Gilligan, the Skipper and the millionaire and his wife are all that are missing here! We are anchored between three islands - Dupwala, Guaridup and Olosicuidup (yep, thats what the chart says) close enough together to swim to them, and a fourth little sand spit with two coconut trees on it. The entire area is strewn with coral reefs, and we look out over the reefs, waves crashing, to the open ocean. Beautiful!

Yesterday was a lazy day, took a dinghy ride, went swimming a couple of times and watched the boats come and go from the anchorage. There are nine other boats here right now, including a boat named Blue Sky from Captiva Island. Breeze, the owner, says he was normally anchored in Roosevelt Channel for the past 12 years before they left to go cruising. Two Kuna Indians came by yesterday afternoon in their dug- out canoe - this one had a sail made out of tattered bedsheets complete with bamboo mast and gaff, and a single stay to hold it up. One guys job was to hold the stay in the correct position to keep the mast vertical, moving it around when needed, and the other guy sheeted and steered (with a hand made canoe paddle). Expert sailors, the came up about two feet away from us and luffed the boat in position until they were certain they had a victim (err, customer) for what they had for sale - which was live lobsters and octopus. So of course we got some - four lobsters and two octopus for seven dollars. I love this place!

OK, the lobsters I knew what to do with, but octopus? Sharon was skeptical when I told her I had never cooked them. After researching all our cookbooks and fishing books, the answer was pound it mercilessly with mallet and then boil it for about three hours!! Well, it is already warm enough here without running the hot stove for three hours, so I decided to try out the pressure cooker that we bought in Mexico. Time to decipher the instructions for that, which are in spanish. And yes, the little ten page booklet that came with the pressure cooker had an octopus recipe in it! Salvation. The now cooked octopus (20 minutes of pressure cooking instead of three hours of boiling) is now cooked and tender, and in the refrigerator to go into spaghetti sause tonight. The most bizarre thing about the octopus (the Kuna guy killed it right before he handed it up to me) was that when I was cleaning and cutting it up, its skin was still flashing different colors. Apparently this is how octopus show their emotions and communicate with each other, by changing skin colors in patterns. Even dead, he was mad about being chopped up for dinner!

We were able to listen to the super bowl play-offs last night on the Armed Forces short wave radio network, our tax dollars at work! The agenda for today - snorkeling!