Boat Tour

I was supposed to go to visit Chuck Stephen's property on the South eastern end of Isla Bastimentos [SHOW MAP]. I showed up at Janpan, his boat touring company at 10:00 as agreed. He said that he had to go tend to a stranded boat and asked if I wanted to go with him. We walked back to my apartment building and took the door next to my unit which leads to the dock outside my kitchen window. He has a 30' glass 150 four stroke shuttle boat docked there.

We stopped by Janpan, picked up some gas and Manuel, my driver (I can't call them captain, sorry) from yesterday and we headed out. Eight people on a small boat transferred onto the boat I was on. Chuck took the helm of the other boat and the driver of that boat became the driver of the boat I was on. I just joined the tour.

The first stop was Dolphin Bay nestled between and island and clumps of mangrove. The jellyfish were plentiful. Dolphins frequently surfaced a non playful, "Hey I'm just coming up for air." It was actually kind of boring as I have seen hundreds of dolphins, but my fellow boat passengers found it very exciting. I tried to get them into the old pre fireworks warm up "Ohhhhhhh, Ahhhh." One of the boat drivers would take off at high speed, throwing up a wake and then stop and the dolphins would jump. I convinced our driver to drive three times in a circle around the clump of boats and throw a wake. The boats in the middle rocked but nobody seemed to care as now the dolphins began to fully breach.

Next we stopped off at a restaurant and the driver explained to Martin, the only Spanish speaking passenger what was happening. The interpretation was we were going to order food but take it with us. But that wasn't right, we were going to order food and not eat it and not take it with us. Yup they needed hours of advance notice to feed 9 people.

We then proceeded to "Parque Nacional Marino Isla Bastimentos". Very interesting as this was on a different island. It was very small, I walked the whole perimeter in half an hour and didn't see anything much more than crystal clear blue water, pristine white sand beaches, lots of sandpipers, a few gulls and skink or gecko. When I returned to what I believed to be the starting point there was no evidence of my fellow passengers. I walked past the spot and back to where I thought we were dropped off and Janpan II was now offshore. I approached the unattended cooler on the shore, extracted my water and took a good long swig.

We then returned to the restaurant and ordered our meals, by our names and were promptly served. The fried plantain needed a little spicing up more than the tabasco like picante they had at the table so I returned to the ordering counter and struggled with "Necesito salsa muy caliente". I was handed a plastic bottle that smelled like habenaro salsa. Now things were cooking. I slathered my plantain and said "now that is more like it." Martin, the guy who was translating picked up the bottle and I said "careful, that's hot." He put some on his plantain and his eyes lit up and he broke out in a mild sweat. His friend Dan, at the end of the table asked for someone to pass the salad dressing. The only thing that could pass for salad dressing on the table was vinegar and oil and it was directly in front of him. I picked up the habenaro salsa and said "Do you mean this?" Martin winked at me and gave me a big grin. So, I passed it down. He doused his lettuce with it and took a bite and said "SHIT!" It wasn't that hot, he took it in stride.

Next we went snorkelling in some pretty strong current. The boat had a lot of nubes. The snorkels were pretty gross, there were green and black life forms on the mouth pieces of some of them. After you dive down here you should really clorox those things. The two girls from Vancouver were going to be trouble, one wore a life vest that didn't come close to fitting her and the other went out without a mask or a snorkel. Not much you can see without a mask.

I think I was the only person capable of swimming against the current to the boat. Why the boat wasn't drifting with us I don't understand, it wasn't anchored. I stuck with the Canadian girl who had no life jacket, the others seemed like strong swimmers or had life jackets on. I told her, "just relax, you're in salt water you won't sink." Then I made her float face down with the mask on. By this time we had drifted past all the coral. I signalled for the boat to come get us, we all got aboard and agreed it was pretty cool.

We took a vote on whether we should try to snorkel again at Hospital Point and reached a concensus that would should go despite the fact that it was described as "profundo" (deep). We pulled within 15 meters of shore at Hospital point and it was awesome. You could snorkel in 2 feet of water as the water was so calm. Coral went from above the water to about 3 meters and then there was a "wall" divers parlance for an underwater cliff.

Everybody had a spectacular time at Hospital Point. This was not as dramatic as seeing sharks, morays, octupuses, barracuda, and big grouper but it was relaxing and very pretty.

About 4:30 we headed back to port, said our goodbyes and went our respective ways.