Portobelo & the Rio Cascaja

Date: 25th February, 2024

Where am I? 

Latitude: 09°22.1N

Longitude: 079°57.0W

Berthed at Shelter Bay Marina, inside the breakwater at the entrance to the Caribbean side of the Panama Canal.

How is the weather?

Hot and sunny with scattered rain clouds – pretty normal.

What am I feeling?

I’m now reconciled to the fact that we will not be able to transit the Canal until Monday, 1st April. And while this is quite frustrating, it does give us time to visit old friends in Mexico City and Huatulco and to see Oaxaca, the home of fine mezcal! Shelter Bay Marina is a good spot to leave Fujin for a short while as we get our land legs back.

What has happened this week?

We departed the San Blas Islands on Monday 19th February for the relatively short hop to Porto Linton and, after a very rolly night there at anchor, we continued on the 20 miles to Portobelo. 

Portobelo is the site of the first Spanish customs post in the Americas and was therefore the target of many British privateers such as Sir Francis Drake (who died of dysentery just off Portobelo), Sir Henry Morgan and Admiral Edward Vernon. It was in honour of Vernon’s capture of Portobelo in 1739 that the eponymous areas of London, Edinburgh and Dublin were named and the anthem Rule Britannia was composed as part of the celebrations of the battle.

The bay is indeed a beautiful one – a long indentation, surrounded by lush, verdant jungle and well protected from the prevailing winds. The water is somewhat murky due to the fact that a river empties into it, through a fringing band of mangrove. We took our dinghy around a large lagoon at the head of the bay to see a couple of locals in their canoes with their dogs, apparently hunting for iguana along the water’s edge. 

Patrick and I spent a day riding horses up the Rio Cascaja river to see a waterfall and a hidden lagoon. The initial part of the ride follows the last section of the Camino Real, the road used by the Spanish to transport gold, silver and silks from the Pacific side of the isthmus to Portobelo, for onward shipment to Spain.  Riding upriver with the cool waters up to the horses’ bellies and without any sign of civilisation, it appeared that nothing had really changed since the Camino Real was in heavy use 300 or 400 years ago and more. The primordial forest reaching up with its interlacing branches providing a welcome respite from the sun’s oppressive glare, the rushing of the river over a bed of slippery, smooth stones, the haunting, distant cry of howler monkeys announcing the impending rain: all bespoke a rhythm as old as time itself, unbesmirched by the hand of man.

Yet, on the way back, we did notice a certain amount of rubbish left lying around…. Next time, we should take along some rubbish bags and a litter picker so we can clean up as we go along…

If you go to Portobelo, be sure to visit Francesco at his Restaurante Casa Vela – he’s an interesting and entertaining Apulian, resident in Panama for more than a decade and running a simple but good Italian restaurant on the water’s edge, with the magic ingredient of a serviceable dinghy dock right outside. No doubt he will also expound upon the magic ingredient of his pasta carbonara – guanciale imported direct from Italy.

After a relaxing few days at anchor in Portobelo, we sailed across to Shelter Bay with all sail out on a beam reach with around 15 knots of apparent wind, sailing steadily at 8.0 to 9.5 knots – a really satisfying way to bid farewell to the Atlantic as we prepare for the next phase of our trip.

We’ll now be on land for a while as we visit old friends in Mexico, so the next blog won’t be until 24th March when we will be back aboard.

Fujin out!