We approached the anchorage at Escudo de Veraguas in the early morning as we wanted to make sure we didn’t hit any shallow reef. When we arrived it was beautiful.
Tarpon Tip
We found a good spot to anchor. There was a long beach about 4 km long. You could hear the waves crashing on the beach. There was crystal clear water the colour and texture of a swimming pool. There was sand on the bottom. There were not a lot of fish swimming around, though. When we settled down then we all put the tender in the water. After that my mom and I went swimming. It was really nice.
Meanwhile dad was repairing the autopilot, under supervision of Doug.
Then after swimming around a bit my dad asked us if we were swimming to the island. We said yes and went to prepare. It took a while but we got there in the end and walked around on the beach. We paddled back because my mom brought the kayak. So then we had lunch and relaxed.
In the afternoon it started getting hot so I went for a swim. I was swimming around the boat peacefully, diving up and down, playing in the water and then out of nowhere I see this huge fish, I mean HUGE, and I am like ‘that’s not a barracuda, I better get out!’ So I quickly got out and told the first person I saw. I was really scared! So multiple times I got in the water and then out again because I kept on seeing that freaky fish that looked like it would like a Gitane taster. But the last time I saw that fish my dad saw him too. So now I know that he is a tarpon. He was about 10 kilos. We marked that anchorage as “Tarpon Tip” on our maps.
At night we celebrated Doug’s birthday with a chicken curry.
The next morning we were getting ready to go to the second anchorage. When I went outside to hang up my towel, guess what I saw??? A tarpon ten times bigger than the last one. So, the anchorage really deserved its name! No one else saw it, though. Sadly :-(.
Gitane