SV/SOMF: Bahia Del Coco!

I was sad to leave our awesome anchorage, but it was time to move on, we needed to head 40 miles to Bahia Del Coco, the town El Coco to check into the country so we could all be legal. We had an easy motor down, no fish, but Skeeter and I did see a lot of dolphins.

I am not very good at getting the dolphins when there are close up and in the air!

We arrived and anchored in Playa Panama around 2:50pm on Sunday, we could not check in until Monday so we had a quiet evening on the boat after first jumping in the water to cool off. The next morning Jerry, Sam and Mitch all jumped into the dinghy to go to shore to start the check in possesses, and what a process it was. First of all, we were not supposed to anchor in Panama, we needed to anchor in Del Coco, but it looked to full for us to all fit. They first jumped on a bus to go to El Coco which was just a few kilometers away, but the bus dropped them off at the wrong spot, so luckily a cab came by and picked them up. After a couple of hours at the port captain, and then immigrations the cab brought them back to the boat where we waited for an inspector from the agriculture department to show up. Sam transported the inspector back and forth to the boat and after about a 2 minute inspection by dinghy back to the beach. The guys then had the cab come back and pick them up at 2:30pm to go back to the Port Captains to get their paperwork. They then were told that the next morning they needed to go to the town of Liberia to customs to finish the checking procedure. The next morning they met the cab driver at 8:30am on the road off playa Panama and headed 25km to the town of Liberia. When the three guys got back to the boats, we decided to go move to the anchorage at Del Coco to be closer to the little town of El Coco. So around 12:00 pm we pulled up anchor and motored the 2 miles to Del Coco, which the anchorage was quite full, but the three boats found room near the northern most part of the anchorage. That evening since it was Sam’s birthday we went ashore and had dinner at Beach Bums Bar and Grill.

We had some great food at a pretty reasonable price, we then pulled back off the beach, which was not as hard of surf landings like some that we have had, and headed back to the boats. The anchorage was rolly, probably one of the worst rolly anchorages that we have been in. We stayed to days going to shore for some provisions (by the way, they use colones currency money in Costa Rica, and 500 colones equals 1 US Dollar…so imagine trying to do some major provisioning) and some shopping and had breakfast at Woody’s that had 7 dollar buffet breakfast.