sv evi

03/01/2007

With the sweet 5 day passage behind us, Guava firmly has the hook set in a safe estuary in front of Puerto Amistad. Not really a marina, it does offer moorings for rent but we have opted for a more private spot away from the 25 other vessels. We pay a fee for the use of the dinghy dock, showers, laundry and wash water. The sleepy town of Bahia was perfect for Guava to rest and serve as a base for our Ecuador adventures. A few good, cheap restaurants for us and many hardware stores for Guava provided most of the items necessary in preparing for the long pacific passage to come.

In our 2 months here we reaquainted some old friends and met many new ones. Our first order of business was to deliver the 45lb anchor we hualed from Panama for the cat S/V Fifth Season. Not an easy item to send thru the mail and they were grateful for the help. David and Gail had been taking a paragliding certification that we heard about thru Randy on S/V Otter and convinced us that this would be a good use of our time while here.

Caraquez

So we soon met Greg, a certified instructor from Kentucky, who has been living here for a few years and is firmly settled with his flight school, local wife Claudia and their new son Harlan. He is also building houses here in-between flights. Check out flycanoa.com.

Upon returning from travelling we immediately started the beach training and learning to control the kite. Paragliding is nothing like skydiving or parasailing, but similiar to hangliding where you actually ‘fly’ the wing and climb in altitude after a launch. This made it easy for Courtney to learn since she has a hangliding experience. The training launch for FlyCanoa is perfectly sloped, situated 200ft above the beach for consistent wind conditions and a large open landing zone. This is where we would hone our skills with many launch/landings over the next month. We would eventually work up to a perfect launch and soar for 2 hours before returning to the beach.

Canoa was a daily mini-vacation for us. The ferry ride across the estuary and flagging down an at capacity local bus up the coast put us there somewhere between 50 minutes up to 2 hours. Straight to the Hostal Coco Loco, a backpacker lodging run by Rika and Franz, was our base. I had brought and stored my surfboard and whitewater kayak for the times the wind was not right and managed to get a few rides on both. We also spent at least one meal a day Cafe Flor….yum!!

Post flying was the same everytime. To the Cocoloco for happyhour and debating whether to catch the last bus or stay the night. Usually running for the bus at dusk we also did stay a few times, catch a cab and even piled in the back of a pick-up. Appropriately we had our graduation here with champagne, cigars and happyhour. Thanks Greg!!

Canoa Flyin’