Through the Eyes of Louise: Cruising the Islands of Las Perlas

We go from one beautiful little island to the next. Drop anchor in the dark and wake up all exited to see if this place is as beautiful as the last little bay. Jump straight in the clear water from the boat and relax surrounded by the most beautiful scenery. as you drink coffee and dry off in the sun. Paddle the kayak right onto the beach and enter a new island to be explored for the first time…almost! RIGHT: Louise Bech, 33, is an Architect from Denmark

This is the first time I have experienced cruising islands by boat, and it is wonderful. I realize that arriving in a new place with a forty-nine feet sailboat instead of a ten liter backpack makes traveling quite a different experience! The three main questions on a backpackers mind are where to sleep, what to eat and how to get to the next place? This is all taken care of by the boat, and in this case to an extent that makes living extremely easy and comfortable – a smooth running boat, comfortable beds, hot showers, hammocks on the deck, movie nights with surround sound, cold drinks in the freezer and great people to hang out with. Food is not a problem either as this boat is loaded with more canned tuna and chocolate, than fuel! On top of that we are provided with all kinds of toys to explore the water that now surrounds us. And we have great days in Las Perlas going on trips in the dinghy and kayaks, swimming, snorkeling and diving.

What really adds excitement to this way of traveling though is that it does not take much before “you playing in the ocean” turns to “the ocean playing with you”! We realized this as an unusually great difference between high and low tide resulted in the beautiful “Wanderlust” getting grounded late at night in a dark little bay at the Island Pedro Gonzales, were we had dropped anchor for the night. Within a short time our “home” and everything in it stood on the bottom of the bay at a forty-five degree angle! As we had no power to change the situation we took the only reasonable course of action - to open another bottle of red wine and wait for everything to fall back into place – actually not a bad night!
Trying to paddle against the current in a dinghy from Isla Bartolome back to Contadora was another challenge at sea, and a test of social skills for three people in a very small dinghy under a very hot sun (one of whom was desperate to catch a lobster, but had to go for canned tuna again…).Luckily we were rescued by local fishermen!

We left Las Perlas after a week full of adventures, to experience the real Pacific Ocean and six days at sea!!! It is very strange and very beautiful out here - there is sooo much space all around and yet nowhere to go! In a way here is nothing, but then again there are so many kinds of blue in the sky and the sea – from black to silver, from clear to dusty. There are constant changes in the surface of the water and the formation of the clouds. All the stars that surround you at night, the sunsets and the moon that gets bigger and bigger and sets as a red glowing ball in the middle of the night.

There are different sounds and textures of the water - smooth and soft as it feels on your bodies when we go swimming in the middle of the Pacific, and hard and rough as it appears when it lifts the bow of the boat from the surface and slams it back down again – making you sleep like a spider all spread out on the bed. Still, after a very long, clouded day four with no wind and where the gage seems to be stuck at “sixty hours to go”, I start to get restless and I am not the only one…quite often our fellow traveler, Tom the pilot, crashes into the cockpit yelling “are we there yet?” The panic growing in his eyes, he argues he could have gone tree times around the world by now, and that he parks his jet at the gate at the same speed we are going! Time takes on another dimension out here – it takes some getting used to, I guess.


It is a great adventure experiencing this big open space, the wind in the sails, the salt, wind and sun on your skin and the excitement when playing dolphins, a whale or flying fish brake the surface – and it’s the little things that bring you great pleasure, like when a bird follows the boat at night, the wind suddenly picks up, someone brings you a hot cup of tea on your watch, or a cold glass of wine while you watch the sunset – it’s not bad...it’s not bad at all…

Thank you so much Mike.