The curse of the cruising lifestyle is that we have to leave a place just when it starts to feel like home. Bocas del Toro–the town and the archipelago– has been our home since June. We had just gotten to the point where we knew which market has the best pineapples, which store our preferred rice. It’s a happy comfort when we can walk through town and run into people we know on almost every block.
So it was with both sadness and anticipation that we weighed anchor on December 14, exactly six months after we sailed in from The Bahamas. We took a last sail through Tierra Oscura, where we had lunch with friends. Then on to one of our favorite places, Dolphin Bay, for more farewells.
New Horizons
Next we sailed on to Loma Partida, the gateway from the familiar waters of Bahia Almirante to the unknown (to us) waters of the much larger Laguna Chiriqui.
We sailed across Laguna Chiriqui to the little town of Miramar on the south shore. Along the coast, the isthmian mountain range rises sharply from the coast.
Miramar
Like most places in the Laguna, Miramar isn’t on the usual cruisers’ circuit. Cruising sailboats are a novelty, and the curious, friendly townspeople couldn’t be more hospitable. As we walked past a modest home, the owner, Larry, pulled us in and showed us around. We became fast friends during an hour of chatting. When it was time to go, he cut down about forty pounds of coconuts for each of us–as much as we could carry. He didn’t have much, but he gave generously what he could.
I think about the traveling I’ve done, especially in the developing world. I’ve experienced nearly universal kindness and generosity from people for whom life is a daily struggle. It makes me sad to know that many of these people, should they ever visit my country, would likely not receive such a warm welcome from my countrymen.
Continuing through the town, we came to a marvelous gingerbread house on pilings over the water. I stopped to take a picture. The owner, Maria, invited us in. We had a long chat about our families and our travels.
By then it was time to find dinner. Locals pointed us toward the restaurant: walk down the road until it ends, then keep going half a mile down a dirt path along the beach. At the path’s end is Oscar’s restaurant. There Oscar and is wife graciously served us homecooked meals on beachside picnic tables.
La Cascada
Our main purpose for sailing to Miramar was to visit a waterfall on the Rio la Gloria. The waterfall is accessible from either of two indigenous Ngobe villages on opposite sides of the river. A villager serves as a guide for a challenging two-hour hike to the waterfall.
We choose to hike from the Alto la Gloria community. A pickup truck met us in town at the dock. The newly constructed gravel road is one of the steepest I have ever seen. It has a vertical rise of 1300 feet over about a mile and a half for an average grade of 16% by my math. We had to walk the last few hundred yards–going up wasn’t too bad; coming back down was treacherous. This is the only access for a community of several hundred people. Before the road construction this year, they had only a dirt path.
Our young guide Daniel led us along a challenging mile and a half trail through pastures, banana fields, and rainforest jungle. Every step was jaw dropping–a botanist’s paradise of palms and canopy trees, epiphytes, aroids, ferns, and dozens of plants we we know from our horticultural work.
Daniel picked a couple of ripe cacao pods from trees along the trail. We have toured a chocolate farm and know how chocolate is extracted from the seeds. Daniel showed us something we didn’t know: the thin white flesh around the seeds is incredibly tasty, what I can best describe as the tartness of a green apple combined with the sweetness of tangerine. You pop a seed in your mouth, suck on the fleshy part, then spit out the seed.
I’ll let photos tell the rest of the story.
And finally, a refreshing swim.
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