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31 October - Leaving Cartagena
Well October seems to have completely whizzed past since we got back from traveling. We had a few bits to get done on the boat before our Visa run out on the 18th, and we left the marina a week or so after coming back. It was quite nice to be out at anchor again.
We thought we would check out the dentist whilst we were in a good place to do so. I haven't visited the dentist for 10 years so was a bit scared about what I would find! We went to a Dentist called Jessica who a lot of the other boaters had used and we had heard very good things about her. I was a bit shocked when she told me that I needed 22 fillings though!! I wasn't aware that I had that many teeth! I settled for having 3 done and a nice (but painful) deep clean. Stuart was the first to have his work done, he was told he needed about 10 fillings done (We think this woman may just be a little bit of a filling freak!) but he settled for having a chip in his front tooth and a deep clean done instead. She had told us it was 40 000 pesos for a filling (around £10, this price also seemed to go up each time a new gringo went to see her), although when she finished her work on Stuart she turned round and charged him 400 000!!!!! She said this was because it was cosmetic work and not necessary so was a lot more expensive! Well when I had mine done after, we asked the price and paid before she did the work to make sure she didn't sneak any extras in. We were happy with the work she did, but are angry with her obvious money grabbing and wouldn't go back to her, or recomend her to other cruisers.
We had a few medical trips this month too! Stuart went to the dermatologist to have some moles removed that he wasn't too happy with, this cost another 400 000 pesos. Then we had an interesting trip to the accident and emergency, section of the local clinic! Stuart was spending the morning working on building some new shelves for the bathroom cabinet and I was working on the computer in the yacht club when all of a sudden I look up and had a very bloody Stuart standing before me with his hand cover in napkins saying "I think I need to go to the hospital". He had been removing some wooden plugs with his lock knife when it decide to close on his index finger, there was a lot of blood and all the yacht club staff were crowding around and giving advise. Anyway we grabbed a taxi to the local clinic gave our name then sat down to wait.
There were a fair amount of people waiting to be seen, you would have thought you were at a mother and baby group as it was full of small children. After a couple of hours a nurse came out to see what the damage was, so Stuart carefully removed all the bloody rags from his hand, we were both expecting to see a finger barely attached, but when he removed the tissue, the wound had stopped bleeding completely and had started to weld itself back together!! He had to pull it apart to show her where it was! It was still fairly deep and did need a couple of stitches, which we were finally sent in to have done. This cost us 150 000 pesos, we couldn't believe it £40 for 2 stitches Mind you it could have been worse, this could have happened in America! A friend of ours cut his head in America with no medical insurance. He had to have 10 stitches and they gave him a bill of $1500!!!
On getting back to the yacht club after a day at the hospital we were accosted by concerned cruisers asking if Stuarts thumb was still intact or if he had lost it completely!! Our friend Demetrie had been drumbing up smpathy for us by ever so slightly exagerating the wound! Everyone throught Stuart had lost his thumb!!
Finally with all our medical business over with we visited the mega tienda and stocked up on a load of dried food, then popped over to the Basorto market and brought a load of veg (30 Kilos of potatoes, 5 kilos of toms, a huge bag of onions and 5 kilos of yucca!!! I don't even like yucca that much, Stuart just got a little carried away!) We then signed out of Colombia on 19th and headed off We spent a couple of days here adjusting ourselves back to living out of the city, then when the weather looked right we headed off back to Panama and the San Blas.
The journey to the San Blas what quite a peaceful one although that didn't stop me from feeling fairly ropy for the first night. The wind was with us when we left and we had predicted that at an average of 4 knotts an hour it should get take us 2 nights and we should arrive into the San Blas in the morning. As with all well laid plans this went askew when we startied off with a good wind the beam. We were speeding along at 7-8 knotts very comfortably! This buggered up our plans, if we were to continue at this speed we would make it there in half the time, which would have been good only that never happens! The wind died down and took us back to our usual 4 knotts which meant we would arrive in the middle of the night, which you really don't want to do in the San Blas with all the reefs around. So the second night we had to slow down to a speed of about 2 knotts to make sure we got there in daylight. We only went through one thunder storm, which luckily wasn't on my watch! We did have a few rain storms, with a few gusts of wind but that was about it.
We arrived safe and sound in the Holandes on 25th and spent a few days chilling out in the place they call 'The Hot Tub'. There was only one other boat here with us so it was very peaceful. Time to do lots of reading swimming and all those jobs you never got round to. I have managed to make us some cockpit cushions which are a bit of a luxury, you can lay outside in comfort now! Stu set off on his spear fishing missions again and has been pretty successful and Mano has been on an adventure to our little sand spit island again. This time he was a little more brave and after hiding in the only bush on the island for a while he did eventually come out and chase a few crabs, then didn't want to come home with us! After a week in the Holandes we thought we had better go and sign in so headed down to Porvenir to get all the boat paperwork done.