Chagres River

Tags: Chagres River, Panama, food, sailing

Date: February 10, 2022

After spending a long time at Shelter Bay Marina, it was finally time to head out. We started by going up the Chagres River. You can see Fort San Lorenzo in the distance as we started motoring up the river:

Here we are at anchor:

We stayed for six days and spent quite a bit of time exploring the small tributaries in our dinghy:

Here we are out on the main river looking back at Amanda in the distance on the way to another tributary:

We could hear howler monkeys and lots of different birds when moving around in our dinghy.

We have a solar cooker on board which is like a little tent with one side transparent and reflective material on the other sides. By pointing it at the sun, the temperature reaches over 80 degrees Celsius, so warm enough for slow cooking. Here, we are cooking spare ribs at the front of the boat:

The vultures and other large birds seemed to notice (probably by smell) our project, so they started circling the boat:

We ended up using a plastic bag as a scarecrow by hanging it over the solar oven.

Here is a partly destroyed bridge from another trip up a small tributary:

It was probably built by the Americans when the area was part of their military base.

Even in the dry season, it sometimes rains:

Apart from going around in the dinghy, we also went on a few small hikes in the jungle. Here is Felicie at a second destroyed bridge similar to the one shown above:

The jungle is very lush, and sometimes difficult to penetrate:

A fallen tree regrowing on the river:

We saw quite a bit of wildlife. Here is a fairly large predatory bird, probably a black hawk:

Later we saw one chasing a heron.

A group of howler monkeys in a tree:

Notice the young one at the bottom of the picture only holding on by its tail.

The bottom monkey in this picture got tired of us and started howling: