Northern Costa Rica

This blogging stuff is hard work. Here I am sweating away trying to get some pictures into these posts just so I won’t bore our blog reader.

We took the boat over to La Union and anchored just past the Naval base. There’s a restaurant with a blue roof here that has a nice dinghy landing pier. We arranged with the port officials to meet us there to do our exit paperwork. Nice guys, easy process – another $40 worth of paper so we can officially leave El Salvador and legally enter Costa Rica (Golfito, CR, is the destination port identified on the Zarpe).

Sorry for the out of focus shot. This is our boats track during the 3am storm while off the Nicaraguan coast. The red blotch center top is the boats current position. The red trail is the track we took to try to avoid the storm. You can see that as it approached we kept heading further out to try to flank it. Eventually, we gave up and turned hard back toward shore to punch through it. The yellow/red blotch at the bottom of the screen is the Radar image of the trailing edge of the storm cell.

Suicidal squids inking our decks

Our first stop in Costa Rica was Bahia Santa Elena, on the northern coast, part of the Parque Nacional Santa Rosa. It was fairly overcast and pleasantly cool and quiet for the three nights we anchored there. Chris even had to put on a blanket at night to sleep- it probably got down to the low 80’s. The overcast and light rain made it look a bit like the Pacific Northwest Only with green parrots flying overhead, sea turtles grazing near the boat, and jungle-like plants and bugs. Great jungle noises at night, too. We were one of three boats in the bay, one of which were our friends Virginia and Dennis on Libertad who we met up with in Golfo de Fonseca. Bienvenidos a Costa Rica- country of the Pura Vida!
 

Don’t feel too bad for us, the lower number on the screen is the water temperature

Bird homes along the shores of the bay

Jungle hike plants

Johnny Weissmuller grabbing a vine

Kayak adventure up the estuary

In the estuary

Hermit, the beach critter, cruising- maybe looking for another shell?

‘Mom, I’m hungry’. One of the big sea turtles in the bay sticking his head up for a breath and a peek.

We snorkeled off the inside island at the entrance Bahia Santa Elena. I came across this turtle just grazing on the growth on the side of the rocks. He wasn’t pleased that I showed up and took off like a bolt.

Bahia Santa Elena is a beautiful, but isolated place. Except for the other two cruising boats, we only saw a few small fishing boats come and go. Nothing on shore except a little used access road and the remnants of a wooden hull buried in the rocks.

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After three days, we headed off south, around Punta Santa Elena and Key Point, to the Bat Islands (aka Islas Murcielagos). There’s supposed to be a park ranger here who collects something like $20 a head to anchor there (part of the Parque Nacional Santa Rosa). No one has shown up yet, although we can see the rangers boat from where we are anchored.
We are anchored off this beach in the cut between two islands in the Isla Murcielagos chain, the ranger’s station is on the island across the cut on the other side. Got in some good snorkeling on the north east side of this island and then Chris went in to the beach to compete with the hermit crabs for cool shells.

We were met by the spotted dolphin welcoming committee on the way in

Something that looks like it should be dinner

A 4 foot shark hanging on the reef. After Chris found him she decided to snorkel a lot closer to me. I think that was just a increase the odds thing, as she thinks she can swim faster than me.

Paul

Gulfo de Fonseca - Photo catching up

Time to fill in some pics of the 10 days we spent around Gulfo de Fonseca at the southern end of El Salvador. We went down to meet up with Pam and Henry who were traveling down on Rapscullion, Henry’s trick catamaran ride.

El Salvador requires that a boat receive a Zarpe (exit paperwork) even to travel to another port within the country. They make the paperwork very easy and convenient, but it is still an unneeded $40 expense. Next time, I think we’d just get a Zarpe for leaving the country and then go into the Golfo, but not go all the way into La Union, or any of the nearby commercial ports, to check out of the country.

To leave Bahia del Sol we had to head back out across the bar again. Rojelio, the bar pilot, had Tuesday off but he graciously agreed to come meet us 8:30am to guide us out at high tide. The surf wasn’t too bad, but you definitely do want a pilot here. You can see the bar, with breaking waves, in the distance.

The bar breaking on our way out

One of the panga (called lancha here) fisherman tied up to his little black flag 10 miles offshore. These are the flags that are supposed to warn you that their nets are out. If there’s a swell running they can be completely hidden behind the swells, as are the pangas themselves. And guess what, the black flag does not stand out at night. This guy is giving us the international hand signal for it appears if you stay on your present course you are not going to run over my net and foul it in your prop– but watch out for the next one.

Pam needed to check out the boat lift at the Naval yard in La Union to determine how well it would handle hauling her 46ft steel hull boat, Precious Metal. The first few nights in the Gulf, we anchored in Tamarindo Bay just in front of where Giovanni- a real go-getter local who we first met at the lunch we had with the brass in San Salvador- plans to develop a new marina, the first in the Golfo de Fonseca. Giovanni picked us up one day and we visited his development site and then headed over to La Union.

The first pier and beach area for the new marina. This is going to be an ecologically sound development. They finally received their government approvals after two years of work. Interested in investing?

Giovanna on the left, John off Sea Quest in the middle, and yours truly looking at where the dredging spoils will go. John has developed and run major boat yards in California and Mexico and is interested in being involved in the development of a potential dry storage yard in La Union.

Giovanni drove us all up to the town of Chonchaguara(sp) in the hills just above La Union. The church above was originally built on one of the offshore islands. It was moved here in 1700’s (or so) brick by brick to make it more defensible– damn pirates. Gofo de Fonseca was long a haven for forays on the Spanish gold plunder from S. America.

When you head out with Giovanni (right), there always seems to be a good meal involved.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the unfortunate white elephant at La Union, a project not yet complete. This brand new container port was built by the Japanese a couple years ago, with promised French involvement.  Those yellow container lifts are reportedly $10 million a piece. The plan was to build a new container port in La Union and connect it with an existing container port on the Caribbean side of Honduras by taking the old United Fruit Company narrow gauge railroad and rebuilding it into a double rail cross Central America track. This would then give an alternative to some of the container traffic that passes through the Panama Canal- a money maker to be sure.  The Japanese built the port and dredged the entrance. The world market went to hell and the French pulled out before staring the rail line. Not a single container ship has landed here.  This is just not the kind of infrastructure investment that El Salvador needs at this time. It’s too bad, because it seems like the government is really trying to fortify the country’s economy to create jobs for the locals and grow the middle class (and get re-elected). Unfortunately, many Salvadorans invested in businesses that would support the port and they are now hurting- badly.

We also got a good guided tour of the Naval Base. Here’s one of the ships having work done on the Naval boat yard lift. In order to lift Lovely Lady out of the water (for inspection and repairs after her grounding), this boat needed to be moved. The Commander at the base said that they could finish up work on this boat fairly quickly. But before they could put it back in the water- and haul the civilian sailboats- they would need to do some maintenance on the lift itself, which would take a little more time. Pam was glad to hear they were going to do the maintenance before Precious Metal would be hauled.

However, the maintenance didn’t go so well and the boat, and part of the pier, fell over during the attempted launching a few days later. Not sure when this will get fixed. Does not give you a warm and fuzzy about hauling your boat here at this time.

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Isla Meanguera, Golfo de Fonseca

About 10 miles off La Union or Tamarindo is Isla Meanguera. We spent all total about 4 or 5 nights in the peaceful anchorage in the little bay where the La Joya de Golfo hotel is located. This is a four room hotel run by an ex-pat from LA and his El Salvadorian wife (also from LA). The Lonely Planet guide describes it: as a very nice place to stay, and that’s a good thing as it is the only place to stay on the island. The anchorage was nice, but the evening thunderstorms left a little to be desired in the ‘peaceful category’

La Joya de Golfo Hotel

Me and the hotel dog Gordo putting in some deck time

Chris and Rachel, the very talkative and fun hotel kid making sure George the hotel cat is comfortable.

Having a good-bye dinner on the deck at the hotel.

The island has some nice stone paved roads, but no cars. Here’s some of the goods transporters hanging by the docks.

There’s one pupuseria (pupusa – the Salvadoran stuffed thick tortilla) in the village on the island. Check the local green parrots (pets) up in the right side of the roof frame. These guys were just bored looking at us on a hot day until the proprietess came out to talk with them. Then they started singing, dancing and vying for her attention.

Then the boss parrot started tongue kissing with the proprietor

Pam saw a chance for some bird affection and gave it a try while Henry watched and wondered about why not me.

These guys are way cool.

End of photo update Uno.

Paul

Passage to Costa Rica

Our last evening in El Salvador, we enjoyed another good dinner on the over-the water patio at the Hotel La Joya de Golfo with Henry and Pam off 'Rapscullion' and Dennis and Virginia off 'Libertad'. Having 3 cruising boats in the anchorage in front of the hotel on Meanguera Island is probably a record. We've been traveling with Henry since Zihuatenejo and traveled to Guatemala with Pam while in El Salvador. We said our goodbyes and hope to catch up with both of them again in Panama. 'Libertad' is off to Costa Rica along with us.
We got up early on Friday and had the anchor up by about 5:15am. Motored out the Gulfo de Fonseca. The gulf is bordered by 3 countries, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, so when you see a Naval vessel, most likely a Vietnam era hand-me-down, you can't tell which country it's from in the distance. Either way, they seem pretty friendly and more interested in the cruisers security than anything else.
Once we got out into the Pacific we had a few false starts of sailing, then got in a good days sail till early evening when the motor had to go back on as the wind died out. There must have been some kind of a no-fishing holiday in Nicaragua as we did not see a single panga or shrimper all day or night. That was a good thing. The night looked clear and the sliver of moon was setting as the Southern Cross rose. There was a lot of phosphorescence in the water, the usual green glow with additional dancing green dots that looked like small galaxies, spun up in the boat's wake. Every once in awhile a porpoise or two would zoom up to play with the boat and leave trails of glowing water in their wake. You could see the trail dart under the boat and then the depth sounder would suddenly register 13 feet depth, instead of infinity.
By night fall we were around 17 or 18 miles offshore. We went this far out to avoid pangas -- apparently the non-existent ones -- and to hopefully reduce the number of storm cells we ran into, as they seem to develop on shore. It looked like a brilliant strategy until about 2am. Instead of just seeing all the lightening flashes on the coast you could start to see some more ahead of us. The storm built and you could clearly see it as a 2 mile by 12 mile long set of cells on the Radar. We spent the next 4 hours trying to out dodge the storm, making little progress toward our destination and moving even further offshore. Eventually it caught up to us and started dumping rain. The wind and the rain are not the real issue -- its the lightening flashes all around that make it a less than enjoyable experience. There looked like a couple of small light rain paths through the storm so we changed direction and punched through it toward shore. An hour later the sun was coming up ad looking over our shoulder to the storm there was a full rainbow.
Today was a boring motor boat ride-- no wind and a need to get to the anchorage before dark. We made it into Bahia Santa Elena in northern end of Costa Rica this evening just after dark. Hope to get in some snorkeling in the morning and hunt down some of the local parrots and monkeys for dinner.
Paul
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