Oh, the time has finally come! We’re off to Kuna Yala either tomorrow or the next day. It’s exciting and there’s the bitter-sweet taste of facing new adventures while saying goodbye to very special friends and memories in Puerto Lindo.
Whether Alex and I stay together for a long time or not, this will always be the place where we met and fell in love and where we discovered we could actually be with someone right for us, with the same dreams and values, a passion for freedom, traveling, the arts, cuisine, nature and a healthy lifestyle. But most of all, we’ve finally found ourselves ready to build a cool nest with someone we don’t want to change, and that we couldn’t, even if we tried. We’re ready to love and face life together without having to settle or give in. Things just flow. And when they sometimes don’t, we bring out all the patience in us to survive the storm, without causing permanent damage to our love. We have finally grown up, choose reality over fantasy, and it gives us a great sense of accomplishment.
Alex posted a beautiful blog today and I feel it would be interesting to write one myself, to try and portray once more what happens from the woman’s point of view.
Funnily enough, our good friends and next-boat-neighbors Manny and Raffi (the only friends my age around here) are also leaving tomorrow or the next day and I can see many parallel situations going on. Both Manny and Alex have been saying they would leave soon for the past couple of weeks. In the last few days, when they started feeling the date was actually approaching, they both started working non-stop all day in the heat or underwater, making sure all the mechanical issues were solved and that their vessel was ready to face the seas.
Meanwhile, Raffi and I have been really busy as well, making lists of the things we will need for our next destinations (we’re are pretty close to Panama City and Colon right now to buy almost anything, but they are off to Bocas del Toro, a good 12-hour bus trip, and we’re going to be miles away from any town as well), doing laundry in salt water waiting for the rain to be able to rinse it, storing away piles of food and things lying around the boat but, most of the time, cleaning after our workers. You have no idea what our homes look like while our men are working on one project, picture three or four projects happening at the same time! We can’t put any tools away because they will need them again later. There’s oil, dust, wood shavings, dirt, cable rotten ends, screws, a whole spectrum of materials you don’t want under your bare feet when you’re cooking or coming out of the shower.
They work all day, in the heat, poor things, sweating like pigs, swearing like vikings, angry when something does not work out and you are trying to still have a good pleasant day while you try to make the mountain of shopping fit in the pantry -and the few spaces that are not filled with tools, paint, rope and spare parts- and clean up a bit so that you don’t get another splinter in your toe while being interrupted every minute and a half because they need you to pass them something, turn the inverter or the engine on and off or see if the numbers change somewhere. You can’t and you don’t blame them of course, they truly need you to hand them that flathead screwdriver when they are buried deep into a small coffin under the cockpit seat. But after two or three hours the swearing starts to get on your nerves. “Honey, can you keep the anger to yourself for an hour or so, I’m up to my eyes too baby, getting interrupted every ten seconds, but still trying to have a nice day”. It’s hilarious because Raffi told me the exact same thing, “we women have to be so patient sometimes” and I said “I don’t know why they get so upset when things don’t work out immediately, they always fix it in the end but they’ll have a heart attack one day in the middle of it”. They say “I’m interrupting you because I really need a hand, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to”. And we go “that’s not what I’m saying, I’m always happy to help you and you know it, I’m just complaining about the end-of-the-world atmosphere in the room, just take it easy please, nobody is rushing you, don’t go crazy, you’re stressing me out and nothing’s wrong. Just have some patience, bebé, you’ll figure it out, all we have is time!”.
What is even funnier is that I’m sure they say exactly the same thing about us from the opposite side, that we have no patience while they’re working so hard. Both Raffi and I have a slower, more relaxed, optimistic personality and I’m sure it drives them crazy when they have to wait for us to do something or when they find us naive or too positive. I talk solely about myself now, but my PMS days can be quite a challenge as well, I get very sensitive. Alex and I were laughing the other day looking for a PMS alert application for the iPhone and there were a few different ones available! So funny.
But there was another wonderful coincidence between Brava and Splendid. Now that we are about to finally leave, the universe, once more, smiled at us and let us know we are on the right path.
A few weeks ago, Manny told us that even though he knew work on a boat is never finished, he would be happy to spend 5,000 dollars and he would be done for a while: he wanted to buy a new, stronger chain for his anchor and a spare starter and alternator. A couple of days later, a friend of his came back to the anchorage and gave him around 300 feet of a very good chain for only 200 dollars. He was so happy! Later that week he asked Raffi to look for something deep in one of the closets and she found a big bag she hadn’t seen before. She brought it to him and it was a starter! Alex knew he had a few alternators on the boat, he found one yesterday and gave it to him. So… in only a few days and for 200 dollars he had everything he wanted.
In our case, last Saturday we borrowed a lot of fuel jugs, rented a car and went to Colon to spend all the money we had left on diesel for the engine, gasoline for the dinghy and generator and groceries for our long stay at San Blas. Alex had been wanting to have his tanks full for about a year and a half. Every time he had some cash to spend he would put a couple of jugs in but never managed to fill it. He checked the tanks and calculated we needed to buy 100 gallons. We first visited a few shops to buy paint and a couple of other things. Then we went to the supermarket and had to decide how much of the money we would spend there and how much we would leave for the gas station. As you can imagine, instead of a tank full and a half-full kitchen, I wanted to make sure we had plenty of beans, lentils, rice, pasta, tomato paste, salt, etc. We started putting things in the cart and adding costs mentally but it was crazy. In the end we relaxed, bought what we really needed and had like 300 dollars left.
Alex was a bit disappointed, he was going to be 30 gallons short and he had no money left to order a couple of hard drives he needed for the film. When we got home, I started putting the food away and he put the fuel into the tanks. He suddenly called me over really excited: he had miscalculated the space and they were now actually full, with only 3 extra gallons in the last jug. A-ma-zing! But that is not all. We had asked my brother a few days ago if he could send us a link of where we could buy cheap drives online. That night he sent Alex an email saying that he had a couple of spare ones sitting in his house and that he wouldn’t mind delivering them to him personally with his wife in two weeks!! We could afford exactly all the food and fuel we needed, the drives were coming sooner than expected, for free, and I would have my brother with me in Kuna Yala soon!
So, our homes have been a bit of a rollercoaster these last few days. Manny and Raffi have had Brava for about a year, so they are also saying goodbye to a special place where they finished putting their floating home in shape to travel the world together. We saw them from our cockpit half an hour ago, they were laughing and diving into the water from the bow pulpit. I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures. Alex joined me with his better zoom, they saw us and went back up to pose for a couple more dives. Then they swam to our boat, we jumped in as well and had a laugh hanging out in the water with them and sharing stories. It was obvious in everyone’s faces that we are all stoked to be sailing away but we know that we’ll miss each other. We have been talking about maybe crossing the Pacific together sometime in the future. Time will tell but it’s so nice to make new friends and hope to cross paths again.
This is the travelers’ bitter-sweet reality. One is always leaving and always arriving. Each trip, each new country, each new period in our lives is so real and defined. We experience everyday as if it was the last. Because each day is unique: you go to bed knowing that you’ve met some wonderful new people, you’ve seen new landscapes, you’ve tried a new dish you hadn’t even heard of before, you’ve experienced a different culture and seen your own under a new light. And then, when you catch a bus to go somewhere (or when your home sets sail and starts rolling on the waves) your eyes fill with tears as you realize that something is over and something new is about to begin. A new life adventure. And I believe that’s the key to happiness, in the sea, the mountains, the jungle or the city. Living each day as if it was your last one.
