San Carlos–From The Backlog

Even though Mag Bay is certifiably ginormous, there’s not a lot of buildup, so to speak. It’s chock-full of scenic wonder and amazing wildlife and not much else. Awesome for relaxing and recharging your soul and all, but kind of inconvenient when your frickety-fracking whatisit finally gives up the ghost and there is NO HOPE of replacing it in the town you’re anchored off of. We decided to anchor off of Puerto Magdalena because blah blah sheltered blerrg bleh quaint blippity bloop and so on and so forth. Also because the channel leading into San Carlos, the only actual “port” in the bay, goes through super shallow water and looks like it was made by a couple of kindergartners. Who were falling down drunk off of some fermented Capri-Suns they liberated from under the couch cushions.

The isolation was not such a big deal until I lost the broom. Well…half of it anyway. Stupid metal handle had been secretly corroding away on the inside. There I was, briskly sweeping the decks in preparation for swabbing the decks. Frequent saltwater swabbery is very important on a boat with teak decks, otherwise you end up with 152 leaks on all your beds, electronics, and basically anything else that isn’t totally waterproof. So yeah…Sweep. Ah lovely day! Sweep. Getting the decks squared away! Swee–rrrk! WTF? Aaaand I’m watching the sweeper part of the broom catapult itself between the railing and plunk gracefully down, into the water. Really?

Thank the Sweet Baby Jesus that Robin on Pioneiro was there to bail me out. “Don’t worry, there’s a market in San Carlos,” she said. “It’s great, we can get there by panga. It’ll be fun!” It was. We were zipping across the water, just kind of hanging on for dear life, with huge doofy grins on our faces. The open air market had exactly what I needed. Spent like 50 pesos on the best broom I’ve ever owned and got to eat excellent street food, to boot.