The overnight trip to Isla Isabele was sadly dull. We had a great breeze that carried us until around 8 pm then we had to motor until we anchored at 8am the next morning.

Approaching Isabele

Anchoring felt super dodgy. The bay was fairly open to the swell and we were watching it smash against the rocks sending up 10 feet of white water. And we were supposed to anchor near that? It was impossible not to imagine Asunto getting smashed against the shore. But imagination is not reality, so we set the hook clear of obstacles and settled in for two nights.

Nothing like watching waves hurl themselves against rock directly astern

On the second day we went for a bit of a walk- but I was super hot and the smell of bird shit was making me nauseous. Not to mention that Kyber was going crazy on the leash trying to chase the lizards- well as crazy as Kyber gets. They must have reminded him of squirrels. But the cool part were the frigate birds. They circled the island in the hundreds and nested in the trees at eye level. The males were displaying their full red red plumage while some momma sat on eggs. Other nests were older and the babes looked ready to fly pretty soon. It was completely amazing, and Fynn was in awe.

A male showing his colors

The bay and the birds

We left that afternoon for another overnight sail to La Cruz. This time we sailed a good chunk of it before motoring into the anchorage. Just to make it more interesting we arrived around 4 am, and to add another layer we no longer have charts for this area so we had to rely on radar and the GPS positions of a just rocks listed in our guidebooks. Funny how necessary we find GPS and radar and charts when sailors have been going without for centuries. Although they probably would just have waited for daylight before heading in to anchor.

We planned to stay just two nights – marina’s are usually our thing. But after one day is was clear we would need to stay longer, this was just too much fun and way to easy! It helped that El Cid had a special on – 7 nights for the price of 5, and the our friends from Yare were also staying the week. Suddenly we were transplanted into a vacation. We had free run of the beautiful resort and fantastic pools. Fynn spent 6 hours in the pool the first day and developed blisters on her toes that didn’t heal until well after we left.  We swam -a lot – visited Mazatland and generally just relaxed. It was quite lovely really and well worth the $35 USD per night. We even paid to have some one wash, polish and wax our hull, top decks and cockpit. I just wasn’t up to the work in the heat and you could beat the price of $250 USD including materials. By the end of the week we were well rested, Asunto was sparkling and we had painted new markers on our anchor chain. We were ready to go!