Tarantula at our friends’ house in Boca Chica!
Jeff was back in the States for the first part of July and I was keeping busy with little boat projects that had found their way onto my list (all of which took more time than expected, naturally), hanging out with our new friends in Boca Chica, taking side trips to the mountains or the beach, working on various projects and volunteering at the local school. While I enjoyed having the boat to myself and getting into a new rhythm I was eager for Jeff’s return. The rest of the month was very low key. In between boat projects we worked on our own personal projects (writing, photography, music), read lots of books, enjoyed the beach and playing in the waves at Playa Grande, took a side trip to Punta Bejuco, continued to meet new and interesting people in Boca Chica and got more involved with the school.
Here’s the quick recap in numbers!
12 … nautical miles travelled
31 … nights on the hook
0 … nights on a mooring
0 … nights at a marina
$2,193 … monthly expenses (ouch! we’ll chalk this up to the expensive camera I replaced)
1937 … the year that Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and the United States signed the Convention on the Pan-American Highway, whereby they agreed to begin construction
30,000 … miles of roads comprising the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Argentina
3 … blogs I’ve been following that document the travels of three couples, two couples are heading south – a couple of rock climbers and a couple of birders – and one couple (an Argentinean couple) is headed north
60 … miles without a road between Colombia and Panama – this section of Central America is called the Darien gap and can only be crossed by boat
8 … hours Jeff sat on an un-air conditioned bus to get from San Jose, Costa Rica to David, Panama
1 … year that Punta Bejuco in Panama has been connected to the Pan-American highway via a road (prior to that it was accessible by horseback and boat)
6 … years that Boca Chica has had a paved road (prior to that it was a bone rattling dirt road that required a 4×4)
10 … miles, the length of the beach at Playa Las Lajas
$30 … cost per night to stay at Neilly’s on the beach at Las Lajas
18 … the age I was when I got my first guitar, so I’ve theoretically been “playing” for 12 years
15 … times I’ve taken the guitar out of hiding and tickled its strings (I intended to make so much music on this trip!)
35 … songs I’ve collected that have something to say about the sea, a soundtrack of sorts – I plan to do an acoustic cover of these songs
14 … cans of random vegetables and fruits that I ate up as a part of the pantry challenge while Jeff was away (we’re not done with the challenge just yet!)
1.5 … pounds of random grains I had to throw away because they had either been infested with bugs or were growing some type of mold
9 … years that it has been illegal to sell wild animals such as parrots and monkeys, a crime punished by the Law Nº 24 of June 7 1995, and Executive Decree 43 of July 7, 2004 – despite this law we still see wild animals for sale along the Pan-American highway
101 … millimeters, length of a tarantula we discovered in our friends’ bathroom in Boca Chica
3 … other cruising boats who dropped in to Boca Chica for a visit(!!!), including our friends on SV Wanuskewin and SV Apsaras – we thoroughly enjoyed their company
55 … degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature of the ocean off of the coast of Oregon where Jeff was visiting with his family…he informed me that he did not go swimming
0 … neat shells Jeff’s family was able to find on the beach with our nephew Darren – the exhaustive (and ultimately unfruitful) search led them to the nearby souvenir shop where they purchased some fun shells then placed them strategically around the beach for Darren to find – grand parenting at its best
3 … years that Jeff and I have been married – Happy Anniversary to us!