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June 2006 |
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20 June - Arrive in Cartagena Colombia
03 June - Off to the San Blas
20 June - Arrive in Cartagena
The journey from San Blas to Cartagena went really smoothly, which was a bit of a surprise as it can be notoriously rough, it was flat as a pancake for us. Mind you with the calm came no wind at all so we ended up motoring the whole way. It took us about 48 hours to get here and we finally arrived at around 4.00am after nearly being struck by lightning! We didn't get much rain but on the second night as we came into Cartagena there were terrible lightning storms, no thunder, but the lightning was so bright and to every side and above us, and the sky was so black with clouds, I was sure we would be struck. By some miracle we weren't, thank god (or whoever should be thanked round these parts!)
So now we are in Cartagena and are anchored up, pretty much in the centre of the city. We have the restricted navy area to the left of us, with lots of big war ships, to the right is a huge container dock which Stuart seems to be able to spend many a happy hour with his binoculars watching the containers being loaded and unloaded, "Look Sarah, another ships coming in!" I'm not quite as enthusiastic!.
There are a lot of other sailboats anchored up here, at the moment our closest neighbors are Beauport a huge (169ft long, 34ft wide, the width is longer than our length!) ex coastguard boat which has been done up to a luxurious standard (helipad, gym, 29ft Sport Fisher boat on deck! That sort of thing!) Also a huge German charter sailboat called Stahlratte (115ft long, 19ft wide), we are completely dwarfed!
There are a few marinas here, the landscape comprises of lots of high rise buildings mixed in with old forts. Its the first time we have been anchored in a city.
Since we have been here we have spent most of our time in the Yacht Club watching the football! (Culture, culture, culture that's the Brit's for you!) It is a little sad as we are the only English supporters here and every game we play, everyone else is always batting for the other side! Colombia didn't make it into the world cup so they aren't making such a big deal of it here, they have the South American Games coming, beginning 5th July so they are more geared up for that. We will persevere though in support for our country!
The main shopping area, and where most things go on is the Old Town, a huge walled city, filled with fantastic architecture, where if you are lucky you get to peer into one of the large doors and catch a glimpse of one of the beautiful courtyards. You could just go and have a drink in one of the nice hotels to appreciate the interiors but our budget doesn't stretch this far and we are more accustomed to sitting in the cheap bars with the less wealthy locals! The Old Town is really lovely and reminds me very much of a European city, such as Rome or Florence, the big squares with their large outdoor seating areas and everyone wanting you to come and eat in their restaurant. Lots of horse and cart rides waiting to take the tourists on a tour round the city. We took one of these one night and had a nice tour of the city although we forgot to take the camera so have no pictures.
There has been some proper Colombian style goings on here too, I think we mentioned a while back in Portobelo meeting a couple of English backpackers, who came on a disastrous dingy adventure with us. Well they were paying for a sail boat journey from Portobelo to Cartagena, along with 8 other backpackers. These guys can really make a fair bit of money $275 per person for 8 people on a not particularly large boat for what should be a 2 day trip. Anyway there trip didn't go quite to plan and it ended up taking them 12 days to get here after some engine troubles and god knows what. That's pretty much the end of that story, they got here ok and have continued their traveling through Colombia.
But, we found out yesterday that the guys who took them on their boat, were a few days ago, arrested for drug smuggling! The coast guard stopped them on their boat on the way out of Cartagena and found them to be carrying 100 Kilos of liquid cocaine in their diesel tanks, 3.84kg of marijuana and a large stash of money. They also had 2 Honduran passengers on board, we don't know if they were anything to do with it or if they were just unsuspecting paying guests! How horrible for them if they were! Looks as thought these guys will be spending some time inside a Colombian prison, something I am sure is not a pleasant experience. I can't understand why anyone would bother to take the risk, especially here where there is such a huge navy presence US and Colombian, your bound to get caught.
Well that's about all the gossip for now, I am sure we will get to do a lot more cultural things once the World Cup is over! We play Sweden this afternoon, so fingers crossed for us!
03 June - Off to the San Blas
Left Portobelo on 17th May and headed off towards Linton, spent the night there then headed off to the San Blas the next day. Spent the first night anchored off of the Chichime Cays.
As soon as you stop you get cayuko-ed, never mind that the anchor isn't even down yet! They all want to sell you Mola's, which are reverse applique material designs, they often turn into bags and masks or put on t-shirts. I was sure I wasn't going to like these, they sounded very old fashioned, turns out they are fantastic! Either traditional patterned ones of black and oranges, or of animals and seascapes, so we spent some time here buying mola's off of the locals. Another thing they try to sell you a lot of is coconuts, which is a little silly as they come floating past your boat on a daily basis. Also if you don't have correct change, some say they can only give you the change in coconuts!
I think it has changed a bit since the first yachts came here. Every day you have someone coming past your boat in a cayukos asking you for things, its either, "do you have any rice, cola, gasoline or cigarettes for us?" Its funny as another boater was telling us, the first year he was here a cayuko came to his boat on a hot day, they had a chat and he offered the guy a glass of water. The guy took the water and was very grateful, then went off in his way. The next year he was here, the same guy came past, stopped at his boat, said to him "you have any cola for me?" The guy said "no sorry, but would you like a glass of water?" The man said "you have ice?" and the guy said "No", the man turned his nose up and left!
We moved on to a group of islands called the Holandes, nicked named 'The Swimming Pool' as the water is so clear and blue.
We spent most of our time snorkeling and fishing Stuart finally managed to catch some fish with his spear gun, so we had a couple of nice fish dinners cooked up on a bar b on a little sand spit we found. The snorkeling was nice and there seemed to be an abundance of large Eagle Rays, which I actually managed to swim with and not scare myself to death! There were a lot of Nurse Sharks here too and you pretty much saw one every time you went in the water. These aren't too bad though as they all appear to be asleep on the bottom during the day. I saw my largest shark here so far, which was about the same size as me! The only time Stuart saw them when they weren't sleeping was when he was spear fishing. He must have wounded a fish on one shot which caused a bit of a stir, a couple of sharks and some eagle rays came to have a butchers. Stuart swam down with them to see what was going on and one of the sharks decided it didn't want Stuart getting his dinner and turned around to have a go at him! Stuart kept his gun pointed at his nose just in case and the shark finally turned his attention back to the fish. Not particularly funny, as I had just taken the dingy back to the boat towing some local Kuna's, to lend them some tools for there broken engine, so Stuart had nowhere to escape to if the shark had decide to chase him!
We spent less time in the San Blas than we had planned, its the rainy season at the moment and with that comes the thunder storms. The last week we spent there we pretty much had thunder and lightning every night, these are very loud storms and we have met a number of other boaters that have been struck by lighting here. We decided if the weather was going to stay this way we may as well head off to Cartagena.