Marina Papagayo, Costa Rica
24 December 2012
Carole
We are all looking forward to a bit of luxury at the marina for 3 nights. We were pleasantly surprised the docks are brand new and well planned, there is a pool, a place to do our laundry, a marine store and friendly staff who are always willing to help.
This is where we will have Christmas dinner with all of our buddy boats. We have Fran and Jean-Guy on Gosling, Duane & Chris on Risk Taker, Alan & Betsi on Beverly J and we just heard from our friends, Russ and Doreen on August Moon, they are going to arrive at the dock at noon on Chrismas day.......they did a fast track from Mazatlan to get to us by Chrismas. They were successful.....Yeh!! We all enjoyed the facilities very much and especially the pool and showers.
We had a surprise on Christmas day around 4pm, Carole was just coming out of the boat into the cockpit when she saw "swarming bees" at the back of the cockpit, so she immediately went below and closed everything so they could not get inside. Carole called out to the rest of the group on the dock that we have bees, they all got the hoses and started to spray them with water and also called the marina office to advise them of the problem. Kinda scary! The bees moved forward to the courtesy flags which were now absolutely covered, they were black with bees, they also started to go on the mast. To make a long story short, the marina called the fire department who came and sprayed foam on the bees which stops them from flying and they will die, eventually Carole was able to come out of the boat, Christmas dinner delayed about an hour. The came to spray again later that evening and then again the next day, in total they sprayed 5 times. They advised us that they were African Bees that had migrated up from South America.
Ok, enough of that onto the Chrismas dinner, we had all the fixings, Turkey, Ham, Chicken, Potatoes, veggies, cranberry sauce, etc. It was a wonderful Christmas dinner, we all sat around the dock enjoying each others company and the meal.
When we left the marina on the 27th the wind was blowing and it was certainly a bit tricky getting over to the fuel dock and leaving the fuel dock.
We had to go to Playas del Coco overnight so that we could get our Costa Rican National Zarpe for the trip down to Golfito, no problemo, they were very quick and efficient in preparing it for us at the Port Captains office.