Dolphins and Phosphorescence

It was on this trip that I realised my glib assumption that groups of people when thrown together on a tour are likely just to get on does not always hold true. On the Ciudad Perdida tour everyone had remarked what a great group it was and only now did I realise how true that had been. The two Swiss guys seemed perfectly nice but, apart from not being very confident in their English, which they were now being forced to speak, I think they were both quite quiet guys. I didn't mind that since I was quite happy to sunbathe, or read when I was sheltering from the sun indoors since I hadn't brought any sun cream; the boat was too small for everyone to fit comfortably on deck anyway! The English couple, on the other hand, I didn't get on with at all. They apparently took exception to the reticence of the Swiss guys and seemed to be trying to bring me into a conspiracy of hatred against them every time they spoke to me. They just didn't seem to like foreigners very much, although they had been travelling for about two years already and Alex claimed this had turned her into a bit of a tree-hugger. It turned out that she had been brought up in some weird religious cult I can't remember the name of, and she and Toby had been travelling on her huge earnings from working as a Bentley saleswoman: she seemed about as right wing as all that would suggest, which was confirmed when she told me she was planning for vote for UKIP, who aren't actually at all racist apparently.

So the atmosphere on the boat was never particularly good, since nobody really seemed to get on, the exception being the captain who was a great host and very laid back. Unfortunately he wasn't anything like as good a chef. The stories I had heard of other people's trips from Panama to Colombia were tales of incredible luxury, including lobster every day or fantastic fish if you didn't want to pay the US$1 supplement. Fabian, however, had calculated that we would be too sea-sick to eat much so all we had to eat on the open sea was jam on toast from a packet. In fact I wasn't sea-sick at all, didn't take any more pills, and would quite happily have eaten some lobster thank you very much. To be fair, because the boat was so small it was affected a huge amount by the waves and the movement in the cabin would have made it impossible to cook. I should have held out for a catamaran! Toby and Alex, however, were both very ill with sea-sickness and hardly came out of their cabin for the first two days; they had been given the double bed in a cabin, since they were the only couple of the trip.

Dolphins playing around the boat

I was really enjoying myself and realised that it was the first time I had been out in open seas in such a small boat, in fact probably the first time I had been on a yacht. Within a few hours of leaving Cartagena, we were followed by a large pod of dolphins for about an hour. Amazing: they just seemed to love playing around the boat a little bit like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoyTY8XPr4w (not this trip). After ages of thinking I must have missed my chance to get any photos, I finally thought it was worth a try and went down into the cabin to get my camera. They had started to drop away by the time I came back up on deck, but I managed to get a couple of photos.

Dolphin

The Monitor autopilot

At night we had to take turns as lookout. Fabian had a couple of auto-pilot contraptions for his boat, but the more accurate one had broken down early in the trip, so someone needed to check the bearing occasionally to make sure we were still on course, but the main reason for the lookout, he told us, was in case of any other vessels coming into sight. The first night passed uneventfully, but what I thought was going to be an unwelcome duty I reckoned the amount of money I had contributed should excuse me from, turned out to be an amazing, relaxing chill-out. Of course I couldn't sleep since I was on duty but, apart from standing up every ten minutes to look all round, I was able to lie back and relax with my MP3 player on, hypnotised by the cool air and rocking motion from the waves, which became quite exciting at points: a couple of times a large wave washed over the side of the deck, prompting Fabian to jump out of bed and make some adjustment to the setup of his auto-pilot. Most hypnotic of all, though, was the phosphorescence in the breaking waves, caused by plankton I believe. This caught me completely by surprise when I first noticed it, then I remembered having read about this effect in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, which is set in the Caribbean; the very same sea we were on now. It's incredibly beautiful and I sat transfixed, listening to the most ambient music in my library. When my shift was up I was sad to leave it, but I was exhausted; not as exhausted as poor Fabian, who covered half of the time Toby and Alex were too ill to do their share of, the rest divvied among the two Swiss and me.

Sailing into the sunset

In the morning we found a dead fish on board, which Fabian identified as a flying fish, then later in the day we saw hundreds of them skimming over the surface of the sea - fantastic! - and another icon from The Old Man and the Sea: first dolphins, then phosphorescence, and now flying fish.

Fabian slept a lot during the day and the rest of us sunbathed and read. On the second night it seemed the Swiss boys had allowed the boat to drift off-course when I started my shift, so I had to call Fabian to check it. His GPS revealed we had drifted worryingly close to the shore, well south of where we were supposed to reach Panama, so he changed the course and left me to it. Later I was disturbed a few times from my phosphorescent reverie by the appearance of lights on the horizon, which was the cue to waken the captain. The first couple of times they disappeared again over a different part of the horizon with no consequence but the third time the other boat got closer and closer, eventually overtaking us, without ever responding to Fabian's radio requests that they identify themselves. It's probably just the coast guard trying to freak us out he said. He had explained that Colombians, in particular Colombian captains, endure quite a lot of harassment from the authorities of other countries because of the drug reputation the country has, but he seemed sanguine about this, saying it had long ceased to bother him. The chances are any shipment of coke they find in or around Panama has originated in Colombia, so what are they supposed to do? he explained. He told me the Panama coast is patrolled by the US coast guard.

The next day we started getting into calmer waters so Toby and Alex re-emerged from their cabin. Alex noticed I was sheltering indoors a lot and worked out that I hadn't brought any sun cream, so very kindly offered me some of hers and I was able to alleviate the growing boredom by spending more time on my tiny little patch on the deck. I was glad when some land came into view because I'd had enough of this tiny little boat.

Very first view of San Blas Islands

written by  The Happy Couple on January 16, 2010 from San Blas Islands, Panama
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
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