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Eastern
Lemmon Cays, San Blas Islands, Panama
October
25th - 26th, 2007
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Our first stop after leaving the Rio Diablo area
was still in the San Blas at the Lemmon Cays.
We tried anchoring behind several islands, but had trouble
finding good protection from the building wind and waves.
We re-checked the charts, chose a new spot that looked good, but
had a rather tricky entrance.
After making double sure we knew where we were, we navigated
through all of the surrounding reefs, and found the perfect spot in
between Tiadup and Naguarchirdup.
Our first visitor’s in the Lemmons Cays arrived
via cayuco and were a family of one grandmother and two young children.
The sky was about to open up as the grandmother motioned to come
aboard, so Capt Mark carried the children on board and the Kuna Mujer
proceeded to tell us that these were her grandchildren and their parents
had died. The children were
poorly dressed. One of the
children, a boy, was about 1 year old and the other, his sister, was 8 or
9 years old. They were in
need of help - the young boy had been bitten by a dog in a few places,
and the wounds were not healing well at all.
Of course the Mujer had items to sell including Molas, shells, Gods eyes
and jewelry. Our
hearts broke for these little ones as we bandaged them up, gave them
drinks, cookies, pasta and sauce. We
bought items from the Mujer and Capt Mark gave her some money to take
the child to the doctor. We did all we could and the family set out in their cayuco to
another remote island where they lived.
Our next guests were in a huge cayuco that was
running out of gas. They
had a load of freshly caught fish in their boat and they wanted to trade
for fuel. Capt Mark came up
and checked out the situation, he gave the men a gallon of gas for 4
mackerel. Mark and Mike
helped them transfer a gallon of gas into their tank; they thanked us,
gave us some fish and headed away.
Unfortunately, they did not give us the fish we wanted – the
fish that they gave us was a type of mackerel that was very bloody.
We decided to toss it overboard since the fish book said they
were not very tasty and rarely eaten. Nonetheless, we had a fantastic
dinner of Lobster Tails & Yellowfin Tuna and hit the sack hoping
that our attempts to help the Kuna that day were successful. |
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Dolphins on the bow!!
Dolphins breeching the surface, for a breath of air
More of the frolicking dolphins surfing our bow wave
They hung out with us for a good ten minutes
These were some of the first dolphins we had seen the whole
trip
The island of Naguachirdup in the Lemmon Cays
Also Naguachirdup, there was a pier at the end of the island
on the right side of the photo (East end) and a couple of cabanas on stilts that
looked like they could be rented
The storm approaching the anchorage from the mainland
These are the cabanas on Naguarchirdup
Stray Cat tucked in and finally holding fast between
Naguarchirdup & Tiadup
Somewhere in the Lemmons Cays
Mike and our little visitor, this is the little boy who had
been bitten by a dog several times, you can see the bandage on his arm where we
patched it up, the wound was not healing properly and the poor little guy did
need medical attention
Cookies always help ease the pain a bit
This is the little boys sister, both of them are now being
taken care of by a grandmother, since their parents passed away
The grandmother or Kuna Mujer was a very good salesperson, we
wished we could have done more for them
The catch of the day "Mackerel", seven Kunas worked
all day for this haul of fish
These guys had run out of gas a long way from home
Mike filtered the gas for them
Their cayuco was enormous
This cayuco was at least 25ft long, it was the biggest one
that we have seen
Lobster Tails on the grill - Yumm....
This dinner would have cost you big bucks at a restaurant in
the States - Lobster Tails with Yellowfin Tuna, saffron rice and black
beans
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