling by bus is lack of English interpretation.  The bus pulled up on the Costa Rica side and everyone piled off as did we.  A local who makes a few Colones by spotting wide eyed foreigners grabbed us up and led us through the process.  Thank goodness.  He got us in the right line to check out of Costa Rica and provided the forms we needed to fill out.  Once checked out he was there to walk us to Panama.  By now our bus had disappeared.  On the Panamanian side he got us in the right line to check into Panama.  We knew Panama would want to see the return tickets to leave Panama, so we were ready with our cruising permit which satisfied that requirement, but I still had to show a credit card as proof of some financial means.  Our guy, Rudy had provided us with the customs form, but our luggage was still on the bus.  Amazingly out of an almost full bus only about six of us were continuing on into Panama.  The bus had been pulled up outside the customs office, so when we were all ready they opened the baggage compartments and we dragged our bags in for inspection.  That done, I gave Rudy our remaining Colones, which was generous indeed, but I knew they would otherwise be destined for some forgotten place for all time.  We then re-boarded and were on our way.  We were unaware the bus was going to pass through an insecticide spray.  Had we known we would have closed our window and avoided a personal spraying.  One more stop to have our passports inspected to make sure we all completed the process and we were on a way to David.

We had booked a room at Hotel Puerta del Sol.  We selected this based on Tripadvisor.  We have had very good luck using this site.  The ratings and comments are from actual tourist.  We can certainly recommend this hotel. The hotel also has a reasonably priced restaurant, which was perfect for us after a long day on the bus.  We had dinner there and breakfast the next morning.  Back to the bus terminal in David we found the mini bus to Changuinola and indicated we wanted to get off at Almirante.

Our Mini Bus - One Pit Stop Along The Way

There are no tickets for these mini buses, you simply show up.  They leave about hourly and are all owner operated.  We were dreading this portion of the trip as the buses can be crowded, but ours was only about 1/2 filled most of the way.  They made stops along the way and people were getting on and off.  It turned out to be a pleasant ride, although ear popping as we climbed the mountain roads and then descended on the Caribbean side.  We opted to get off at Almirante, well actually just outside of town.   It made for a shorter bus ride and then a shorter water taxi ride.  Almirate is not a place one would want to be any longer than absolutely necessary.  We got a taxi into town and after waiting about 1/2 hour we had enough passengers to satisfy the water taxi driver so we could depart.

In Bocas Town we had lunch and as much as we wanted to get back to Ariel, we took time to shop for some groceries.  One more quick water taxi ride and we were back at Red Frog Marina.  Home Again

Pura Vida

Rain Forest Tram

We arrived at our hotel in San Jose, Costa Rica, actually near 1 am Tuesday morning after a long but uneventful day of air travel. We are staying at a Marriott Courtyard, which would be expensive, but we are still using points I earned while I was still working. This has been the easiest Central American country for us as tourist. Costa Rica is the most visited nation in the Central American region. Despite being in Spanish speaking counties for years now our Spanish is extremely weak. That is not an issue here as most of the people we have interacted with such as taxi drivers, hotel staff, waiters, tour guides, all speak extremely good English. It so nice to be able to engage in conversation with the locals. We are impressed by how clean the city and the countryside is. This is certainly not the case in much of Central America.

Our first full day we went to the center of the city, which is always an interesting place to watch people and get a feel for the place. There we had lunch at cafe inside Teatro Nacional (National Theater). After a wonderful lunch in such a beautiful setting, we visited the Museo de Oro Precolombino (Gold Museum – Pre-Colombian) The museum building is in an unimpressive underground bunker, but the collection is truly impressive.

Museum Is Actually A Large Vault - Understandably So

We booked a trip to the rain forest for our second full day in Costa Rica. There are so many day trip options in Costa Rica that it was hard to choose. We were drawn to the aerial tram ride through and over the canopy of the rain forest in Braulio Carrillo National Park. The tour we booked would pick us up at our hotel, provide transportation to the park, an English speaking guide, the 90 minute aerial tram ride, lunch and then a walking tour, all in all about a seven hour package. As it happens were were the only ones that booked a tour for that day so it became a private tour. Our van driver Eric was a wealth of knowledge and pointed out the highlights along the way as we exited San Jose and climbed to the Continental Divide and then down the Caribbean side. At the park we were introduced to our guide, Dennis. Not only is Dennis's English excellent, but he is very knowledgeable about the wildlife and plant life. We would have missed so much without his instruction. One good example is the tent making bat.

Bat

Tent - Notice Cut Leaf to Form One Side Of Tent

To the untrained eye the large leaves on a certain type of plant just look like they are broken. Careful observation revels the breaks are clean and the leaf now forms a very neat tent. Looking under the leaf then further revels very peacefully hanging bats. We saw and learned so much that our walks on Bastimentos when we get back to Panama will be with much more informed observation. We only saw one other couple in the park and that was at lunch so our day continued as a private tour. Dennis pointed our how much better our day is compared to cruise ship days when 300 – 500 tourist descend on the park on a very tight time schedule. We sure are glad we didn't book a cruise ship day.

Time To Leave The Northeast

Burr, low 20's last night, it is time to get back to Ariel. Our last blog entry was in April when we were spending a few days in Panama City on our way back to the United States. We are returning to Central America this coming week. We will fly from the US to San Jose, Costa Rica and spend a few days in Costa Rica before continuing on by bus to Panama.

We do not update the blog while we are not cruising but here is a brief recap of our time back home. We were able to quickly get settled into what I call our cabin. It is actually a small house which began it's life as a hunting cabin in 1935. It is comfortable but in need of much repair, too much in our opinion so we plan to raze it at some point in the future. Our primary desire as always when we are back is to visit with family and friends and that we did. We made several trips to Ohio and one to Michigan to see our kids and grandchildren and we had frequent guest at our home. This is a huge benefit of having a home again.

We returned with an ambitious plan for improvements to our property. It was extremely overgrown from years of neglect and brush and tree removal was an all summer ongoing activity. Just a couple weeks ago we rented a wood chipper and fed it our massive piles of brush.

Linda got a good start on replanting the areas we cleared and also getting her perennial flower gardens going. She just recently seeded a large area with wildflowers so we are looking forward to seeing results next spring, that is if the turkeys and crows leave any seeds.

Raspberries

I started a fruit and vegetable garden. We planted 30 raspberry canes and 6 blueberry bushes. We actually harvested a few raspberries this season. We put in a few vegetable plants, sort of as an afterthought, and had a good supply of tomatoes and a few other vegetables all summer and fall.

We continued to refurbish our machine shed. We completed one exterior wall last year and just finally finished the remaining three. This 16 x 20 shed was sagging badly and had sunk as much as eight inches due to rot. Somewhere along the way dirt was pushed up against the exterior walls. Now the walls are like new. Next year we will tackle putting on a new roof.

Saving An Old Shed

Last year Norm's mother decided to move into a new senior housing complex which was being built with a planned opening in the fall of this year. Caring for her home, particularly the landscaping was getting to be just too much. We knew that returning this year we would have a lot to do to get her house ready to sell and to eventually get her moved. For starters much of our furniture was still stored in her garage. We began by finding space in our cabin and shed for it. It looks strange but we found a home for everything. Getting her place ready to list was easy since she has always taken exceptional care of it. A bigger challenge for her was downsizing as she has lived in her home for 40 years. Her property sold right away so that was a huge relief. Due to the mild winter the apartments were completed about a month early so she was able to move in September and so we set her moving day for September 15 and she closed on the sale of her home the following week. Her new place is great and she is very happy with it.

We absolutely love spending summers in our little country get away. We are trying to co-exist with all the wild animals. The most challenging by far are the deer. They love to eat just about anything green. Linda selects plants which are deer resistant, but we have learned this does not mean deer proof. We have fenced in some areas which seems works best but isn't necessarily the way we want to leave it. We have had several bear visits this year. We had one stop in while our grandchildren were visiting so that was perfect. They typically look around for something to eat and not finding anything move on.

On to new adventures with Ariel.