Panama and Panama Transit Part II, Gamboa and the Miraflores Locks
February 26, 2003

We had one week to prepare DP for 6 weeks of storage at the Pedro Miguel Boat Club. With the valuable assistance of Alli, Gerti, James, Heather, and Genio, we managed to get everything done with a little time to explore. We would return almost 6 weeks later with Natasha to start the trip to Chile.
Gamboa is a small native village just east of the Pedro Miguel locks, and is on one of the rivers that intersects the Calubra Cut. Here, the Wounan have their traditional homes on stilts. They sell their crafts and artwork to tourists, but have the village in the style of their original culture. Lizzy, a retired american botanist who has made her home nearby, organizes "basket weaving" classes in her garage. Whoever started the joke that basket weaving is easy obviously has never tried!! The women would start the base for us, and we would continue from there. It was great fun!!

Barry had a go and turned out a most beautiful basket in the end. We also found many beautiful wooden carvings, walking sticks, and baskets for sale at Lizzy's. The workmanship was wonderful, and some of the baskets were very intricate. The Wounan also made carvings and jewellry from "plant ivory", which is derived from the nut of a local tree. These were beautiful articles, particularly the ones that had not been painted.

Gamboa was wonderful and we were lead on a tour through the forest to see some of their local medicinal plants. I am only too sorry that I do not have the memory for all of the details, but the range and variety of vegetation in Panama is really amazing. At the village we had the opportunity to purchase more arts and crafts, so we were well stocked! Because it had been my birthday, on of the local women gave me a lovely open weave basket for a gift!
The river is the main source of transportation for the Wounan. Many of the people use dugout tree trunk canoes. Despite the infringing modern conveniences such as cellular telephone (as seen held by the young girl in the photo here), the Wounan do try to preserve their culture at least for the local tourism.

As a part of our Gamboa trip, we explored up to a beautiful waterfall in a very long canoe with modified sides and an outboard engine. This vessel was very similar to those used in Canaima at Angel Falls. In order to get to the Gamboa waterfall, it was necessary to plow through a few hundred feet of assorted waterplants, mostly water hyacinth. Amongst these floating plants were a huge variety of insects and birds, but the water was only about 1-2 feet deep, with a rich dark brown/orange tannin colour. We could see monkeys swinging in the trees nearby, although their voices proceeded them.
The dip in the waterfall was wonderful, cool and refreshing. We saw the exoskeletons of crawfish and several small minnow-like fishes. Barry found a section where the rock had been worn out into a perfect seat!
The trip back was as delightful, and we thanked our guides.

Ahhh... but that was enough cavorting about... we had a boat to pack up and a trip back to Canada to do... Before leaving, we had the routine of checking over and packing up the boat. In addition, we had asked Allie to make some simple repairs and to add some more mast steps to the tope of the mast. He had some very simple stainless steel steps that had a very low profile and were really very comfortable to use. The had better hand-grip than the folding aluminum steps we had lower down, and had the added benefit that something could be clipped to them. Incredibly, they were even less noticeable than the folding steps.
It seemed that everyone was hard at work in the Boat Club. Heather and James were making repairs and adjustments to their beautifully bright yellow boat. Some boats had extensive damaged from accidents during their canal transits. Most of these accidents seemed to occur on boats that were tied to tugs on the upward transit.

On last minute job that we had to do was search for the blades of our wind generator. During the transit, we had removed the so that they did not get tangled in the lines to the shore. However, we wanted to have a backup to the effort of keeping our batteries topped up should we have for any reason a cut in the electricty. The breezes were known to be very light in the area. However... shortly after the blades had been put on, they somehow disappeared. Our only guess is that they somehow counter-rotated off and fell into the water. So.... we spent half a day donning scuba gear looking. NEVER AGAIN! The presence of a small crocodile didn't bother me so much as the zero visibility (less than 6 inches from the face) in 15 feet of water. The bottom was muddy red-black and it was better just to close your eyes. On the bottom, there were muddy parts that hands and arms would just sink into. Needless too say, we never found anything!

When we returned from 5 weeks in Canada, DP was how we had left her. The photo of DP is taken looking west towards the Miraflores locks. The working area on the right side of the photo is where Allie did his metalwork and welding. Just behind DP is a mudback that we had to skidder across to get into the berth!

We were happy to return and anxious to continue on with the transit. After seeing the damaged boats and speaking with their owners, were were feeling very fortunate for the first half of our transit.

Tina McBride, who we hired as our agent, was worth every penny we paid... and then some. She was knowledgeable and knew what she was doing. On top of it all, she was marvellously pleasant. It was good to have someone representing us who was not easily pushed around.

One morning we had a special treat. Tina arrived with a baby Amazon parrot. I think Natasha enjoyed the chance to check it out!

We finally pulled out of Pedro Miguel Boat Club on February 26. Our transit was supposed to be at 0830, which somehow became 1200. We hired Dracula once again and his assistant, Victor. Genio, Allie, Gertie, and Petruva joined us for the ride. Petruva was writing her school exams at the time while we transitted!!

The transit went well, although we had to side-tie to a training tug. Unfortunately, the had started lowering us before we were even properly tied. But we had no incident. Barry was commended on his ability to handle the boat, and we had all worked pretty hard to get fenders, tires and lines in the right place ant the right time.
Our stay at Balboa was brief - only overnight. We headed out into the mighty Pacific at 1100, February 27.