Leaving Golfito

Golfito – 21st February

We left Golfito yesterday after being there almost a week. When we stop in a place for as long as a week it definitely starts to feel like home and leaving becomes a little wrench. We move along so frequently that ‘home’ no longer has the same larger meaning that it used to have. Home of course is where the heart is and though Tony and I are at home on Moondancer because we are together we miss our families and friends and the short term friends we meet go some way to filling those gaps.
In Golfito we met 2 other boats from Vancouver; Joyce and Peter on Maruatu left Vancouver 6 years ago and have circumnavigated via South Pacific, Indonesia, Africa, South America and are now on their way back up to Mexico. We met them on our last day in Golfito and spent a great evening together with our friend Gary from Pursuit II who is from Toronto and is eagerly sponging up information from veterans like Peter and Joyce. Peter and Joyce have also bought retirement property in Parksville to go ‘home’ to.

Norm and Shiela of Arithea (I think that’s right) who are now from 100 mile house but were previously from Langley and White Rock, have a Kelly Peterson 44 which is currently housing themselves, their son and another family with 2 children.

Though I didn’t care too much for the part of Golfito we had access to it was definitely a convenient place to anchor. For $5 per day we had access to a dinghy dock at Land and Sea, where we could shower in an excellent big clean shower, use the internet, have coffee in the morning, meet other cruisers, and basically sit in a comfortable, quiet anchorage. Next door the Banana Bay Café has excellent food in a very clean, well run restaurant with internet hook-up. We fuelled up at Banana Bay, filled up our water tanks and thoroughly washed our boat. Its easy to see why people could stay in a place like Golfito, a person could live comfortably at anchor for $150 per month with all amenities, but that’s not what we came this far to do.

Clearing out of Costa Rica was quite painless, we did have to go to 3 different locations to do so, but the taxis are cheap and we never had to wait for the friendly officials to deal with us.

We’ve moved over to the other side of Golfo Dulce and are anchored off the Parrot Bay Resort next to Jimenez. We came over yesterday as this is a better place to leave from which we intend to do this evening, it’s a wide open exit and as our next leg is about 70 miles we’ll leave in the evening, sail through the night and arrive around 0900 in Isla Paraido, our first stop in Panama.
We’ve picked up a couple of guide books for Panama and have now met a few people who have cruised the coast already and it looks like there are so many choices of stops. Many islands to choose from off the mainland, and for some reason seems a bit daunting – much more foreign than Mexico and Costa Rica, but perhaps as foreign as Nicaragua which we only went to by accident.