Panama to Providencia

By Ella Modesitt

We left the Kuna Yala islands early in the morning, sailing over to Puerto Lindo.   On the way we caught a Blackfin Tuna.  We had sushi that night!

Climbing the jib, I’m 19 feet off the sea!!

It was fun to be on the mainland again, we heard lots and lots and lots and lots of birds and monkeys.  Monkeys talked from three different places surrounding us.   “whhooo, whooo, heee, whoooo” the howler monkeys screamed from troop to troop.  Monkeys make really loud howls when it is about to rain.  They made a racket and then it rained.  We went on a dinghy expedition to some islands and there was a house that the monkeys had taken over.  A monkey swung from the porch into the house!  It was really funny.

His face looked like a tiger with whiskers all over, a tail that was longer than him and really long arms and legs.  When I climb up the halyard line hand over hand I pretend a monkey is climbing with me.  We can climb together.

Our family was hanging out up front on

Camels in the jungle??

Rivers2Seas.  Chase and I were playing pirate

games.  And then, mom said “Is that a camel over there?”  I said, “ahh mommy, camels live in the hot desert.”  It’s hot here but it’s hotter in the desert because there is no water.  We looked through the binoculars and saw that it was really a camel with one hump.  I think the camel took a wrong turn.

The star!

So we were walking through town and I see my name on the store right there.  “La recuerdo de ella,” which means the the memory of ella (her).  The houses were made out of concrete and very colorful.  All sorts of colors, my favorite was a bright pink house.  Chases’ and

mommys’ favorite was a green house the color of a green apple.  Daddy’s favorite was the orange house.

Portobello was our next anchorage.  The museum told us about lots and lots of pirates.  It

one of the cool forts here

was attacked seven times by pirates like Henry Morgan.  Hiking to the fort, we had to cross and itsy bitsy plank that went over the moat.  Inside there were bunches of canons pointed out to sea to hit ships.  I’m glad that they didn’t sink Rivers2Seas.  We went to four different forts.  One fort we had to hike and hike all the way up the hill.  I know why they built the fort up so high because the pirates would get so tired climbing up that they would turn around.

From Portobello we sailed to Colon, which is where the Panama Canal is located.  We couldn’t go to town because people were fighting and shooting because they were mad at the government.  We went swimming in the pool at the marina instead and walked through the jungle.  Monkeys threw poop at us!  We ran for it.  I’m glad they didn’t hit us.  Chase found a turtle and we all yelled, “Turtle! Turtle!”

We had a tea party in the marina lawn with mommy, Liz, Sue and me.  It was really pretty and we played I spy.  I even got to do the last one, which was really hard.  It was the tea, which was brown.  Winston, Sue’s teddy bear, and Tianna, Aurora, Barbie and Cindy Loo Who all came to the tea party too.  We ate some yummy cake.

When we were leaving, I was sad because we wouldn’t see Sue and Andy on Spruce for a long time.  They are heading to the Pacific and we are heading north.  We sailed for two nights and two days straight.

Sailing we put up the jib and the main and we sailed for a long, long time.  My dad caught a medium sized Mahi Mahi – yummy!  I see mostly waves and blank for ever.   We were in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the ocean.  My dad said that we were 150 miles from land.  Chase and I played silly games together.  Mom and dad watched out for reefs and boats.  At night, Chase and I went to sleep in the salon with the table down for a big bed.  Mom and dad took night watches.  Daddy goes up for half the night and then mom for half the night and then dad for half the night and then mom for half the night.  It’s not so easy sailing all night.

In the morning I said “where’s land?”  I wasn’t looking the other way and it was right

Land Ho!!!

there!  I saw big green fluffy mountains.  It felt good to see land.  I realized that we had found Never Land.  I took out my all about fairy instruction book and looked at the map and saw that it was Never Land.  The split in the mountain was Pixie Hollow, and I thought I saw a little lake that was mermaid lagoon, the cave was captain hooks treasure cave, two big mountains and Never Never peak all assured me that this was Never Land.  We anchored in the Cove.  Good thing that Captain Hook was not there.