Category: Nicaragua

Sailing southeast – El Salvador to Costa Rica

Our hearts ache without our GREM!! BUT, (and this is a pea sized consolation) – there is quite a bit more space aboard s/v Allora! Haley was going back to March in the DC rally and Maddi was off to India, so we had to release them!! Having been more leisurely with our movements from Mexico to El Salvador, we now realized that our time is getting somewhat crunched, so our pace has to pick up in this next zone, which is regrettable. Weather really dictates many of our  ‘should we stay or should we go’ movement decisions and it can be capricious. We’ll get a flavor of Central America; enough to know we could happily come back – on a slower pace.

After saying goodbye to Haley and Madison and this particularly thorough provisioning stop at the market in San Salvador, Marcus said, ‘we could have kept the girls here and just cannibalized them!’ (haha, this way I can tell if they are reading our blog!).
The “Marte” – Art Museum in San Sal. Retrospective on El Salvadorian artists; interesting!
It’s a messy job to switch the paddle wheel (sensor for measuring our boat speed) which is essentially a hole in the boat which gushes water when we replace the wheel with a temporary plug.
Scraping the paddle wheel to rid it of barnacles, which render it unusable as a gauge.
We flew our tattered American flag upside down and half mast – and although we saw no one all day, it felt good to make a statement about this particular Inauguration Day, 2017.
Gulf of Fonseca, El Sal/Honduras/Nicaragua. We hoisted our brand new, ride side up, American flag on the 21st – in solidarity with the Million Women’s March, 2017!
Gulf of Fonseca, where El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua come together (this is an El Sal hill!).
El Tigre Island, Honduras, in the morning light, before slipping away toward Nicaragua.
Marcus’ first Sierra on the ‘ugly stick’ (trolling rig). He did catch and release one on a fly on Isla Tiburon. It’s one of our new favorites for eating!

Dolphins continue to join us almost every day we sail, but whales have been missed in these waters.
Customs Officer, Puerto Capitania and Immigration officers came to us!
The other two officials were much more interested in Marcus’ fishing gear!
The flag of Nicaragua!

Inside the estuary adj. to Puesta del Sol marina.
Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua.
Puesta Del Sol, Nicaragua

We took a taxi to the nearby town of Chinandenga to get some cash from an ATM to pay our check in fees. It was low light (late afternoon to sunset) and the driver was quite heavy on the pedal, so we whizzed by idyllic pastoral scenes of a Sunday in a Nicaraguan village. Nicaragua was basically a beautiful blur, as you can see in this smattering of shots from the bumpy cab window:

Loved this! LOTS of folks pulled their rockers out in front of their homes to take in the evening.

Costa Rica!!

Bahia Santa Elena hikes, but the guidebook is OLD, so the jungle has consumed the trails and almost us!
Dubbed, ‘Worst hike EVER!!’
Not sure what these blossoms are, but they highlighted the verdant hills in Bahia Santa Elena.
Turkey vulture’s plea for some compassion?
I saw (and smelled) two dead sea turtles on a kayak excursion, hence the healthy turkey vulture population.
Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica. This anchorage, with zero development, is a gem. It’s almost landlocked, so a Papagayo howling wind can be wreaking havoc on the seas outside and this place sees no more than some chop and wind gusts. REALLY sweet!
One of our iPhone anchor alarms. This is the course our boat ran around the anchor all night!
We swab the decks (!) every morning there’s dew, to give Allora a nice fresh water rinse.

Bahia Samara, Costa Rica (near Punta Guiones). Big surf area. In this tucked away corner, we had numerous reefs and shoals to deal with to get into a good anchoring position. Here, you can see that our charts are sometimes incorrect, because they have us going over a bunch of rocks when, thankfully, we weren’t. We use other sources, our visual clues (water riffles and breaks over reefs) and radar to piece it all together. It’s tough when the depths are only a few feet more than our keel.
Bahia Ballena. Noodling around.
Puntarenas is a REAL place. Working boats ply this estuary. We are tied up to a pontoon dock (itself floating and secured by two anchors) with never more than 2.5′ of water underneath us. This morning, if our instruments are correct, Allora was touching the soft mud bottom by 3″. Unnerving. But we are here to check in to Costa Rica and these formalities with the Puerto del Capitaniá, Imigracion and Adouana are proving to be the toughest yet.
Our yellow quarantine flag flies as we await the ability to fly our Costa Rican colors.
The Customs and Immigration folks came to the boat, but only after we waited for 36 hours or so for them to show up. The yellow, quarantine flag means we aren’t officially cleared into the country yet, and as such, we have to stay aboard Allora.
Really?! All THAT for two papers?!
Quarantine and Costa Rica flags. Yellow abajo, CR encima!
Our view from the floating pontoon at Costa Rica Yacht Club (fancy words for that experience).
The pilot boat leads us out of the extremely shallow and shoaling estuary at high tide, around 6:30 pm. Southeast headings and a favorable 1.5 knots of current move us away from the Nicoya Peninsula toward Quepos.
Early morning chill accumulates from hours on night watch.
Since our destination was only 55nm away (in a straight line), we had the unusual focus of trying not to move too quickly – to avoid arriving at night. The winds cooperated and we sailed sweetly and slowly along, splitting the night into just two 4.5 hr. shifts between us. Lovely sail. Sunrise and a cup of Central American bourbon coffee (just the name of the bean, no actual bourbon!); perfect setting to clean our dusty fans underway.
Our needs come in bike sized packages! Provisioning for southern Costa Rica with the Mamas.
Marina Pez Vela, Quepos, Costa Rica. This newish marina caters mainly to sport fisherman and is charging the highest rate we’ve seen on this journey! It costs us $180. a night for a slip here. SO … we scooted away for a couple nights (2/4 & 2/5/17) anchoring off Manuel Antonio National Park. By 4pm when the park closes, we have this lush backdrop all to ourselves.

Capuchin Monkey mama and baby

 

That’s a sloth in the center of the pic!!
Marcus was relieved that wasn’t the spot we chose to land our dinghy – although our effort wasn’t uber smooth and I walked around in salty clothes all day!

 

Parasailers at sunset, with the anchorage at Manuel Antonio Park all to ourselves!