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July 2006 |
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13 July - Trip to Mompos
Not much to report for the last month since we have been in Cartagena. We spent a lot of our time watching the World Cup games, we lost all interest though when we go knocked out by Portugal. Bahhhh humbug! Well there is always next time!
Daily life has been consisting of going into the yacht club most days, checking the internet and catching up with the other boaters over a few beers. Its quite funny we have met a family here; Sue, Adrian and their kids George and Olly. It turns out that they are also from Maidstone and their family owns the green grocers in Pudding Lane! Small world!
Cartagena Old Town is a pretty lively place in the evenings and we have had a couple of very late nights out sampling the local bars and clubs, getting back to the boat at 5 in the morning. There are hundreds of bars and restaurants, ranging from the cheap street bars to really nice more expensive places. All of them have either live music, mainly Salsa or Cuban, or they have large stereo equipment blaring out the local music.
We took a day trip to Boca Grande, which is the new town. Lots of high raise buildings, clothes, tourist shops and hotels. You do get pestered more here with people trying to sell you crazy tourist rubbish, but its not that bad. This is the area where you get a lots of the rich Colombians coming for holidays or short breaks, we have never been in a country that has soo many bank holidays. There has been almost one each week that we have been here, it is more like a 4 day working week. There is a very popular beach here too that leaves a lot to be desired, its a pretty ugly one. You really do get pestered here more than anywhere else we have been. We met a most persistent masseuse here, sitting in a beach bar, before I knew what was happening she had squirted a load of cream up my leg and was massaging away whilst her friend whipped my hat of and started platting my hair! We managed to shake them of after a lot of trying to convince them that we really weren't interested.
We took another day trip to the Fort San Felipe (This seems to be the name of every fort in all of Central and South America!) Its a huge structure with lots of crazy thin tunnels inside, niches on either side, in which we presume that the soldiers used to sleep (although we could be very wrong about that!) The tunnels go on for quite a long way and into the depths of the hillside. We need to go back again with a torch this time as they stop the lights halfway along the tunnels so you don't know what happens after that, we want to do some proper exploring and see where they eventually lead to, you never know there could be secret passages leading out of the fort and into the old town!
We were invited to a party at one of the local girls houses, we had a really nice evening, drinking eating and chatting. It was a really good opportunity for us to practice our appalling Spanish as only one of the girls spoke English. After a few beers its surprising have fluent you think you are speaking!!
Last weekend we had a night away from the boat with another of the boaters 'Peter' when we took a trip to a town called Mompos. Its an island in the middle of a lake 5 hours inland from here. We had to take a series of buses, launchers and taxis to get there. The town is avery different place from here, very peaceful and laid back, we didn't see another tourist for the entire time away. We took a little tuk tuk around the town for a whistle stop tour of all the sites. We only had a day so didn't get to take a really good look around. We did however, see a horse being operated on by what we hope was a vet, down by the river and saw a cage full of lions that the fair had just brought into town! Not entirely what we had expected to see here!
We stayed in the hotel 'San Andres' for 35 000 pesos (about £9), it was basic but clean and comfortable and had 4 very entertaining parrots in the courtyard. One of them enjoyed a good laugh, and every time someone laughed he joined in, another was very cheeky indeed and wasted no time in chasing both me and Stuart off of our chairs to steal our crisps! (He also took a big chunk out of our room key!)
We spent the next day in Mangangue, this is where the launcher drops you off to catch the bus back to Cartagena. It's a much busier town than Mompos, lots of hustle and bustle and lively market places selling all sorts. All the locals looked at us as though we had just stepped out of a spaceship, which was very funny, the people were still very friendly.
We took a bus home that afternoon, we were thinking of staying another night but were worried about leaving the boat alone at anchor for to long. It turned out to be a very good job that we didn't stay any longer as the next morning we had a gale sweep through the anchorage. We were woken at 5.00 to the sound of the wind picking up, we jumped outside and put the engine on, then settled down to keep an eye on things as the winds picked up to 30+ knots. Luckily our boat stayed sound and didn't drag anywhere, others weren't quite so lucky. Half the anchorage was dragging in different directions. The worst we saw was a French boat hit our friend Brian on SV Molly. The boat came dragging over from the other side of the bay and got tangled up in his anchor line. His anchor held them both together for a while until the French boats keel cut through the line, then they both went drifting back towards the fort walls. They managed to untangle themselves before anyone hit the wall. Brian lost his second anchor but managed to motor off, with only minor damage. The coast guard came along and helped the French get their anchor up so they were free again.
When the wind died down we tied Brian's boat to the back of ours and rooted out a spare anchor to lend him. The French guy came back later and they retrieved both of his anchors. The sudden high winds seem to be quite frequent here now, that was the 3rd one we have had since we have been here. I don't think we will leave the boat alone for a night again just in case!