The eastern Caribbean has been a disappointment, although that's no doubt partly due to rushing through everything between Saba and Bequia. The places we seem to enjoy the most are the ones we spend a lot of time in and really get to know. But the reefs all seem to be dead and fished out, the trails are hot and muddy, and one island town is pretty much like the next. The relentless heat of the tropical summer is beating down our energy, so that more often than not we find ourselves curled up in a shady corner of the cockpit, or on a settee below carefully positioned under the airflow of an open hatch. The anchorages are crowded with older retired American and Canadian couples with whom we have little in common. (Many other cruisers we've talked with share these feelings. Most who have spent time in the Bahamas miss the crystal-clear water teeming with sea life, the quiet anchorages, and the large number of uninhabited islands, as we do.)
We haven't even gotten yet to some of the places we've heard good things about, such as Dominica, since we needed to hurry south before hurricane season set in. We figured we'd see them all on the return trip, as we were planning to return to the US by the same route we took south. But now we're thinking about doing something different -- circumnavigating the Caribbean.
We'd talked to several cruisers who raved about the western Caribbean, and after borrowing some guidebooks and reading articles in our back stock of SSCA bulletins and cruising magazines, we started getting more interested. Continuing west to Panama would mean we could travel with some of the cruisers we've met who are planning to transit the canal, such as Hallelujah and Oddly Enough. Then we could sign on as line handlers for their transits. Cruisers we've talked with who have gone through the canal rate it as a highlight, and it would be the best of all worlds to go through the canal on somebody else's boat!
Other stops on this route include the historic city of Cartagena (the only safe place to visit in Colombia, and recommended in every article we've read), Panama's San Blas Islands, Guatemala's Rio Dulce, and the islands off the Belize, Honduran, and Mexican coasts. We're attracted to the Hispanic countries because we enjoyed the Dominican Republic so much, because of both the culture and the history. On the other hand, Venezuela, Honduras, and Mexico have bureaucratic regulations which are particularly onerous to cruisers, requiring lots of legwork, paperwork, and fees (some official and some not). (The DR has similar regulations, but as we only stopped in one port, we had little difficulty.) The San Blas Islands are home to the indigenous Kuna, who from our research sound as money-hungry as any corrupt official, demanding a fee of $5 or $6 at each island for anchoring privileges.
Whether we go around to the west or back up the east, we still plan to visit Venezuela. If we choose to continue to Panama, we won't have to beat back against the trade winds to get back to the Windwards after cruising Venezuela -- but we'll pay for it with the tough ride north. We'll have to do several multi-day passages. The charts are not as detailed. We'll need to buy more guidebooks and courtesy flags. Our Spanish will get a workout. It will be a greater challenge, and a greater adventure.
We don't need to decide yet. (Which is a good thing, considering that it's hard enough for cruisers to just make plans for the next day!) We'll see what the next few months bring.