Bahía Honda

Merry Christmas!

Everyone stops at Bahía Honda. We were here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. There was one another boat from France anchored in the bay. I guess we are early in the cruiser comute calendar. We do have a few boats ahead of us waiting at Panama City for their canal transit. Maybe we’ll catch up with them.

This part of Panama is very desolate. Costa Rica had houses peeking out of the jungle pretty regularly as we went down the coast. Not so much in Panamá.

There is a small ‘town’ on the big island in the bay. We walked through it and had a couple beers at the local bar. They served rum and Atlas beer, and thats all! We scooted back to our boat to anchor out of earshot of the music emanating from the two bars in town.

Once we had our anchor set in Domingo’s bay. His grandson came out to invite us to get some grapefruit, limes and oranges. We did and they picked the limes from the tree because they could reach them, and used a long stick to release the grapefruit from the high branches.

Later that afternoon, Domingo’s son came out to invite us to Christmas Eve dinner. We met 83 year-old Domingo. He is famous among cruiers and is mentioned in several guidebooks. The evening was such a treat. We put together a little bag of items we heard they needed and enjoyed a dinner of roasted pork, chicken, rice, and potato salad. It was a fun challenge to communicate with our limited Spanish and their limited English, but we managed. What a gift for Christmas.

This is a very remote place to live. It’s a tough and austeere life for them out here.