Holiday Beach Potluck
08 April 2012 | Eastern Holandes Cays / Swimming Pool, Kuna Yala, Panama
Susan / mostly cloudy, 88 degrees F
Our dance card has been unusually full here in the Swimming Pool. Everyday there's an opportunity to snorkel with a group, every other day there's been a get together on BBQ Island (the Kuna call it Isla Tortuga now), every third day we enjoyed yoga led by Suzanne, and also dinners with Gris Gris and Nautibear just before they departed, with others waiting in the wings for a mutually open day for a happy hour or dinner gathering. Todays social event is an afternoon potluck on the island. For those celebrating Easter, Easter potluck dinner. It's a beautiful day here in Paradise, mostly cloudy and hot but a nice breeze has filled in making it quite pleasant. The other part of our days have been spent in the usual way: boat maintenance and cleaning, and other projects. I've taken Jerry up the mast three times in two days to end-around the halyard and repair the lazy jack lines. On one of the trips up, Jerry's sunglasses fall off; they hit the hardtop with a terrible sound and the lenses fly in separate directions. One lands on the sun shade strung above the trampoline, the other goes into the water and sinks into the sand under one of the hulls. Thankfully neither broke and the frame while dented, repairable. We hunt down a pair of glasses tethers before he makes the next trip up.
During holiday weekends rich Panamanians join us cruisers in Kuna Yala. They're easy to spot in their mega-yachts. Of the 22 boats in this anchorage, two of them are mega-yachts, one of which looks like the Presidents'. The Kuna Congresso take this opportunity to collect their monthly fee, $20 plus $2 per person. Everyone is suppose to go to Porvenir each month to pay this Kuna Yala permit fee but it's just ridiculous to think that over one hundred cruisers would navigate those reefs to anchor in a small, deep, poor holding anchorage just to pay it. When the Congresso representatives come to Vida Dulce, Jerry tells them we've just arrived from Portobello. "Welcome, $24 please." If the Congresso representatives visit all of the popular anchorages this holiday weekend, their coffers will be full.