 |
August |
Jump to updates:
30 August - Still in Cartagena
Not much has occurred since the last update, we are still in Cartagena and still anchored off.
The Chiva and Independence Day
We celebrated Colombia's independence day back in July by dancing with the locals in the Yacht Club, drinking free rum punch and eating free food that they put on.
We have taken a trip on the local party bus 'La Chiva' around the city with a few friends. Lots of terrible entertainment, fire throwing and the like, then on to a club.
Click here to see pics of The Chiva and Independence day.
We have seen people come and people leave, but we are still here!
The cat has taken his first drop into the water, we have no idea how he fell in and no idea how he got himself out, all we do know is he was very wet, which he clearly let us know by leaping over the toilet door and jumping straight onto the bed. He has also had some close encounters with the fly catching plates (very sticky plates), where we have been woken up on more than one occasion with a mental cat running around with a plate stuck to his side! (Its a shame we never got any pictures as he did look very amusing!)
A new president has been inaugurated, we were a little worried about this as apparently last time it happened here, 5 car bombs were set off in the city. So we laid low for the 4 days when this was taking place. There was a large military presence around the city and we never heard of anything radical occurring. The most traumatising thing for most of the boaters was the fact that all the shops stopped selling alcohol for the time this was happening. Most people didn't even know the inauguration was taking place, which was quite a good thing otherwise there would have been a frenzy of boaters all over the shop panic buying rum!
We took a guided tour around the city with a few other boaters, we visited a lot of museums and were told the history of the Plazas. We stopped for a fantastically cheap lunch at a Pizza/Pasta restaurant, a 3 course meal of soup, chicken, rice, beans and Salad and a banana for pudding. All for 4000 pesos (Just under £1!) We have since found that most of the restaurants do these daily lunches, although they are often not on the menu, you just have to ask for the lunch of the day. Its crazy as in the same restaurant a bowl of pasta cost 25000 pesos, a bit of a difference in price. Mind you you could get a little bored of it after a while as it tends to be pretty much the same meal each day.
Click here for the tour pictures
After lunch we checked out an emerald shop (mainly for the free coffee!) I think the man thought he was in for rather a large sale until we all slowly disappeared after we had finished our coffees! Then off to the Fort San Felipe for our second visit. By this point we were all a bit weary and lacking in enthusiasm. We were a little disappointed that the tunnels we had wanted to explore didn't actually go any further than we had got to last time, they just filled up with water and only came out at the bottom of the fort anyway.
I don't think our poor guide knew what he was letting himself in for with us. At the beginning of the day he said to us "It doesn't matter if we are out for only 1 hour or 4 hours, the price is the same, as long as we are having fun". 1-4 hours... Ha! we know how to get our moneys worth, we kept him on his feet for 7 hours, and Phil did his best to ask as many questions as humanly possible! The guide definitely earnt his money that day!
We celebrated Stuarts birthday on 26th by spending the night on the town with a group of friends. We had a really nice evening after discovering a bar that we had found on one of our first days here but had never managed to find again. I think this bar is a little like Brigadoon where it only appears once every 100 years but our need for a good bar made it materialise just for us! The bar was full of locals and salsa, we had a good time bopping away and making new friends, all helped down by a tidy amount of rum!
Click here for the pictures of Stuarts birthday
Yesterday we had a bit of a shock when the anchor line broke and we found ourselves over the other side of the harbour. We were happily watching a DVD on the boat blissfully unaware. I took a peek out of the window and had a bit of a rant about the guy next door who appeared to be re anchoring his boat right on top of us. Stuart popped his head out of the door about 15 minutes later to say "not to worry, he has anchored all the way down there now". Then had to do a double take and realised that the place where he was, was where we were meant to be anchored! He hadn't been anchoring any closer to us, we had been drifting past him and were now at the opposite end of the bay! (No wonder he gave me a funny look when I was glaring out of the window at him!)
Anyway we are all safe and sound now (touch wood), after being told of by the Navy for anchoring too close to their restricted zone and being made to move again. We have now sneaked (hopefully inconspicuously) further into the bay, fingers crossed we won't have anymore non planned moves!
The main reason we have been here so long is we have been waiting for some paperwork to go through back at home. This has all been done and dusted now and we are planning to put the boat in the marina in the next couple of days, so we can do a little traveling inland.