We had a visitor

Wednesday evening, Frank suggested we go for a sundowner at The Dock restaurant in the marina. I do enjoy a sundowner so was only too happy to oblige. A few minutes later, one of my daughters, who lives in Cape Town, South Africa walks in. I was so happy, what a surprise. But I had to confess to them both, I already had suspected they were up to something. Frank is pretty good at organizing these surprises for me but this time, I had figured it out a few weeks earlier. My suspicion was confirmed when we were watching the Rugby World Cup semi-final on TV in the salon, we were able to watch it because Frank was mirroring his phone to the TV as the game was only available on his phone. Technology, it can be great but can also confound one to such degrees of frustration. Anyway, to cut a long story short, at half time he resorted to messaging Jodie on WhatsApp, but neglected to stop mirroring to the TV. I could see everything they were saying. All this was being planned during the height of the Panama protests and it was touch and go as to whether she would be able to get from Panama City to Shelter Bay or not. It was a brief visit of only one week but I was not complaining.

We took a cruise from Colon to Bocas del Toro, and had planned to stop at Escudo De Veraguas on the way up. When we arrived at Escudos at 8pm. the wind was up to 26kts and it was raining quite hard. We slowed a bit to see if the storm would pass but eventually decided to press on to Bocas. We dropped anchor there at 2am. We visited the town of Bocas, went for supper at Palmar on Bastimentos and snorkeled and chilled in Dolphin Bay before heading back towards Shelter Bay. The protests had intensified and we did not want to risk the flight from Bocas and taxi ride to PTY airport.

We dropped anchor at Escudos De Veragua in the afternoon and took a dinghy ride around for a couple of hours. This island is truly beautiful. The water is clear, and the place is deserted. We decided we would do some adventuring around the following day. But, Mother nature had other ideas. It rained and stormed the whole day. Well, at least until after we raised the dinghy in the late afternoon. We never did get to adventure around or snorkel at Escudos which is a great pity. This island is only comfortably accessible in favorable weather conditions because the anchorage has very little protection and so can be quite rolly. We had to be back on Shelter Bay for Jodie to get to the airport in good time for her flight on Friday.

Jodie left, mommy was sad, but life goes on. Thanks to Frank for arranging this surprise for me, and to Jodie for coming all this way.

Right now, Kariwa is out of the water to get the bottom painted. Unfortunately due to protests and public holidays, it is taking much longer than anticipated.