The boat was anchored just off shore in Puerto Lindo, Panama. The first night we got there there was music blearing all night long from the local town it stopped about noon the following day. We discovered that a politician had supplied the whole town with free booze on the deal they vote for him! Slightly corrupt!
There was a german guy (Hans) that owned a restaurant just on the dock and he had a pet toucan..we have never seen anything like it, the colours were incredible. It was allowed to fly off when it wanted, so it was obviously happy living there.
The next night Hans was our saviour.. he introduced us to Clos - a red wine that is very cheap and actually tastes nice. We hadnt bought any supplies back to the boat and we were in the middle of nowhere, so we became Hans' best customers!
We had a few nights to spend in Puerto Lindo before four backpackers were due to come on the boat to sail via the San Blas Islands to Cartegena, Colombia.
After reading Amy's blog (before we had met up with them) we had heard horror stories about Sym's finger being bitten by huge aggressive monkies on a nearby island. We wanted to get a glimpse of them..so Sym and Amy reluctantly took us to the island. We got there and Alex and Sym got out of the dingy onto the island to see if there was any sign of them ( me and Amy stayed in the dingy at a safe distance) After a while the 'huge' monkeys appeared and the boys came legging it back towards the boat. Slowly building up courage, helped by another boat arriving we started to feed the monkeys and they were really friendly. Sym is adamant the angry huge monkey that attacked him wasn't there! ha. But to be fair he has got a scar on his finger to prove the attack.
There was a german guy (Hans) that owned a restaurant just on the dock and he had a pet toucan..we have never seen anything like it, the colours were incredible. It was allowed to fly off when it wanted, so it was obviously happy living there.
The next night Hans was our saviour.. he introduced us to Clos - a red wine that is very cheap and actually tastes nice. We hadnt bought any supplies back to the boat and we were in the middle of nowhere, so we became Hans' best customers!
We had a few nights to spend in Puerto Lindo before four backpackers were due to come on the boat to sail via the San Blas Islands to Cartegena, Colombia.
After reading Amy's blog (before we had met up with them) we had heard horror stories about Sym's finger being bitten by huge aggressive monkies on a nearby island. We wanted to get a glimpse of them..so Sym and Amy reluctantly took us to the island. We got there and Alex and Sym got out of the dingy onto the island to see if there was any sign of them ( me and Amy stayed in the dingy at a safe distance) After a while the 'huge' monkeys appeared and the boys came legging it back towards the boat. Slowly building up courage, helped by another boat arriving we started to feed the monkeys and they were really friendly. Sym is adamant the angry huge monkey that attacked him wasn't there! ha. But to be fair he has got a scar on his finger to prove the attack.
The following day Amy and I went to do the big shop for food and drink for our five days at sea while the boys prepared the boat.
We picked up the backpackers (four Americans) and Sym gave the big safety talk which was quite funny to see him as Captain Serious! Not long after setting sail most people started getting sea sick, luckily me and Alex felt ok..so we felt instantly part of the hardcore sailing crew of Amy and Sym! Not quite hard enough to help clear peoples sick buckets though!
Arriving at the San Blas Islands was unreal..even though the weather wasn't that great the islands were something straight off a postcard. Palm trees, white sand and turquoise waters. We jumped in straight away to snorkel around a ship wreck and saw loads of different fish and a massive sting ray.
The few days anchored around the islands were spent with the boys unsucessfully fishing, snorkelling, drinking the Clos. The Kuna Indians that inhabit some of the Islands would come to our boat everyday and sell us fresh fish so luckily we didn't have to rely on our 'fishermen', who come back empty handed and drunk!
We really didnt want to leave the San Blas but we were also looking forward to Colombia (everyone that has been there says its amazing- so we had high hopes!).
The backpackers departed the boat (we weren't classing ourselves as backpackers while we were living the high life on the Yacht!) and we spent the next two weeks partying, making a new spray hood for the boat, visiting the Rosario Islands just off Cartegena, having an amazing time with Amy and Sym... and then came the day that they had to head back to Panama on another backpacker run, I was so reluctant to leave the boat, but glad to see the end of the Sprayhood (nightmare!)
The day before Yacht Quartermoon was due to head back to Panama, Alex and Sym went off with our bags to check us into a hostel and Amy and I stayed on the boat to clean it up. When the boys came back I started to get ready to go to the hostel but Alex insisted that before we left we had to have a photo of us both up the mast (he'd said that he wanted the photo a few times over the past couple of weeks and Amy was saying how amazing it was to go up in the harness. Sym (ever so practical) gave me a set of allan keys and told me to tighten some bolts while I was up there.
There were two harnesses, and to my relief I just had to sit in a chair one, Alex on the other hand was dangling from his back! As we went higher and higher you could feel the sway much more and I offered that maybe Alex could just go up on his own but by that time Sym was in charge of hoisting me up and he was not about to start letting me down! When I had done my 'chores' at the top Alex swung me around to face him in a move the sent us both swinging into the mast in the wind..i was having slight vertigo issues by now and then he said....
'The real reason I wanted to get you up here was to ask you to marry me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??'
Shocked was an understatement, I checked he was serious (and hadnt been drinking!).. and then said YES. It was very surreal.
Amy and Sym were shouting up congratulating us..obviously in on it..sneaky buggers. We had a couple of celebratorary drinks with them and left to go to our hostel which was actually not a hostel but a really posh hotel. It took a few days for everything to sink in!
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