Thursday, February 6, 2014

Las Perlas Islands

Our trip to the Las Perlas Islands, which received their name from the pearls that are found there, was mainly a motor trip. The wind was under 10 knots except the last couple of hours to our first anchorage at Isla San Jose.

We anchored in Ensenada Playa Grande, and were the only boat in the anchorage. When the moon set a little after sunset, it was total darkness except for the stars. Jupiter was noticeably visible along with Orion and Canus. There seams to be a local phenomena that the wind picks up to about 15 to 20 knots after sunset and settles back down around midnight. The anchorage was a little ruff for this period as the waves would wrap around the point and hit us on the beam. Still, we slept well.

The next morning we went exploring as the beaches looked enticing. As we approached the beach we were amazed at the unnoticeable ground swells would start to lift about fifty feet from the beach and then break just before the shore line. Then about every twentieth wave would be larger than the rest. Brian wanted to stop short of the breakers and walk in, I said no we can surf in. Well Brian was right. We almost made it to the beach but flipped at the last second. After recovering from the flip, we were missing Brian and my glasses. We did recover the anchor bag when Brian tripped over it with anchor still in the bag. So I took of my shoos and started to look for my glasses and luck was on my side. However we didn't recover Brian's sunglasses. We suspect that my glasses were metal and sank, while his were plastic and drifted out with the waves.

The expedition continued as we explored the beach and stream, which turned to be a tidal wash. This area of Panama has twenty foot tides. We scared a couple of iguanas and left our foot prints in a remote beach. We witnessed a bait ball feeding frenzy as any bird with in range flew in to take advantage of the food. A very successful day.

The next day we went to an anchorage between Isla Chapera and Isla Mogo Mogo where they filmed Survivor Las Perlas. We are sure that we found one of the camps as we saw stacks of bamboo, which doesn't grow on the island, and the remains of a camp fire along with other signs. We took on piece of bamboo to the boat and cut it up for souvenirs.

Our final couple of days will be spent at Isla Contadora, a small community in the northern islands. We have some rally things to do along with taking on fuel before the trip to the Galapagos.












2 comments:

  1. Great pics! How amazing to have that whole beach to yourselves. Been reading Brian's logs religiously, he writes in much detail in the hopes that all of us back home can live vicariously through all your adventures. It's working!! I'm riveted and await every entry with enthusiasm. I would like to leave comments on the WCC site but looks like you have to have a Facebook account, which I don't have. Let him know I'm an AVID follower!!

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