BOATBUMMS LOG

BURNS SUPPER

2012-02-07T11:06:00.000-08:00

We are definitely doing the CLOD life. CLOD standing for Cruisers Living On Dirt. We are all settled in and busy with all kind of projects, whether for boat, our casita or for Binnie. It keeps our mind off not being on the boat, which we really miss. But this is a good setup and we feel really lucky to have fallen into this wonderful situation of being able to live in this cute little house.

Backyard

Front yard

We enjoy our daily cocktail with Binnie on her patio with incredible view over the whole bay then have dinner in either house, where ever I choose to cook that evening. Cooking is my passion but I have never had so much fun at it as here. Both Sid and Binnie are wonderful to cook for and I sure love her kitchen it has all kinds of gadgets a kitchen just could have. We are a happy family.

Mid January Binnie left for a cruise around the Horn and so we were alone on this huge property for 3 weeks and busy getting a few projects done for Binnie before she returned and feeding the 2 dogs, 1 cat and the sloth. Sid had started with boat projects but we still had to watch the weather and time it right to get out to the boat. The weather has settled in and is blowing mainly from the East and keeps the nasty waves from coming in here.

Panama has a lot of history and we didn’t expect getting thrown into out of all some Scottish history. Jim and Heather, we had met them also 11 years ago when we were in Pedro Miguel, at that time they were just taking over the management of the Club when we left and here they are now.

Jim and Heather organize “Burns Night” or “Burns Supper” every January 25^th at Binnie’s and we are sure glad we could join this year. What an incredible fun event.

An amazing amount of preparation went in to this deal. Jim, Heather and Cindy worked all week on this, we helped getting the tables set up and with other odds and ends; it sure was fun. (click on photos to enlarge)

Jim getting printing poems and clan cards


Scottish dance steps by Heather

Manuela's table napkin art

Heather cooking

Burns Supper is a Scottish celebration and has been of the Scottish culture for about 200 years. It’s a night to celebrate the life and works of the national Robert Burns or also known as Rabbie Burns. When Burns immortalized haggis in a poem, his close friends a few years after his death in 1796 started this ritual as a tribute to his memory. Suppers can range from an informal gathering of friends to a huge, formal dinner full of pomp and circumstance which is celebrated worldwide by Scotsmen.

Ours was very formal, every boat bum was dressed up with their best cloth and even the wrinkles were ironed out.

Usually a big-time Burns Night calls for a piper to welcome guests, but since we’re in Panama it’s a little hard to find a piper, instead Jim and Heather had some traditional Burns music running in the background as we enjoyed cocktail and appetizers made by the guests. The variety was incredible and everybody outdid themselves with elegant dishes from lox to pate and one lady even smoked her own fish and cheese, yummy.

Appetizer table

When all guests had arrived we were asked to take our seats at the nicely decorated and set up tables. Again in Scotland a piper plays until the high table is ready to be seated, at which point a round of applause is due. At a more egalitarian gathering - with no high table - the chair can simply bang on the table to draw attention to the start of the evening's proceedings.

Jim then warmly welcomed us and introduced some of the assembled guests especially the newbie’s. Then the event is started with the Selkirk Grace which is a short but important prayer to usher in the meal. The Selkirk Grace is also known as Burns’ Grace at Kirkcudbrightough:

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

And sae the Lord be thankit.

Guests then are asked to stand to receive the haggis. Again in Scotland a piper leads the chef, carrying the haggis to the top table, while the guests accompany them with a slow handclap until the Haggis reaches its destination the head table. The music stops and everyone is seated in anticipation to the address to a Haggis. Since none of us were Scots of course we didn’t know the rules and anticipated the haggis drooling. The haggis should be served in a silver platter; we were all fooled by a stainless steel dish Heather was carrying.

Then Jim seized the moment of glory by offering a fluent and entertaining rendition of Burns' famous poem “To a Haggis”, with great enthusiasm. Jim had his knife poised at the ready. On cue (An’ cut you up wi’), he cuts the casing along its length, making sure to spill out some of the tasty gore within (trenching its gushing entrails).

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn,
they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve,
Are bent lyke drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
"Bethankit!" 'hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro' bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer,
Gie her a haggis!

Robert Burns 1786

The recital ended by Jim raising the haggis in triumph during the final line “Gie her a haggis”!, which the guests cheered with rapturous applause.

Heather, the whisky-bearer, made the round and filled up all our shot glasses to the rim with whisky to ensure the toasts are well lubricated, then we toasted the Haggis and Jim served each individual guest.

By the way Haggis is made of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep or lamb, combined with oats, suet (raw beef or mutton fat, especially the hard fat around the loins and kidneys) and other herbs and spices, then cooked in a casing traditionally made of the animal's stomach. Kind of like a huge round sausage. To most the ingredients don’t sound appealing but it really has a very pleasant flavor.

Each table had a selected wench that helped bring the wonderful platters of food to the table and everybody dove into the food:

A typical Bill o' Fare would be:

Cock-a-leekie soup

Hagis warm reeking, rich wi’ Chamit Tatties,

Bashed Neeps

Clootie Dumpling (a pudding prepared in a linen cloth or cloot)

or Typsy Laird (a Scottish sherry trifle);

A Tassie o' Coffee

The Wenches

After dinner an invited guest, is asked to give a light-hearted speech. Originally this was a thank you to the ladies for preparing the food and a time to toast the ‘lasses’ in Burns’ life. The humorous highlight of any Burns Night

comes in this toast, which is designed to praise the role of women in the world today. The toast concludes: To the Lassies!

Jen and Dan

Then it’s the turn of the lasses to detail men's foibles. This toasts were done by both Dan and Jennifer, oh man was Jen's funny.

Then another guest read a Burns poem, followed by a French guest reading a French poem, of course none of us understood anything he said. Sid read an American Poem then dessert was served, ice cream and homemade mango sorbet.

The party took its peak by Jim and Heather teaching us the traditional Scottish line dancing, which was a bit confusing at the start but everybody learned fast and we had a blast. This was such an unforgettable evening we talked about it for days and still are, we can’t wait to join the next years Burns Supper.

Great job you two thanks!!!

Happy New Year

2012-01-21T10:53:00.000-08:00

I didn't think house life could be so busy, how did we ever fit sailing into our busy schedule LOL. Sid is busy between fixing this and that in either our little house, or helping Binnie and when weather permitting going out to the boat and fixing this and that out there. I am busy catching up on computer stuff, keeping up with the house which is a lot more to clean than Paradise, assisting Binnie and going shopping with her or with Cindy. Shopping here is definitely a whole day's activity. It takes a little over an hour to drive to Colon and 1 1/2 hours into Panama City. In either place the traffic is always a chaos and Sid and I were trying to figure out how much driving/standing in traffic to shopping we do and we figured about 1 hour of shopping to 4 hour driving or more. There is no such thing as a quick shopping trip. Shopping here is so good that it is worth all the driving.

Before all the Christmas dash started Jennifer, friend of Binnie, organized a tour of the Expansion of the Panama Canal (Third Set of Locks Project) which should be in operation in 2014.

We had to drive across the bridge of the Americas and meet everybody on the other side of the canal. From there a tour bus took us to a sight above the Miraflores Locks with an incredible view over the new excavation for the new locks. The view was spectacular over the new ditch they were digging. (Click on pictures to enlarge).

Miraflores Lock

View of Miraflores Lock and Lake

Bridge of the Americas

This project will double the capacity of the Canal and will allow the mega tankers to cross. To do so a new lane of traffic along the Canal is being created by constructing a new set of locks. On each side, Pacific and Atlantic, two lock complexes are being added, each with three chambers, which include three water-saving basins. Plus the excavation of new access channels to the new locks, the widening of existing navigation channels, deepening of the navigation channel and the elevation of Gatun Lake's.

Outside Panama the expansion will create demand along the US Eastern Seaboard for ports able to handle post-Panamax ships. As of January 2012 ports of Miami to New York are considering renovations including dredging, blasting and bridge-raising, only Norfolk, Virginia is completely ready for the larger ships.

They also are going to build a new bridge across the canal in Colon.

It was very impressive and I hope to be here when the new locks open.

Before we went to the second event of the day we visited the local fish market and had lunch. The market is very impressive, clean and wow what an array of fish. I don't think I have ever seen bigger shrimp.

Lunch was a disaster, the chef never showed up and we waited for over an hour until the food finally arrived and it was horrible. I think the United States is the only county that will not charge for horrible food, here you don't have a choice.

A short drive later we arrived another construction sight the new Biodeversaty Museum of Panama City in Amador. A very funky looking project.

Jennifer is a volunteer and had her first speech to see if she is going to get the certificate to do tours. She passed with flying colors and we were amazed what this museum is going to offer, I hope I will be here for the opening in January 2013.

Binnie

Binnie, Jennifer and friend

view of Panama City

I did not know that the Isthmus was formed some three million years ago during the Pilocene epoch. The wide body of water between the continents was a strong flowing current that connected the water through the earth. This major geological event separated the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and interrupted the current. Two Plates of the Earth's Crust beneath the surface were slowly colliding, forcing the Pacific Plate to slide under the Caribbean Plate. The pressure and heat caused by this collision led to the formation of underwater volcanoes, Some grew large enough to form islands about 15 million years ago. Meanwhile, movement of the two tectonic plates was also pushing up the sea floor, eventually forcing some areas above sea level.Then over time massive amounts of sand, soil and mud from North and South America filled the gaps between the newly formed islands. Over millions of year sediments deposits added to the islands until all gaps very completely filled. By about 3 million the isthmus of Panama was formed between North and South America.
Scientists believe that this was the biggest event in the last 60 million years. Even though only a small sliver of land was created it had an enormous impact on Earth's climate and its environment. By shutting down the flow of water between the two oceans, the land bridge re-routed ocean currents in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Atlantic currents were forced northward, and eventually settled into a new current pattern. This is how the Gulf Stream was created. With warm Caribbean waters flowing toward the northeast Atlantic, the climate of NW Europe grew warmer. The Atlantic, no longer mingling with the Pacific, grew saltier. Each of these changes helped establish the global ocean circulation pattern in place today. The Isthmus of Panama directly and indirectly influenced ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns around the world.
It is believed that the creation of this land mass and the warm wet weather over northern Europe resulted in the formation of a large Arctic ice cap and contributed to the ice age.
The formation of the Isthmus of Panama also played a major role in biodiversity on the planet. The bridge made it easier for animals and plants to migrate between the two continents. In North America today, the opossum, porcupine and armadillo all track back to ancestors that came across the land bridge from South America. Likewise are bears, cats, dogs, llamas, raccoons and horses made the trek south.
In each show room you will see an epoch from then to know. Even two aquariums which shows the difference in fish and fauna between the Caribbean and Pacific side.
Although the museum is still under construction we were the first tour group that was allowed to enter. All was in raw state but it was really easy to picture the finished museum.

You read already about our Christmas so I will not repeat it.
For New Years, we had a wonderful time at Jim and Melania's who live in a quite part of the coast line around the corner from Portobelo. As always at her house we had wonderful food, drinks, fun but when Jim and I started singing Karaoke for some reason everybody disappeared upstairs to the pool room, wonder why??!!!! The party came to it's peak at 11 when the power went out region wide and stayed out until 3 am (we were told it happened the previous year as well). That did not stop us from playing pool but I'll tell you the candle light shadow following the balls into the pockets made it a bit more difficult to play. With the power outage the party started dwindling down and we left 10 minutes before midnight, there was no way to tell exactly the time for the new year anyway. Actually it was perfect to leave early, we arrived in Portobelo to watch the wonderful firework as we passed Portobelo in the dark when midnight struck. It was pitch dark other than the headlights on high beam and no other cars within miles on this very windy stretch and had a safe drive back to Puerto Lindo where a bottle of cold champagne was waiting for us. Our first day of 2012 was spent with a champagne brunch at Casita Paraiso and the afternoon playing Ping-Pong and Wii game, wow is that Wii stuff fun.

We are so done eating and drinking, I don't think we ever ate that much over any holiday so we were going on a diet and of course every time we started another party came up then another and then Birthdays and and, but we are on it now.

The rainy season officially is over and the Christmas Winds have started bringing high winds and high seas to especially this part of the Caribbean. The nice thing is no more rain and adios to mildew growth, for a while.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2011-12-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

Wow, this has been a busy couple of weeks. I forgot how busy Christmas season can be. Thinking back on the last Christmas when we were stuck in Bahia Honda, in the northern Coast of Colombia in 25 knots of wind and not being able to celebrate, this year is making up for it. With ice-cycle lights around the house, a Christmas trees by the front door, two inside the house, making presents and a whole week of baking cookies for friends and neighbors, the Christmas spirit sure has entered our house.

We hope you're Holiday Season is a joyous as ours.
Merry Christmas wherever you are we are thinking of you and are wishing you a very happy 2012

Back to Panama

2011-12-10T17:13:00.000-08:00

The weather was still unsettled and the winds came out of the West the direction we have to sail into. I guess we had a lucky break our weather advisor Chris told us go today or tomorrow after that there is no window for at least two weeks. Needless to say we pulled the anchor the very next morning. We were not even 20 minutes out of the Cholon Bay when I noticed steam coming out of the companion way. We shut the engine off immediately and Dr. Sid went to work to find out what the problem was. We were between Isla Grande, and Isla Peroquito with not a breath of wind anywhere just a light current was pushing us slowly towards the reef in front of the big island of the Rosarios. I wasn’t worried about it as I know Sid can fix pretty much anything and the current was very week. The thermostat gasket was broken and Sid even found some extra gaskets and within 30 minutes we headed out between the two islands towards Panama. Amazingly the wind filled in at the same time, we hoisted sail and motor sailed pretty much the entire trip to Panama, a 196 Mile trip. The sea was calm with gentle 2 foot swells on the beam.

30 miles out a gray heron joined us. I noticed him first on top of the solar panels. But then when he saw me he quickly jumped down on top of the dinghy tube and stayed there for almost the entire trip. 30 miles of the Panamanian shore he decided he could fly the rest. It was pretty cool at times he was just about 1 foot away from us and best of all he was a polite visitor and only left us a little surprise in the dinghy. Some Martins tried to hitch a ride too but not sure what the heron told them, they took off.

A true Patriot

It was a very calm trip and 33 three hours later we dropped the hook in Banadup. Early the next morning all our Kuna friends one by one came by to say hi, including fishermen selling us lobster and conch and to top the dinner we went to our secret beach and collected steamer clams, now top this dinner.

We spent two nights, enjoyed the quite and the occasional rain before we headed to Chichime.

What a surprise to find a wrecked sailboat on the reef. It landed high on top of the reef of Gaby Dup and we found out that this was the new owner’s maiden voyage and Chichime was going to be their first anchor drop. Why they entered this reef at two at in the morning is beyond us, but the result is obvious. Amazingly the boat was totally stripped in just the 2 weeks it’s been on the reef, the mast was even gone.

They sure did a good job

A message came through to us via SSB that Manatee had to leave Colombia and was going to be on the way to Panama soon. The Colombian authorities have gone after Manfred (one of the check in agents)and checked out all the boats he is the agent for and found Manatees paperwork screwed up and told Roberto he had to leave. So stay away from Manfred when checking into Cartagena (same for David).

We decided to head for Puerto Lindo the next day. The trip was great and it seemed we were chasing rainbows the whole entire way I have never seen so many as one thunder cloud after another dissolved in front of us, we never made it to any and all they left for us were beautiful rainbows. We arrived just on time to join all our friends in the Puerto Lindo for Pizza dinner and had fun the following day for the weekly Sunday Ping-Pong.

Two days later we moved into a cute little house on the beach with ramp for our dinghy. Paradise is resting on a mooring that comes with the house. We will be CLODs (Cruisers Living On Dirt) for a while, while doing some upgrades to Paradise. The project list is huge and it will make it so much easier not to live on the boat while especially varnishing the inside.

The second night in the house at 4 am the phone rang. Our boat neighbor had called one of our friends and said that Paradise was on the loose and rubbing against his boat and if we don’t show up immediately he’ll cut her loose. Nice guy. Adrenalin rush was on, got dressed and ran down the path to the dinghy. A good storm was blowing right into the bay. The dinghy was filled with water had to be bailed out first before we could drag it down the ramp and into the water. The waves were breaking over the reef and the broken pier where the cut is for us to exit into the anchorage, this was not going to be fun and it wasn’t. There was such a current from the waves the engine could not get us out of there in waste deep water we waded her across the turbulent water. When we tried to get the dinghy through the narrow cut between the reef and broken pier we had 6 foot waves break right over us, over and over again. We by now were in chest deep water and jumping into the wild dinghy was a challenge. The few minutes seemed like hours before we managed to get to Paradise but after a few scratches and bruises and stepping between coral heads and rocks we managed to head out into the rough bay and over to where Paradise was in absolute calm water (the mooring field is protected behind a reef). We found her sideways to the wind but still on the mooring, the mooring had dragged. After taking the sunshade down, we lowered the anchor into the dinghy set the anchor and pulled Paradise off the mooring and anchored further out away from all the moored boats. Luckily daylight was just coming up so it was easier to see where to anchor. Paradise then was sitting in 6 foot rollers almost all day long before the wind slowed down enough for us to attempt to re-anchor in a calmer environment. We anchored in the same spot as the mooring was with a stern anchor out and also stern tied to the mooring.

No damage was done to either boat and the friendly neighbor who threatened to cut Paradise loose admitted that the boats never met, but he blamed us for breaking his mooring chain. Sid went over to check it out and found his mooring 3/8 chain of so rusted out he actually could pull the chain apart with his bare hands and the guy lucky that we did break his mooring it was poorly maintained would have gone very soon. Sid lent him our anchor until our neighbor could fix it. Our mooring was re-set about a week later when the weather had calmed down and the water was clear enough to dive on the mooring.

Manatee showed up just three days after we did and it was a happy reunion. When we said goodbye in Cholon, Roberto and Sid both had tears in their eyes so we teased him enough that he really must have missed us to follow us within three days.

I took Carmen, Johnny and Patricio on sightseeing tours. The boys had never been outside of Colombia I just had to give them a tour.

Patricio and Johnny's first time ever at McDonalds

First we went shopping in Colon at the Quatro Alto Mall. At Novi we saw sunglasses UV protected for 3.99 and knowing neither one own a pair and neither one had any money in their pocket, I told them to choose a pair. Their eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and I tell you they sleep now with their sunglasses on. While at El Costo I handed each one a 20 dollar bill and told them to buy presents for their family. The El Costo store is awesome, all is very low priced you wouldn't believe how much these two could buy for the kids. In the next store I told them to buy a T-shirt for themselves, they both chose the same and when I saw the price of 2.99, ohgosh no way that can be an told them "otro" they misunderstood and put T-shirt back on the rack, I told them "no compro otro". With two T-shirts each and new shorts they were beaming. Also knowing that Patricio's daughter’s 15th BD coming up, which is a big deal in Latin countries, I bought a few presents for her from Dad and wrapped it all up in beautiful present paper and ribbons from him to his daughter’s special BD. The following day we drove to Panama, they can't possibly be in Panama without seeing the Panama Canal. First stop was the famous Gamboa Hotel, wow were they impressed, more so when they saw the big ships going through the canal and later on to stand in front of the tall high-rise buildings in Panama.

Panama Canal Train

But I think the highlight was when I drove them across the bridge of the Americas and they stepped foot on the North American Continent. We had a really good time.

First step onto North America

Wore Johnny out!

In the 8 days Manatee was in town we had several potlucks and happy hours on Manatee or dinners at the house or Pizza night out.

Roberto managed to get three backpackers and their motorcycles on Manatee and made his way back to Cartagena. Weather looked good and what he found 80 miles out was not showing on any weather chart. He said he had 16 foot seas, boat was tossed around like a toy. They all feared for their lives, Roberto said he was even praying. Autopilot went out, luckily only 7 miles out of Cartagena so no harm done there. Roberto said he is done with boating and that Manatee is for sale.

We for sure miss living aboard but we do enjoy being in the house, we can take hot showers at any time, do laundry at any time. But I tell you I run my butt off in the kitchen it's not like in my galley where I barely move my feet as everything is within reach, this kitchen is work LOL.

We moved most of our stuff into the house and are amazed that we filled up every cabinet and drawer to the rim, even under the bed, couch and on top of all the closets, there is no more room left for anything else.

Thanksgiving approached and I had the honor of organizing a Turkey Potluck at Binnie’s. We had 27 people, two turkeys a ham and everybody brought the most scrumptious dishes. Everybody was full and we had tons of leftovers especially desert.

It is still rainy season until at least the middle of December and it does rain every day at least once. Whenever the water clears up enough and Sid wants to dive on the mooring to add a swivel that we can finally get Paradise back on the mooring it starts raining again. We have such downpours that within minutes the bay turns into a brown mud hole.

The house is really cute and cozy. We have a big bath, bedroom, living room and big kitchen/dining room and a laundry room with dryer, what a treat. In the back of the house by the patio with BBQ is a small pond surrounded by bamboo and other lush tropical trees. The front of the house is covered with green grass, coconut trees, frangipani trees and all kinds of colored bushes with view over the water. The three bird feeders I put out attract the most colorful hummingbirds. When the sun goes down the frogs serenade us all evening and way into the night. Howler monkeys announce day break and occasionally we spot a wild sloth in the trees.

The wild life here is surely different and the two times I did Yoga with the girls at Binnie’s each time I found something interesting hanging in the net in the ceiling. First time I saw a dead humming bird sticking through the net, poor birdie and a beautiful green Praying Mantis. The second time laying on my back yogaing I opened my eyes and above in same spot was a looooooooooong green vine snake, wow what a beautiful animal. I could almost not concentrate anymore but not because I was afraid of the snake, far from it this snake was just so beautiful.

Sid saw a little rabbit in the yard told me about it and it must be someone’s pet as it was pretty tame. Doesn’t the rabbit know this is Christmas time and not Easter?!

Three days later it was in the garden again. It let me pick it up and poor thing was just skin and bones. I fed it with a fat carrot and some apple; it attacked it like it had never seen a carrot before. It was still there the next morning and later on that day our neighbors got my attention and told me that the teenaged girl next door was crying she lost her rabbit. She was happy to get her rabbit back but I told her to feed it better and gave her the left over apple and carrot. A couple of days later I brought her some rabbit food and invited her to bring the rabbit over to feed on the grass. She was so happy. Three days later she told me the rabbit had died, poor thing.

Oh and Dooger the sloth is my buddy, he’s the cutest thing and I get to pet sit him any time.

My kitchen help

How can you not fall in love with this smile

Christmas is approaching fast, my two Christmas trees are up and the house is surrounded by blinking white ice cycles. Next week the smell of baking Christmas cookies will fill the air and drive Sid nuts.

PS: I just posted the latest Newsletter from Santa Marta to Cartagena, if you want to see the photos stories just scroll to the bottom

http://turtle-express38.blogspot.com/

PPS: You can find all the other Turtle Express photo stories after each newsletter in the link list on:

http://www.boatbumms.blogspot.com/

Beautiful Cholon

2011-11-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

It was great to sit in the calm and safe anchorage of Cholon again waking up to the different bird sounds including the special one from the “Whatthefuckbirds”, they still keep us in stitches.

October and November definitely is the worst of the rainy season in Colombia and Panama and this year is no exception we did get a LOT of rain to the point that the drive way up to Roberto’s house is slipperier than snot on a glass door knob and very carefully we climb that 40% climb and going down is even more challenging.

On October 13^th we celebrated Sid’s birthday at “Crow’s Nest” with a tasty Fondue Bourguignon and luckily the weather cooperated so we were able to walk instead of slide down hill.

Happy Birthday Sidley

Carmelita and Roberto

A few days after that Roberto’s kid’s Lori and Paul flew in from LA, including his brother Tom from Medellin, it was a happy family reunion and we were honored to be included. Tommy is a retired Costa Mesa officer and both of Roberto’s kids are still active police officers. Sid had a lot of fun talking to Lori as she works with some of his ex partners. We had a blast and not one moment to relax. Roberto was so impressed with the Fondue dinner on Sid’s BD so we had one for his family. It was a hit, everybody enjoyed it and we ate and ate for at least two hours. The eating and drinking didn’t stop there it went on for days.

We had many potlucks on Manatee:

Tommy and Roberto

Lori

Paul "Pablo"

Their last evening in Cholon Roberto organized a potluck on Manatee. Food as always was wonderful and when Carmen changed the music to some hot Latin stuff Tommy took over and taught us all to dance Salsa, man can he wiggle his butt. Even Sid ended up wiggling his little behind like a Latino. It really was a fun evening.

Is it Halloween yet??!!!

Actually this photo was staged

Tommy the Salsa Teacher

Next day we all went to Cartagena, Roberto had rented a cute house in Getsemani with 4 bedrooms and invited us to stay with them. Getsemani is one of the most charming neighborhoods in Cartagena. The nightlife is definitely happening here especially with all the hookers and numerous bars, most famous Club Habana. If you don’t remember the Getsemani name just tell the taxi driver you want to go to Club Habana.

Lori, Tommy and Paul we sure had a wonderful time thanks again for all, especially to Lori for bringing us our mail and all kind of goodies.

We had another fun week in Cholon but do to our visa running out it was time to say goodbye. The weather was still iffy as a Low pressure system just above Panama was threatening to turn into a tropical depression. Until that one was gone we were stuck in beautiful Cholon. We will miss Roberto and Carmen terribly, they are both such wonderful friends and who knows if the “check in” drama straightens out we may return.

Manatee on the way to Cartagena

Definitely sat too long around the hook! What a mess!!!

Pot of Gold?

Manzanillo Marina and Checking in procedure

2011-10-31T08:09:00.000-07:00

We did not know what to expect this time in Cartagena, our last visit left a bitter taste in our mouth. One reason we came back was for some unfinished business with our buddy boat Wind Shear who most of you know was confiscated in Cartagena last April. I will bring the whole story eventually to the light but not until all is behind us.

Paradise was a mess and needed a bath and so we took a slip in the Manzanillo Marina for one week we thought. The one week turned into a month keeping us busy with boat chores and doctor visits. Medical stuff here is very good and very affordable we took full advantage and did the yearly check up. We both have a clean bill of health.

Imagine the costs: Mammogram 28 bucks, Ultrasound 8 bucks,

PSA blood test 28, Cholesterol blood test 5.60.

(What is wrong with our prices in the US?)

But the big expense we had was definitely the marina bill. We were shocked to find out that the service fees were higher than the slip fee. Our bill for one month came to 1000 bucks, minding you we had to climb on another boat to get into ours, water coming out of the hose smelled like sewage, electricity never showed higher than 90 volt, due to that most appliances didn’t work. The showers had only cold water and the doors as soon as they got wet were see-through and the TV/computer room had no AC as advertised. When we were told that the slip fee was only 89 dollars a week we took it. But this is what the bill came to:

Slip fee is 20 000 per foot a months, for us: US$ 10.32

10 000 per day for live aboard US$ 5.16

10 000 per day for electricity US$ 5.16

5 000 per day for water US$ 2.58

You do the math and will be shocked to see that the extra fees are more expensive than the slip fee, outrageous.

For this price cruisers expect floating docks, a restaurant on the premises, good WiFi, a pool and a safe neighborhood, which this has none of the above except for a very slow most of the time not working WiFi because the son of the owner running the marina unplugs the WiFi so he can watch TV on his computer. Not just that he ignores the needs of his clients and does not come back to you for any inquiries or complaints, most cruisers at the yard were very disappointed and unhappy.

In the two months we were gone, drastic changes have been implemented with the check-in procedure. Last November when we arrived in Santa Marta we learned that the Port Captain there never had to deal with cruisers and gave us a rather hard time. Back in November Santa Marta was still pretty unknown for cruisers but with the new marina, it opened the doors for us to make a shorter passage to Cartagena which was a big relief along this treacherous coast line. Any of the boats arriving that had Cartagena as destination on the Zarpe the port captain would call into the office, they had to see him with an attorney present and he fined them all. The word spread fast not to stop in Santa Marta if the Zarpe did not state Santa Marta on it. Unfortunately right after we arrived in Cartagena they had a change of watch and the Santa Marta Port Captain was sent back to Cartagena were he originated from. Stories have it that everybody was relieved when he was sent to Santa Marta and that the moral is down with him back. There were no imminent signs then that he was back but we sure can tell now.

FEES FOR CHECKING INTO CARTAGENA

Exchange rate 10/10/11 USD 1.00 = Col. Peso 1,935.00

Agency fee in/out 150.000

Immigration 20.000

Cruising Permit 166.000

Temporary Importation 100.000

436.000 USD 225.00

======

After two months you have to renew the Cruising Permit for an additional 200.000 Pesos/ 104 $ which brings the total bill now to roughly 330 US dollars. By the way even a boat that is on the hard for storage must pay the cruising permit.

This permit is good for 6 months, considering that after 4 months you have to leave the country as the 6 months tourist visa is over. You can only stay in Colombia for 6 months per calendar year. If you stay for 2 months, head to Panama for two and return you would think the 100.000 you had paid for the one year temporary importation would still be valid, nope that one expires when you check out.

Also after two months you have to renew your visa and pay 75.000 per person each month so if you stay 6 months you have to pay this amount 4 times. For the two of us that is another 600.000 pesos roughly 300 dollars.

One week after our agent started our paper work she called to tell us that a customs inspector will come to the boat. He never made it but he did want the number of the hull and engine. Then it took a full month for our paper work to finally be completed while I had to go to customs with the agent to sign the paper. Another new thing required to do. Why do we even need an agent if they need us there to sign the paper? My agent told me that she is really upset as the new/old port captain is also ordering the following:

NEW ADDITONS BY THE PORT CAPTAIN

Customs inspection 60.000

Health Inspection 60.000

Food and Animal control 60.000

Veterinary visit on yacht fee unknown

Plus 30.000 for boat rental that will bring them out to your boat as they refuse to take a dinghy (they say it’s too dangerous). I doubt they all show up at the same time so you can pretty much triple or quadruple the boat fee.

Also be careful which agent you use:

Be aware that David and Manfred are corrupt agents.

Manfred never filed for cruising permits as he thought they were frivolous charges, not until we were boarded and harassed by the Armada in Cholon did Manfred realize that it is an essential permit cruisers need. In the mean time he was charging the 166.000 pesos to his new clients but the money of some conveniently went into his own pockets. Nobody ever checked paper work on boats before, not until the new port captain came back. Several of Manfred’s clients had to pay a fine of each 1.000.000 (USD 516.00) because Manfred did not get a cruising permit for them. Another boat he screwed up with paper work resulting in confiscation of the boat and still is and all was Manfred’s fault. He also checks boats in and out of the country without them having to leave, they don´t understand that this illegal action could get them in mucho trouble if caught.

David does anything for you if it involves money, you can bribe him as much as you can bribe Manfred. Robin on Wind Shear bribed him to leave without his wife; the boat is in her name. To cover his own butt, David called for Robin’s arrest for fraudulent paper work, also called authorities his wife was against. Result: boat was confiscated, Rob ended up in jail, but this story is for a later date. Together with Manfred they helped Rob to get a Zarpe to get Wind Shear with help of Coast Guard out of the country. Fortunately his illegal attempt to flee didn’t succeed.

David lied too many times to my face so I definitely don’t trust him.

David’s Uncle Romero, is no longer an agent in Santa Marta, he was caught by Port Captain handling paper work with his own fabricated stamp, collecting the money into his pocket.

Makes you feel really secure to know you are at these agents mercy.

Unfortunately we are not allowed to check in by ourselves and this is the only country we have ever been to where we needed an agent, not to mention the most expensive place to check in.

By the way we use Paola
cartagenacaribbean@hotmail.com

321 583 1456

315 756 2818

or call Cruising Services VHF 68

The last thing I ever want to write down is the following. The authorities have started to board cruising boats in Cartagena. The first one announced it the following morning on the local net. They were approached by the authorities asking to come aboard for a routine inspection, instead of the routine they came aboard with a drug dog and searched the boat for over an hour. They pulled pretty much the whole boat apart and the more time past the more they got frustrated because they could not find anything.

One day after their boarding another cruising boat faced the same. This time they tried to bring a wet drug dog aboard, owner did not allow it, so they brought 2 dry dogs in. The owner just had eye surgery the previous day and was on bed rest, told the agents and asked if they could come back later. 3 ½ hours later the agents wanted them to sign paperwork that stated they were professional about it. The owner refused to sign as they were harassed and they left the boat a mess with head liners torn down and other damage. Just the other day a boat announced on the radio that the authorities were back and checking every boat for paper work.

You know hearing all this, takes the fun out of visiting a beautiful place like Cartagena and I don’t think we will ever return again. We have first hand seen how authorities work here and how corrupt it can be.

Did you know that Colombia celebrates Valentines Day on September 17^th Sept and is called Amor de Amistad. Neither did we and were just puzzled to find the mal packed with people and we enjoyed a great concert with a local artist. With the Day of Love really nasty weather rolled in, we have never seen so much rain and had winds up to 35 knots, just good we were in the marina and were not affected by it, but the radio was busy as many boats broke loose in the anchorage of Cartagena.

While in the yard we had a change to catch up with Kim, Tim and Steve of North Star. Their boat is getting a major overhaul and work is going slow mainly due to lots of rain. We enjoyed some wonderful dinners on our boat or in their small yard apartment, gave them a tour in town they haven’t seen yet, discovered a new Restaurant “De Oliva” a must!!! This Restaurant is just up the street from Club de Pesca towards Carulla. My favorite meal is sesame encrusted shrimp with a ginger sauce with stir fried veggies. Sid loves the fillet stuffed with sun dried tomatoes and goat cheese.

Hopefully North Star can soon get splashed and head for Panama to catch up with us.

Having a Beer or two

Beautiful Old Town of Cartagena

Contraban Alley best prices for booze

Steve and Kim ¨North Star¨

Dinner at De Olive with Carmen, Roberto and North Star

We eventually escaped the marina and headed back to Cholon to finally spend some time with Carmelita and Roberto. Obviously you noticed that I haven’t updated our Blog in a while and you know what I am going to blame it on them LOL. But all that in our next update.

Roberto and Carmen having fun on Manatee

San Blas to Colombia

2011-10-09T05:49:00.000-07:00

After a quite night in Linton and the sun started to peak over the dense jungle’s canopy on top of the hill we snuck out of the anchorage. We had little to no wind at first but with all the thunderstorms forming along the Panamanian coast the wind started to fill in to a nice 18 knots and had a wonderful and fast sail to Chichime. Fast was good then as soon as we were securely anchored a pretty good squall hit us with winds up to 35 knots. This is definitely the time of daily thundershowers, the rain we don’t mind so much, it’s the darts the angry clouds throw towards and around us we don’t like, but when they are over we love the fresh and cool air.

When you see a foot like this in an approaching cloud

you better get ready for some strong wind

Enjoying our fresh brewed coffee and a quite morning, Sid mentioned that an ulu was already approaching, a bit early for 7 AM. The head of a young Kuna girl popped up over the lee cloth peaking right into the cockpit, Where are her manners and our privacy! She was forgiven right away then as soon as she saw me she yelled ‘Manuela”, wow, she still remembered my name from our 2 day’s stay 2 months ago! Melina, her sister Princeline, Calisto (not sure if he is the father) and the adorable grandma Sipu hung around quite a while to chat with us, didn’t even try to sell us anything which was nice for a change. They were so excited to see us again they came by at least twice a day to chat. Of course there is always something Kuna’s want, so we gave them some reading and sun glasses and they put in an order in for nail polish for the girls, cardboard box for Sipu, a T-shirt for Calisto, a tarp for their thatched roof and powdered milk. To our surprise Sipu gave us each a necklace she had made, that is unusual for Kunas to give presents they take them but rarely give them.

By the way Gaby your “Gabydup Island” is still here and we had Mama and baby dolphin play around the boat in the early morning, what a treat.

The joy of boating! We tried to send some emails out but learned that our SSB was not tuning at all therefore we were unable to transmit, always something to repair.

The other joy having sunset visitors

No joy the following morning to clean up the mess LOL

Three days later we motored to Banadup in the East Lemons and we anchored pretty much in our old spot. While in the process of anchoring a little boy stood on the beach in front of his hut waving and screaming ……uela. “Did you hear that”, Sid said”, he’s calling you!” – “Nah”, I said and pointed at the Kuna in the water next to our neighbor, “I think he’s calling “abuelo” his grandpa cleaning our neighbor’s boat”. But then again the kid was looking straight at us so I waved back at him and he started jumping up and down yelling “Manuela, Manuela”, wow a 7 year old boy remembers my name, I am impressed and flattered. An hour later the boy with his parents paddled their ulu out to Paradise, warmly shook our hands and told us how happy they were to see us on their last day on the island. All the San Blas islands are owned by individual families and each family rotates the guardians every 3 months. Their time was up but they assured us they would be back in November.

It was actually fun watching the changes of the guards the following morning. A big panga loaded to the hilt with people and all their belongings landed on the beach in front of the Kuna huts, where the family leaving was standing amongst all their belongings piled on the beach. The family exchanged a few words then the women went right to work and moved all their belongings onto the island. While then the women of the leaving party moved all their belonging into the panga the other women moved everything into the hut. I have no idea how they kept their stuff separated as everything is packed into the same plastic containers. The women worked their butts off schlepping everything into the boat including huge and heavy bags filled with coconut. The guys kind of just stood around letting the women do all the heavy stuff. Then when all was loaded we got a good chuckle out of them first chasing the dog, then the cat and the funniest the chicken. All took about 20 minutes and you would think after not having seen your relatives you would sit together for a while and chat, nope they barely said goodbye to the new family but they did wave to us as they motored by and away from the island.

We couldn’t pass up the waist deep water again on the little sand spit of one of the island where we found clams last time. Wanted to make sure we had left some behind and sure enough we found enough for a wonderful dinner again. After claming we went to the resort island for an ice cold beer to find that the friendly old man now wasn’t so friendly anymore and he had raised all his prices by a third.

Our second night September 1^st, we had thunder and lightening all night long it was a noisy night but stayed off shore and away from us but it did leave us with a cloudy and misty day. Due to Hurricane Irene up north the air was sucked out of here and pulled the ITCZ (Intra Tropical Conversion Zone) up which was all the lightening we saw.

We were suppose to meet Roberto in San Blas on his backpacker run on his boat Manatee, but after postponing his trip for a fourth or fifth time we decided we could not wait any longer to deliver his new alternator in Cholon.

We calculated that our 200 mile trip would take us anywhere from 40 to 48 hours and to time it right to arrive sometime after daybreak we decided 3 PM would be a good time for departure. We left behind the beautiful coast of Panama with clouds building up rather fast, some were towering clouds fully built to explode into massive thunderstorms. We watched them head out to see where we were going but realized that they headed in a NW direction and Paradise into a NE direction and were hoping that we missed them all. It came close but we never did get any rain or thunder but the clouds did send us some 15 to 18 knots of wind which we fully took advantage of sailing with 6 to 6.5 knots towards our next destination. 6.5 knots is fast for us and we realized at this speed we would arrived at 11 at night and that if it kept up we would eventually have to slow down as it was not an option to enter the reef in Cholon at night. But the wind only lasted as long as the thunderclouds did then the motor had to help as 2 knots would definitely get us behind schedule. We had a spectacular sunset with all the left over clouds. A tired booby managed to land on the bow of Paradise and settled in for the night.

Sid took the first watch and a few hours later as I woke up he told me about this huge cloud exploding with one lighting bolt after another right in front of us, he assessed where it was headed and figured if he changed course 30 degrees to the north we might miss it. Good calculation on his part we did miss this cloud which was very active, but what we didn’t expect was behind that cloud was another cell, then another and yet another before we knew it we were in the middle of storm cells getting pelted with heavy rain and darted with lighting bolts, some hit so close to the boat we could feel our hair rise and smelled the ozone, it was not fun, not to mention we didn’t get any sleep for over 3 hours. Poor Booby was pelted by the rain but he staid through the night.

After fluffing his feathers he took off. The interesting thing was the bird sat always with his head into the wind. We hoped he would land again the following evening but no joy.
What a relief it was to finally manage to get out of these angry clouds and were thankful that at least the sea was calm and the 4 to 6 foot swells we had prior were all knocked down by the rain. Irene had still her pull on the ITCZ and there was no escape from it. The rest of the trip went smooth we had wind enough to sail without motor on to just motoring but the sea stayed calm and the sky clear for the second night. On the second morning as the first sunrays blinked over the horizon we could recognize the Rosario islands and at 8 am we snuck through the entrance to the calm bay of Cholon. Hello World gave us a heartfelt welcome as we motored by their boat and later on that day spoiled us with a good cup of tea and coffee on their boat and we caught up on our adventures. But first we anchored, had a big breakfast and took a good nap.

You would think all the rain we had in Panama would keep the boat clean, absolutely not, it just moved the dirt from one place to the next so we decided it was time to visit a marina to give Paradise a well needed bath. Club Nautico was out of the question since it is first of all a very crappy marina and second of all gets waked all day long by the many pangas. We opted for the Manzanillo yard which has some med-mooring slips. Here we are scrubbing Paradise and I tell you a lot of scrubbing it is. Everything inside out is getting cleaned including all the walls which you can watch how the mildew grows.
Talking about a bad hair day!

Portobelo River Trip

2011-09-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

The scent of tropical flowers that swept over our boats in the early evenings and during the nights drove Jeannie and me nuts so we went on a wild flour hunt and found an amazing array, which some were out of reach or between spider webs not to mention the huge spiders eyeballing us, a squeal here and there we managed to collect beautiful bouquets.

We are anchored across the bay

Jannie digging for some plants

A chain of hearts

The white flowers have a wonderful scent

After all this time in Portobelo we finally remembered that there was a river to explore, Sunny and Blake on Slow Mocean joined us. We took separate dinghies and ventured up the river or rivers as there are three different rivers to follow. Since it was still fairly early in the morning we did see quite a few birds, but what we didn’t expect was instead of just mangroves the rivers snaked through jungle and fields with brma bulls. It was a very scenic ride and the further up the river we followed of course the river narrowed, at some points it was barely just wide enough for one dinghy to pass but the amazing thing was the depth still was up to 10 feet.

The lowest in depth we found was 2.5 other than the hump Blake got stuck on and the rocks we hit in the lagoon area. In those narrow parts the river bed was way over our heads and you just know you don’t want to be here in a heavy downpour. We rounded one corner along this high riverbed and it was a bit creepy having dozens of buzzards look down on you.

The funny thing about this trip was Sunny half laying on the dinghy tube loosing her croc in the water and while retrieving it Sid jokingly said: “Oh look there is a croc in this water”, and we all had a good laugh until about 2 minutes later when we actually did see a croc. Yes, Gaby, sorry, we really didn’t know that they are here when you were swimming around the boat LOL!


Not sure what this is but we think it's related to the cocoa pod

Not just are crocks in these waters but now and then after a heavy rainfall snakes are washed out of the trees into the river end up being rescued by an anchor chain and so we had two neighbors with boas on deck.

A couple days later Sid and I were just going into town when we noticed this huge black wall of a cloud with an enormous foot approach. Whenever you see such a cloud you know that there is a lot of wind involved and so we decided to stay on board, which was a good thing. The wind roared and Sid noticed that Slow Mocean started dragging and went on a walkabout. Sunny and Blake at that time were in Panama City and no-one was aboard. In heavy rain and lightning bolts hitting all around us we tried to rescue Slow Mocean. Sid could not start the engines and there was no way to hip tow a catamaran so I was towing in the dinghy in reverse (line was only on the bow of dink) into deeper water. It was tough going as the wind was still blowing hard and a dinghy just does not perform so well with the engine in reverse. Camille on Bohemia came and helped and it was easier to tow the boat with two dinghies. ½ hour later another boater came to see if he could help and ended up on the bow with Sid pulling the anchor up. About one hour later Slow Mocean was secured.

In the following days Discovery a Panamanian charter boat came in high speed through the anchorage and rocked everybody. He comes through here about every other week and has never left a wake like this, so many cruisers were upset especially the one where the wife fell down the companion way and the guy who was on the transom fixing his water pump which rolled into the water due to the wake. The captain was hailed on the radio by several boats and asked to please slow down, but no answer. He turned around in front of Portobelo with throttle slightly down but then pushed the throttle full forward and left us another nasty wake then anchored on the outside of the bay. Several of us jumped into the dinghy and went out to question the captain. We were told that the captain was not on board that he was in town checking in with the port captain. That’s funny the port captain was not in town anymore and his office closed as a cruisers had tried to call him. Anyway, we all contacted the owner of Discovery via email and the following day the port captain from Colon arrived to discus the situation and was actually shocked that nobody wanted compensation. We just wanted him to never do it again and maybe an apology. As a matter of fact the port captain asked us three times if we were going to sue, we did not want compensation. We all bought him drinks, fed him and he and his wife loved it so much they stayed for karaoke and he ended up singing “ I Did it My Way” five times to every bodies dismay LOL.

We left the following day to Puerto Lindo and picked up Binnie’s mooring which is tucked into the corner behind a reef. We had barely settled in when a dark, dark cloud was creeping over the hill and unleashed its fury. We had winds up to 35 knots and since we were bow and stern moored our sunshade acted like a sail and we had to hang onto it so that it would not get damaged. It was a fairly big system and brought a lot of rain. It was overcast for the rest of the day but that did not bother us as we had a fun afternoon again at Binnie’s for ping-pong and once more I managed to kick Reed’s butt!!!!

I received an email from my cousin Gaby. She was contacted by a reporter who wanted to write an article about her vacation with us. Everybody was fascinated that she went on such a far trip by herself and got on a boat and sailed to the Islands of Kuna Yala. The article was printed in the Newspaper of Holmestrand in Norway.

Beautiful Portobelo

2011-08-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Sunsets

We have never seen soooo much rain in our entire cruising career. It rains every day here at least twice and for sure every night around 04.30. Wouldn’t you think that with all the rain the boat would be clean? Nope, the at times very heavy downpour just moves the dirt around. We have thought about painting the boat green and have green canvas so you don’t see all the algae growing everywhere. Daily mildew patrol is a must inside the boat, I use a Windex/Vinegar solution to rub down all the walls to keep up with the fast growing nuisance. But this area is just absolutely beautiful and we both fell in love with it. Portobelo is located in the northern part of the Isthmus of Panama and has a deep natural harbor.

Today Portobelo is a sleepy town with a population of fewer than 3000 people. Portobelo was founded in 1597 by Spanish explorer Francisco Velarde y Mercado, but legend has it that Christopher Columbus originally named it in 1502 Puerto Bello, meaning Beautiful Port. It is also said that Francis Drakes died of dysentery in 1596 and was buried here in a lead coffin. Between the 16h and 18^th century Portobelo was silver exporting port.

Portobelo was attacked by privateer pirate Captain Henry Morgan (still Sid’s favorite rum) in 1668. Despite the good fortifications he managed to capture Portobelo with his fleet of 450 men and plundered it for 14 days, stripping nearly all it’s wealth while raping, torturing and killing the inhabitants. Wow didn’t think he was such a mean dude.

After the British disaster in the Blockade of Porto Bello under Admiral Hosier in 1726 the port was attacked and catpured a new in November 1739 by a British fleet by Admiral Vernen.

In 1741 the Spanish defeated Vernen and recovered Portobelo in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias. Vernon was forced to return to England with a decimated fleet, he lost more than 18 000 of his men.

Portobelo is most famous for its gold and silver trade, there was at time so much gold in this town that silver ingots were stored on the streets.

Still today many sunken ships are found with gold and silver coins and some lucky folks find a silver coin now and then on the beaches.

Portobelo is also famous for the recently renovated iglesia de San Juan de dios which is the home of Cristo Negro de Portobelo a black Christ statue which has several stories how this statue got here. Each story dates back to the 17^th century and each story has three parts, the arrival of the statue, the refusal of the stature to leave the village and its veneration. The version we heard is that it was found in a sunken ship. Regardless of which version, each story conclude that the statue is responsible for miraculous deeds in the lives of his devotees. Twice a year the robes of the Black Christ statue are changed, each is used only once. The Christ is adorned with a red wine colored robe for the Black Christ Festival which is held each October 21 and is changed to a purple one for Holy Week. Tens of thousands of pilgrims visit the church for the Black Christ Festival. We at the Festival 10 years ago but it left a bit of a bitter taste in our mouth as within the first 10 minutes we came ashore some hoodlum tried to pick pocket Sid twice, without success I have to add. Now 10 years later we find Portobelo to be safe and very friendly. Then we had less than 10 boats in the anchorage now there are more than 50 boats here and is now the main port for Back-Packers. There must be around 30 boats that shuttle Back-Packers from here to Cartagena and back and fourth. We call them cattle boats as they overload the boats with these young kids who have no idea about boat safety and how rough the waters in this area can get. A 40 foot boats takes on as many as 14 youngsters and the boats themselves look in pretty bad shape and just this year alone 4 Back-Packer boats ended on reefs in the San Blas. The most disturbing thing about them is that they take over the beautiful remote San Blas islands, don’t respect the Kuna Yala laws or the Kuna people in general, leave garbage behind and give us cruisers a bad name.

Coming back to Portobelo, we’ve been enjoying it immensely and have gotten so busy that we hardly find time to keep up with the Blog. At least twice a week (mostly Manuela) takes the bus into Colon or Panama for shopping. The bus ride to Colon takes about 1 ½ hours and costs $1.60, to Panama from there another 1 ½ for 3.10 in an air-conditioned bus with movies, not bad at all. Since we have friends on the Pacific side anchored in the Las Brisas area overlooking the incredible skyline of Panama City we decided to go for a visit. It was really great to run into Lena and Larry on now Hobo, Allonsy was the old boat when we met in Mexico and realized it had been already 5 years since we last met in Jacksonville Florida. Not just that but Dona on Nintai, we also had met in Mexico, joined us for a delicious lunch and the whole fun day and was also told that Giny and Werner on Ornen, we also had met in Mexico, were on their way on the ferry from the Las Perlas and arrived at 5, so we waited an extra hour for them and it truly was a great surprise for them and us. Hey three boats in one visit that’s amazing. Another visit we did to Panama was to see an old friend we had met at the Pedro Miguel Yacht Club 10 years back Carl Smith, doesn’t look a day older than when we met him and he still hast the same sense of humor, we had a wonderful day catching up and will have more to come as this is not our only visit to see him. There I said it, we will stick around in Panama for a while.

All our friends on Puerto Lindo, keep us busy for the rest of the time, Thursday afternoon its girls domino afternoon. Saturday nights, Karaoke at Captain Jacks which the last one was a huge turnout and every body had a wonderful time with the many talented singers, no seriously they all knew how to carry a tune. Sunday’s food and ping-pong affair at Binnie’s, which is always a lot of fun and I even managed to kick Reed’s butt in ping-pong.

I enjoy most cuddling with the sloth.

So here we are settling in for a while into an area we fell in love with and enjoy all our new found friends. In-between we find time to battle mildew and manage to keep the boat from turning green.

End of Gaby's vacation

2011-08-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

Gaby’s last two days were spend in Panama City with shopping at Albrook Mall, the biggest mall I have ever seen; Gaby was dumbfound to see the prices, a pair of jeans $5.99, blouses and T-Shirts $ 2.99, shoes as low as 1.99 and not to mention the low liquor prices.

We enjoyed a bottle of bubbly in the pool on the top floor of the Costa Inn hotel with a magnificent view over all the high rise buildings of down town Panama and all the freighters anchored out in the bay awaiting their transit through the canal, enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Casa Blanco in the new-old town “Casco Viejo” which reminds me of Cartagena. Of course you haven’t seen Panama if you haven’t seen the Panama Canal so we went to the Miraflores Lock and spent almost all day visiting the museum and watching the big ships go through while having lunch at the restaurant, best buffet I have had in a long time. It’s fascinating watching the boats come through the locks and brought memories back from our Panama crossings. It’s definitely a different view from the visitor’s center than being on the canal itself.

We ended her visit to Panama with a Swiss cheese Fondue at the Rincon Suiza recapturing Gaby’s vacation. Gaby was a wonderful guest and we enjoyed having her with us and hope she will come visit us again. She truly enjoyed her vacation as she satisfied her curiosity what we do all day living on a boat.

A couple days later we invited Cindy and Reed over for dinner to catch up with them.

Cindy and Reed

Bob and Jeannie

Then we rented a car together with Jeannie and Bob on Island Dreamin’ and drove all over Panama City. Manuela did all the driving and luckily Bob knowing the city somewhat did and incredible job navigating her through the busy streets of Panama. We dropped our Radar off and a week later we found out that it was not hit by lightening there is nothing wrong with the radar it’s our ground plane that needs to be fixed which will keep Sid busy for a while. We hit so many stores in Panama and are just fascinated how low the prices are in pretty much everything and you can find pretty much anything here. Two days of just shopping around finding parts and this and that we decided we needed a fun day and extended our car rental for an extra day driving to the Panama Canal where Manuela played tour guide and managed to get into the Miraflores visitor center for free while Jeannie, Bob and Sid paid half price for being old farts.

They enjoyed the museum and we all agreed how incredible it is to watch the boats come through. Our fun trip ended having a gourmet pick-nick in Gamboa along the Canal and visiting the Gamboa Resort, wow what an incredible hotel.

Add caption

Gamboa Resort

While girls were watching view

Boys watched TV !!

Oops caught!!!

Not a boring moment in and on Paradise. If I thought that we would have some relaxing days after the driving stress in Panama I was wrong. Cindy and Reed picked us up for a pizza lunch and then to their friend Binnie’s house where they all meet every Sunday for ping-pong. The coolest thing about this visit was getting a tour of her beautiful house to find she has 3 sloths. Where is the camera when you need it? They truly are cute, 2 of them are 2 toed and the little one is a 3 toed sloth. The 3 toed are very mellow and friendly the 2 you have to be careful they have some nice K9 teeth that can do some harm not to mention the claws on their toes.

We managed to rest for two days before heading to the Free Zone in Colon for one day, wow that is like a city in itself. No wonder they give you a 3 day pass as one day is definitely not enough to see everything. Early the following day Manuela headed into Panama City with Cindy and Reed while Sid worked in the bilge redoing the ground plane and bonding wires under the floor and anywhere where it is hard to get to. Poor guy had cut up hands and nicks and bruises all over when I came home. But that didn’t keep him from joining us again for a Free Zone day.

And boom the week is over again and we will be heading out to Linton for ping-pong and to pet the sloths.

The weather has been grumpy all this time, around 4 pm a nasty swell comes in from the west and rolls all the boats around and of course it rains at least once a day and we’re getting pretty good with the rain shuffle.

We are still waiting for the mail and a few parts. We will start moving around soon we hope.

We are just having fun!

Swimming Pool

2011-07-10T16:37:00.001-07:00

After we saw the nurse shark Sid notice a huge grouper, belly up and swimming in circles, floating towards us. Sid jumped into the dinghy with the gaff to see how much alive the fish was and when he gaffed him, oh my gosh Sid was yanked back and fourth and up and down. It took him a good fight to get the fish into the dinghy and still there this 13.5 pound adrenalin pumped fish was yanking Sid around. Later he told me that he pulled a muscle on his back, poor guy. All the cruisers swear by pouring alcohol into the gills kills the fish instantly, we never had much luck with that but thought to give it another shot, or two or oh well the whole 8 oz of alcohol went into his gills and it took a long time for him to die. We hauled him up on the bow where Sid then was filleting 2 inch think fillets of the bones. There was so much fish Sid brought a quarter of it to our new neighbors. The scrap we tossed into the water which brought 4 nurse sharks and huge trigger fish around. It was fun watching the nurse sharks circling like they were dancing with each other eating the scraps. About an hour later Gaby was ready to venture into the water (after not having seen a single nurse shark for a while). Barely in the water one swam right under her. We had fun following this 7 foot creature and watching it blow into the sand to find food.
After a wonderful grouper dinner we hung the light into the water and were entertained for many hours. First we had several spotted eagle rays swim under the boat, then a fairly good sized squid (big enough for my frying pan) floated by, a school of cobia amongst many smaller fish, but what topped it all off was 5 good sized Wahoo trying to catch needle fish which also scattered around the bright light. Next time we hang the light out we'll be prepared for the Wahoo, frying pan is already on the stove and garlic is chopped.
The nice thing here is sitting in the shallow clear water the light makes it look as if we in deed are in a swimming pool with the turquoise blue hallow around Paradise.

While Sid did some maintenance on the boat, finding the impeller had lost 5 out of the 6 teeth, and other things to repair, the girls ventured to BBQ island where we 10 years ago had fun potluck on this cute island. In the mean time, a cruiser who is still there since we were there was tried to claim the island and upset the Kunas. So now the island is inhabited by an elderly couple to protect what is theirs and the Kuna Congress created a law that now Kuna's living on islands are allowed to charge 2 dollars per person to walk on the island. We talked to the very friendly elderly couple; they are still upset at the cruiser, who by the way is still hanging around the Swimming pool now trying to claim another island. Not just that he puts 200 feet of chain out in 10 feet of water so that no other cruisers can anchor close to them; a real shame as cruisers like that give us all a bad name. Another thing they were upset about that some cruisers come onto their island and steal coconuts, which is their income(get 35cents per coconut). The friendly couple invited us to come ashore and enjoy their island at any time.

After we thanked them we headed to some other islands and walked around some on another Gaby walked into a thorny leaf of a coconut palm which punctured her just below her eye, she now has a good shiner. Later on we snorkeled out by the reef and since there was a strong about 1.5 knot current I suggested we drift back to the boat towing the dinghy which really was fun we barely had to move our fins to get back.

Gaby hasn't had sauerkraut in years and so I promised to cook some, but every time sauerkraut was on the menu some fishermen came by with some more fish, this time with crabs with the biggest claws, we all were drooling seeing those and sauerkraut was pushed off again. She finally had her sauerkraut 4 days later.

Unfortunately Gaby's vacation is coming to an end and it was time to sail back to Portobello." Audrey Page" we haven't seen in over 2 years showed up just on time for us to noodle behind their boat to meet their grandchildren, Gaby and to catch up.

The motor sail back was bumpy and poor Gaby was feeding the fish again. But that went fast away as we anchored and I had prepared one of her favorite dishes grandma always cooked for us, stewed rabbit, she was smiling from ear to ear.

Holandes Cays or Swimming Pool

2011-07-07T06:03:00.000-07:00

Lots of thunderclouds going by to the north of us due to tropical waves which are now coming more frequently and the first storm of this season has built. The mainland creates daily thunderstorm as well so we are always ready to do the rain shuffle. July 3rd was the first morning with no clouds in the sky.
Banadup is such a beautiful place making us feel that Paradise is in Paradise. All but one of the island are inhabited by a Kuna Family, which we learned stays for about 3 months to take care of the coconuts then another related family takes over to take care of the coconuts. One of the islands here is a little resort with a big thatched roof with tables and chairs (made out of tree stumps) a bar with two freezers, beer or coke only and on lucky occasions they have rum. Attached to this is a hut with a kitchen and I think I also saw a hammock in it. The owner a cute little Kuna man lives with two helpers on the island while his wife manages another island with the same idea of a resort. Guests can either sleep in one of the many tents he has available or in a hammock. The island is oblong and Coco palms only grow on both ends in the middle is a nice stretch of beach with a volley ball net. We sat down and had a couple of ice cold beer while talking to the jolly little man and found out all kinds of things about their culture including that they only sleep in hammocks all in one room and yes baby's are created in the hammocks.

We had such a good time we decided to go back later on in the evening and play boccha ball. Several more boats arrived the same day and before we knew it we were 16 boats. Guess we found the right island for the 4th of July celebration. Bob and Jeannie on Island Dreamin' we met in Puerto La Cruz arrived as well and we had a happy reunion at the resort, although we never played boccha ball, there was only time for beers while we swapped stories.

The fishermen come buy every day with either lobster, conch, crab or fish and it's just so hard not to buy anything, today's catch was a 3.5 pound snapper. Some come along the boat and beg for some fishing line with hook as they just had lost theirs with a big fish on the hook. Many bring their cell phones to charge. Yep this is the cell phone age even in Kuna Yala.

Gaby and I did a few snorkeling trips and each time we had found some beautiful coral reefs and sand bars which Gaby thinks is incredible to be in the middle of the ocean and just in ankle deep water. We also had a noodeling get together with Island Dreamin' and Southern Bell right off one of the islands in crystal clear and shallow water. While sitting there and talking away, playing with our hands in the sand Sid dug up some clams, so we all started digging and decided to go clam hunting the following morning and indeed we managed to get enough clams for a wonderful appetizer.

We were going to leave for the Holandes Cays but it looked like the whole fleet was going to meet here in the Eastern Lemmons for 4th of July and so we decided to stay a bit longer. 4th of July was celebrated on one of the islands. Volleyball was one of the activities along with slammers (Tequila/Kalua/Coke yummy) and jello shots. Connie on Better Days made sure that all had a wonderful time; I tell you she's dangerous! The weather was perfect, couldn't have been better as we could clearly see the coast of Panama, just beautiful.

We were going to leave on the 5th but a huge cloud moved the islands and into the direction we were going to navigate. It was a big system and we thought to better wait which turned out to be a very wise decision as a good size waterspout started sweeping the water to where we could have been had we left. Another day in this island group didn't hurt and while Sid played volley ball, Gaby and I went hunting for some more of those juicy clams. While digging in the sand all of a sudden there was this blood curdling scream and all I saw was frothy water and on top of the froth I saw Gaby's spinning legs as she was running backwards on top of the water. A crab had gotten hold of her finger, pinched it and drew blood. That was definitely the end of clamming and we ended this episode with a pipa (coconut water in the nut with a splash of rum and gin). Ahhh life is good!

On the 6th a hefty water shower greeted the day and made sure all was soaking wet. After all had dried a little we pulled anchor and motored the 10 mile distant to Holandes Cays or also known as The Swimming Pool. The sea was flat calm but half way a huge thundercloud tried to threaten us, never made it but it did bring us heavy wind. Approaching the Swimming Pool a squall line from the opposite direction was now threatening us while the thunderstorm from shore still was sending heavy wind, we just knew that Sid would be on the bow again anchoring in a heavy downpour. Luckily the cloud decided to leave us alone and here we are anchored in 8 feet of crystal clear water and Gaby already saw her first nurse shark swimming underneath the boat. I think it will take a lot of convincing to get her into the water here LOL.

Paradise in Paradise Eastern Lemmon Cays

2011-06-30T05:51:00.000-07:00

The mola ladies did stay away but an ulu filled with crab and lobster came buy. Although we just had some lobster we could not say no. I bought 3 big crabs (they are a type like a spider crab, body is the same size but the legs are only half the length that of a spider crab but still very meaty) for 2 bucks each and 4 little lobster for a buck. After 4 miles underway to the Swimming Pool we came buy some small islands part of the Eastern Lemmons which looked really inviting and so we went and checked it out. It looked like Paradise and Paradise dropped anchor at Banadup and settled right in. We are in 20 feet of water not the 40 plus we had been in the last two islands and we are surrounded by small coconut palm overgrown islands and a huge reef protecting us. No bugs either and each island here has a family living on it. The island right next to us Nuinudup, two young kids, about 4 and 7, paddled in their oversized ulu out to us to ask for candy. We don't have any candy on board but they sure loved the Swiss chocolate. They were too cute. Every time we took a photo of them they posed with a big toothy smile and thumbs up. After they had left the other half of the family showed up in their ulu and wanted to sell molas but since we bought plenty already Gaby settled with another Kuna bracelet.
The weather is pretty unsettled or probably it's the way it is at this time of the year; thunderstorms come at any time. Each day we do the rain shuffle and are getting better and better at it. The unfortunate thing is there are two directions NE and S where they can bring lots of winds just like that catching our sunshade and blowing us sideways. So now when we see one approach from these directions we try to roll up the shade as fast as we can.
After another squall drill Gaby and I hopped into the dinghy and ventured towards the reef and pulled onto an island with nobody living on it, walked around the islands and collected some beautiful shells.
Not long after we returned to the boat another one of those heavy wind squall came buy, of course exactly at the time again I was standing in the galley cooking, steaming with no windows open. Dinner was wonderful, sautéed lobster oven baked with a Béchamel sauce and topped with Parmesan cheese and 2 giant crab cakes each. There was not much talking at this table and when Gaby had her dessert (guava pie) in front of her she said she was never ever going to leave.

Lemmon Cays

2011-06-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

Early in the morning already more ulus stopped with Kunas eager to sell molas and of course we got suckered into buying a few more. They truly are beautiful pieces of art.
What is a mola? It's a beautiful appliqué shirt all woman wear and is made by sewing and cutting different layers of colorful cloth, all are hand stitched. Every mola is different but each one tells a Kuna story and shows birds, fish, crab, lobster, turtles, medicinal plants, villages, mountains any thing that is important in their lives. Not all ulus (dug out canoe) stop to sell Molas, some sell fish or lobster. I could not pass on the two nice slipper lobster and a good size crab, what a treat! There is a cute little island next to our anchor spot with three palm trees on it. Gaby fell in love with it so we ventured ashore with a Swiss and a Norwegian flag and claimed the island for her and toasted the event with a bottle of champagne.

Chichime is a protected anchorage and surrounded by several coconut palm overgrown islands with sandy beaches. Cruise ships used to come here but now they go to Carti which makes it again more cruiser friendly for us.
Just a little over two miles south are the delightful islands of the Lemmon Cays and also well protected from weather from any direction. The entrance was a bit scary to navigate as it gets very shallow. We managed get the boat in reverse before getting stuck in the shallow. Two empty oil cans one red and yellow show the narrow and only 8 foot deep channel into the anchorage and there it is anywhere from 60 to 40 feet deep and hard to hook up. Finally on our third try the anchor set.
The names of the island are kind of funny: Ogopsibadup, Mandarraya, Kagandup, Tiadup, Koledup, Kuasidup, Miria, Nugaruachirdup, Tiadup, Kiledup and Kuasidup. The snorkeling here is incredible, Gaby and I were barely in the water when a friendly spotted eagle ray started to swim towards us then at close distance he started gliding around us curiously looking at us as curious a we looked at him. What a beautiful animal. There is an abundance of coral heads and each one is the home of colorful fish. After the fun snorkel we went ashore on one of the islands and found some interesting seeds and many dried out sea bisquets and no-see-ums biting my ankles while mosquitoes sucked on my arm. We were out of there! This was the first day we did not receive any rain, the sky was hazy and we had a brisk wind out of the west. Great we can keep the hatches open over night. At 4am I heard the slamming noise of the hatches; Sid was busy doing the rain shuffle again. A couple of hours later a huge system hit us with gusts over 36 knots and lots of lightning.
So far no mola ladies showed up; maybe we will have some money left over when we return to Portobello.

Chichime, San Blas

2011-06-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

Riding the bus into town is really a hoot. It is an old school bus painted with fun graffiti, the inside is also all decked out. Above the front window is always a mirror the width of the bus, for him to see how many seats are still open, is surrounded with colored feathers. Pink feathers seem to be their favorite. Of course the busses are very, very old and not sure how well they are maintained. When they step on the brakes they have to pump them while they squeal like crazy, worse than running your fingernail on a chalk board.
When all the seats are taken they stuff everybody into the bus like in a sardine can and who does not fit hangs outside by the door. The bus was so full before I knew it I had a baby on my lap and a broom in my hand.

Ever since we arrived in Portobelo it's been nothing but rain, rain, rain and rain again with occasional thunder and lightning. Our neighbor got hit and was pretty lucky he only lost his VHF radio and GPS. Later when we finally left Portobello we noticed that our radar was not working proper anymore possibly due to the lightning strike to our neighbor. By the way I have to add that the 10 boats we know having been hit by lightning all except one had a brush (static disapator) on top of the mast, our neighbor did too. I guess from now on we will have to check our neighbors first if hey have a brush on the mast and if so anchor way away from them.

Gaby is having a wonderful time and Sid and I decided that we will keep her on the boat, she did a wonderful job cleaning the water line and I don't have to do any dishes anymore. After she had settled in and was used a little more of the motion of the boat we pulled anchor and left for the San Blas. The sea was calm there was not a breath of air so we knew we had to motor. As soon as we headed out of the bay and turned right the sea state changed. Huge (6 to 7)rollers fortunately far apart and a backwash from the shore turned it a bit too rough for poor Gaby. We assured her that green looked really good on her. We never had enough wind to sail but it was enough to motor sail until halfway when the engine over heated (hose clamp came off and ½ the antifreeze spewed out). As luck would have it, at the same time the wind started to pick up, we pulled all the sails out and in no time we were sailing 5 to 5.5 knots. It took our mechanic Sid about 15 minutes to fix the problem then we waited a little over an hour for the engine to cool as the wind died down again and we started the motor for the last 18 miles to Chichime in the San Blas. We watched as several clouds ashore started to rain and one started to follow us just about when we started up the engine again and we out ran it. But arriving in Chichime a huge system hung over there and poor Sid had to drop the anchor in heavy rain. We were not anchored 5 minutes when the first ulu (Kuna dug out) stopped to sell us molas. I told them to come back the next day. Early enough they knocked on the boat and we all had fun haggling with them for a few molas, a stuffed parrot and we even traded for reading glasses and big jars of glass beads.

Portobelo, Panama

2011-06-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

Chris was right on with his weather again, we had a great sail for about 4 hours then the wind shut down and the iron jib had to be turned on. We had a quiet and calm night and both of us had restful sleep. After the sun came up she immediately was blocked out by dark clouds which grew darker and darker and the one behind us following us started to throw darts out of the sky into the water, one after another. We checked on the radar if there was a way to outrun it but it was heading our direction slowly. Luckily it changed course a bit and the lightning part missed us, we did get some hefty rain that seemed to last 2 hours. We had another two squalls approaching but all missed and were treated with a fun pod of dolphins playing in the bow wake while at the same time a Bird of Paradise flew over us in calm seas. We arrived in Portobelo early enough to relax for a while before enjoying the sunset. Checking in is a breeze here but I was told I had to go into Colon to get a cruising permit, which now costs 180 dollars and is good for one year. The following day I took or was going to take the local bus into Colon but the friendly lady that was waiting for the bus with me gave me a ride with her friend that drove buy and offered us both a ride. While at the office to get our permit papers I was told that I needed two copies of all our paperwork which I didn’t have, oh well. I immediately hopped into a bus to Panama City to get my passports renewed. It’s a hour and a half ride in very well air-conditioned bus, the AC has two settings: OFF and FREEZING. While freezing your butt off you watch a movie, it’s actually a pretty cool ride for $2.75. Back in Colon I took the local chicken bus for 1.75 and it took almost 2 hours to get back to Portobello. This bus stops at every corner and fills the bus up to the brim so that people hang outside the door. It’s fun though to travel as the locals do. While I was in town Portobelo had such a downpour of rain that the 70 foot boat in front of us created such an eddy to suck Paradise right into it. Luckily Sid saw what was going on, turned the engine on and drove out of the eddy.

Our third day in Portobelo we met with our friends Cindy and Reed who used to sail Sea Fever. We had met them first in Colon at the Panama Yacht Club then in Cartagena and now here, wonderful people. Both picked us up and we had a fun day catching up and we had the most wonderful Osso bucco at the Panamarina Yacht Club.

Cindy knew I was going to pick up my cousin Gaby at the airport and offered to take me into town to show me the ropes again where all the good stores were. We had a blast and it was Merry Christmas all over again in every store we went. They had goodies in there I haven’t seen in years. She dropped me off close to the airport at a fun mall. I tell you Panama is the place it to buy clothing, I found beautiful tops from 2.99 to 14.99, I don’t think any cloths cost more than that.

Finally went to the airport to pick up Gaby and meet her after 35 years, that was exciting. She likes roughing it so I took her back on the chicken bus and man did they pack it full again, but she survived and loved it.

In the mean time Gaby and I are having a wonderful time catching up and especially talking about our childhood, so many things we forgot have come in to our minds again. It’s really good to have her here.

Fun Chicken Bus

Beautiful but always rainy Portobelo

Gaby and Sid

Gaby

Famous Fort in Portobelo

Paradise in background

Oh, did I mention that it rained here every single day ever since we arrived, except for today. I guess Gaby was right when she said she will keep the bad weather away from us!

Tropical Fruits

2011-06-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

View from Crows Nest with Cartagena in background

Time is coming to an end here in Cholon. It has been a very fast couple of months with all kind of exitment some more fun than others. For instant a couple of weeks ago the owner of the island next to where we are anchored drove by on his power boat and invited to join them for a sunset cruise and after the sun had set they invited us onto the island for a cocktail. They had many questions about cruising, where we check in and some about our friends in Crows Nest. Five days after that the Armada (Navy) arrived and boarded all our boats without permission. There were three officers, one from the Navy, the others I am not quite sure which department they were from just that the Navy guy was in charge and he was harassing us. He wanted to see our paper work which are all in order except our cruising permits were still in Bogota but a phone call to our agent proofed that we were all legal. The Lieutenant found another reason he insisted we needed a Zarpe for the park which we know doesn't exist, we cleared that up then another and another, he tried really hard to nail us for something. We realized that this was clearly harassment especially when he threatened to tow us to the Naval Station in Cartagena all 5 boats. He did tell us at the begin that he was told that there were 5 American boats here! It was a 5 hour ordeal including searching all 5 boats, with no permission and when they finally left they ordered us to be at the Port Captain's office at 8 sharp following morning. Non of us did as we know he only deals with our agents. It was clearly harasment and we figured out that it was the friendly neighbor who had us on his island a few days back,what a nice guy! He's tried to get all the cruising boats out of this bay a year ago. We all went into Cartagena and had a meeting with our agents and learned that the boarding was totally illegal and that they had no right to threaten us as they did. We learned that when at anchor nobody can board you without a warrant, you may let them on board but you can decline. If you are afraid if you say no that they would take over your boat that would fall into piracy and they know they can't do that without getting in trouble. Our agents advised us to go to the National Park Authorities and file paperwork. As we entered the office and were introduced to the Boss of the Park he looked at Roberto and said I always wanted to meet you, you are famous in Cholon. He then showed him a page with many photos and asked if that was his boat. It sure was but the other photos were of garbage tossed in the mangroves and whoever sent the photo to the park authority claimed it was from Robert's boat Manatee. We all assured him that it was not Roberto's nor our trash as he weekly collects our trash and he takes it to Baru to the garbage dump. After filing paperwork we were told that we all were welcome to stay in the park as long as we wanted (one year then paper work has to be renewed) and pay 3 dollars per person per day which is used for the park upkeep.

Life was good again and we returned back to Cholon. Sid was still helping Roberto on Manatee and last week I was involved in some sewing project. I also had to see a dermatologist for a sore I had on my lips and she ended up whacking a piece away, ouch.

Weather has been changing and we have our first tropical Low's, hurricane season has arrived. We have a very good weather window for the next few days before westerlies are starting to blow which means we would sail into the weather so we are leaving here today.

We love Colombia and will return soon for some more of all the good things here, tranquil anchorage, historical city, friendly people and wonderful food. I am still amazed how many tropical fruits we are able to enjoy, most of them I don't even know the name of but they all are just yummy tasting.

Carmelita spoils us daily with papaya's from her garden and believe me they are the sweetest we've ever had. Here are a few fruits we enjoy:

Guava Apple

Algaroba (tates just like honey)

Guama (cotton candy flavor)

Mamom (tart and sour with same texture as Guama)

Tomate de Arbol (Tree Tomatoes taste best in juices)

Caimito


Lunch

Cholon, a hideaway in Colombia

2011-05-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not having updated our Blog in a while, we’ve been caught in a bit of a mess dealing with our buddy boat and are still in the midst of it so when this is all over with I will get you up on speed

Here is just a brief update:

Cartagena is so dusty, the boat sooooooooo filthy and forget about wishing or hoping for some rain, the rainy season is not due until at least June/July. How do you clean the boat in this situation? Well here is how it’s done:

Sid the genius did it again!

We decided to go back to beautiful Cholon it is so much calmer and cleaner there besides we wanted to catch up some more with Carmen and Roberto. Sid is helping Roberto and Ken to fix up Manatee a 68 foot Shrimping Boat to get shipshape. They are working on it 12/7 and are having a wonderful time and at the end of the day they look like they worked a coalmine and smell like they sprayed themselves with Eau de Engine Oil.

This place is a true Paradise, the sunrises magical the days quiet, beautiful sunsets and cool nights with magnificent view of the stars.

The vulgar birds are still keeping us in stitches and I just noticed that the video did not completely upload so here it is again:

Sorry if this is a short and not very exciting note I promise the next report will be back to our normal life.

Hugs and kisses everybody

The Boatbumms still in and on Paradise

Cholon and friends visiting

2011-03-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

After a couple of weeks of socializing, shopping, some boat chores, annoying sulfur and smoke smells in the early mornings causing sinus problems, being waked by what seemed hundreds of boats all day long, a lot of barnacles growing very fast on the bottom of the boat, we decided it was time to head into a cleaner and more quite environment. Sid was shocked to see that the boat from the waterline all the way to the bottom of the keel was 99% covered with barnacles when he cleaned the propeller. That kept us busy for a couple of hours in the clean anchorage of Cholon. (Don’t get me wrong as bad as the anchorage in Cartagena sounds, it has a breath taking view and it is worth stopping here to see charming Cartagena Vieja).

The night before we left we had Keith and Rob over for dinner. Couldn’t have been a better evening to invite Keith as during dinner he told us know that this was his Birthday. It sure made Keith’s day not having to celebrate it alone and ours that we had chosen the perfect day. Happy Birthday Keith!

Amazing the wind had been blowing out of the NE ever since we arrived in Colombia but of course the day we’re trying to sail west the wind came out of there. We motored though the channel of Boca Chica which reminded us of the ICW except for all the tourist boats speeding on either side leaving huge wakes behind. The entrance to Boca Chica is very beautiful as there is a well preserved fort on either side.

Heading out the Boca the water was calm with only a one foot long swell out of the North. We pulled the sails out and since the wind was right on the nose we had to sail 90 degrees off our course. For about 15 minutes we sailed at 3 knots then we gradually slowed down as the wind got lighter. When the knot meter read 1.8 knots we had enough and pulled the jib in and motor sailed the 9 miles to the first way point. After that we had four more to follow for which the last one was very confusing as it was behind the island and we do not sail well across land. Some adrenaline was flowing while trying to figure out where to next. There seemed to be a little channel between the two islands, one had a long reef extending the other a shallow beach. As we watched a pleasure boat motoring through the cut we followed him very, very slowly with Sid on the bow and Manuela steering with a sharp eye on the depth sounder. Can you imagine driving your 6 foot draft boat through a narrow channel and only 10 feet next to you are people standing in waste deep water waving to you, yikes.

We managed to get into the Bay of Cholon with no problem, lots of friendly waves from swimmers and never saw less than 10 feet of water. The bay is huge and, very protected weather wise but unfortunately not from scum bags. The night before we arrived two dinghy engines where stolen off two cruising boats. Even though both dinghies were pulled out of the water during the night the thieves managed to steel the motors as they were not locked to the dinghy. Lock it or loose it!

The bay is beautiful with several little islands just big enough for some big shot to build a weekend retreat on it. The anchorage has good holding and the water is a lot cleaner than in Cartagena although not clear either. First thing we did was clean the bottom of the boat, yikes that was some work, we were sore for a couple of days from the underwater acrobatics.

We had the best reunion with Carmen and Roberto, formerly “Fresh Air”, last time we saw them was 10 years ago in Cartagena. They live up on top of the hill in a huge house, had a bit of confusion when they built it, between feet and meters so they ended up with a house triple the size than planned. The house “Crows Nest” is nestled on top of the hill surrounded by lush vegetation with a breathtaking 320 degree ocean view, wow. In the bay sits an old big shrimping boat “Manatee” owned by Roberto and Carmen and every Wednesday and Saturday they have a Happy Hour on board. Some times it’s a potluck and some times Carmen cooks up Hot Dogs. When we participated we had a scrumptious potluck and everybody that played an instrument brought it along. We had one guitar and 3 harmonica players and we played way into the night.

Daily Crows Nest and Paradise went for an early morning walk along the bay, Paradise ending up with blisters on their feet, had fresh brewed coffee afterwards overlooking this beautiful bay.

Roberto and Carmen

Manatee

The nights were so quite you could hear a mouse fart, but just before the sun puts her blinking eye over the horizon peacocks started screaming in unison, being followed by another species of bird which we have not found out yet what it is. This bird call is so pretty it sounds like a flute. Then there is the Guacharaca a bird about 53 - 58 cm, dark brown above and pale below dull plumage and similar in appearance to a turkey with smaller head, long strong legs and a long broad tail. This bird makes the loudest noise of all the birds and like the wave at a foot ball game from one side of the bay to the other. We asked for the English name of the bird, nobody seemed to know and it didn’t Sid take long to figure out the name himself as all you hear when they squawk is: “whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck”. I read up on it, it’s a Rufous- vented Chacalaca, Ortalis rificauda a member of an ancient group of birds of the Cracidae family. It inhabits northeast Colombia and Venezuela. It is also known as Cocrico and can also be found in the Grenadines, Bequia and Union Island. The male’s call is a loud and low ka-ka-rooki-rooki-ka answered by the female’s high-pitched watch-a-lak. I don’t’ blame them for yelling back what we think is what-the-f….

I tried to capture the sound on a video but only managed to get the peacock and the flute bird but if you listen very carefully you will hear them.

We had a wonderful time but also some problems with the alternator, it did not charge our batteries which is a mayor problem. Also the solar panel regulator quit working so did the wash down pump so back to town. Besides we were expecting visitors and didn’t want to chance getting stuck in Cholon. The weather was another worry as it had been howling 25 knots for a solid 3 days, we had a break in the weather and we took it with a gentle 10 knots on the nose.

We were all excited to have guests and what a perfect timing, we just got out of the Taxi in front of the Charleston Hotel in Old Town Cartagena when Dave Baker our friend got out of the Taxi right behind us. His friend jerry Maize joined him and we had nothing but a good time. Don’t know who wore whom out, I’ll just let the photos talk:

We explored the Cartagena Vieja (Old Town):

Walked the famous old wall “Murales” around the city

Climbed the San Felipe Fort with Gustavo our tour guide:

Meet Gustavo (click on arrow to watch):

Talked to Mom (ask Dave who’s Mom):

Ate at the best restaurants in town:

Roof Restaurant at Charleston Hotel

Wonderful Lunch at Club de Pesca

Assorted tropical fruits on Paradise

Got hooked on Mojitos and Zacapa Rum:

Toured the Bay in a speed boat and explored the Boca Chica Fort”

Where Romancing the Stone with Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas was filmed:

Of course we also rested in the cockpit of Paradise catching up on good old times and savoring the moment our friends were with us. Dave found a few things he thinks we should change on the boat like this:

From:

To:

So here is a big cheers from all of us!

Dave is a member of our PMYC Yacht Club

Sail to Cartagena

2011-03-02T07:08:00.001-08:00

Boca Grande Cartagena

When the alarm sounded at midnight the wind was howling again. Not good! We were going to leave the marina but with gusts up to 28 knots and healing in the slip we decided to wait and see. It was frustrating as this was not predicted in the weather forecast. One our later the wind calmed down a bit an occasional 28 knot gust. At 2 AM it slowed down long enough to sneak out of the slip and marina, we pulled the sail up and headed towards Baranquilla. We came to the conclusion that the winds in Santa Marta are mainly a local condition as we now had a 10 to 15 knots the sea was relatively calm it was a good day to be sailing. After the sun blinked over the Sierra Nevada we actually could see the snow capped mountain peaks, well the snow we did not really see but we saw the silhouette of the majestic Sierra Nevada, it was very pretty. The view was only for a bout 5 minutes before it got lost in the haze. Our first leg was 20 miles to the point where the Magdalena River meets the sea. We had a feeling that towards that corner we would have some higher seas and eventual more wind as well and sure enough about 10 miles from the point the winds started escalating and the waves started to get higher and much, much closer together and one wave managed to broach us filling the cockpit with about 50 gallons of water. It wasn’t really that rough, the waves were just too darn close together and pretty much on the beam. Approaching the Magdalena River is quite intimidating, on the far horizon you see some brown stuff almost looks like some sand piles, very unnerving but than I remember from other cruisers description that it is not patches of sandy beaches but where the cappuccino colored dirty water of the river meets the ocean. It’s amazing the change from blue to brown water and the waves at that point are very high, steep and inconsistent the highest, it gives you the willies and white knuckles holding the wheel. We knew to stay off shore for at least 2 miles and seeing this mess I tried to follow the outflow as far as I could before we finally got into the mucky wild water about 3 miles off shore. As soon as we hit it we changed course and had the unsettled sea coming from behind us which was no problem. We now had a 2.5 knot current pushing us though the muddy water we did speeds up to 8.9 knots, nice. For about 2 miles we had this ugly mess then it gradually became calmer and after about 5 miles the water slowly changed color but stayed murky for the rest of the trip. Even though it was now pretty calm one wave still managed to slap us in the butt and dumped another 20 gallon of water into the cockpit. Sid got pretty good in shoveling the water over board, I think the shoveling sand in Santa Marta helped! About 5 miles out from Punta Hermosa the wind started to pick up as it does every afternoon and with it we sailed into Puerto Velero (Punta Hermosa) with 25 knots of wind. After a 58 mile fast trip we dropped the hook in a very calm setting. This is a big bay with plenty of room for hundreds of boats but amazingly we were the only cruising boat anchored. Wind Shear didn’t leave with us as they had to wait for fuel delivery at 5.30 in the morning. They didn’t leave Santa Marta until 10.30 and had a fairly rough ride with 25 knots of wind. Just before the muddy river they caught a fish trap and fouled the prop so they had to sail. Before they turned into Punta Hermosa or what the locals call Puerto Velero, they were able to run the engine again.

I didn’t take long for the Coastguard to tie up to us. Again I have to say we were treated with the utmost respect, they greeted us and told us that we were in a safe place to anchor and could stay for days. They wanted to know if we had a phone and gave us their phone number to call them if we had any problem and asked us that when we leave to contact them so that they could contact Cartagena to let the Coastguard there know that we were underway and make sure we were safe as this stretch of coast is questionable according to them. Before we left Santa Marta I questioned the Guardia in the Marina about this anchorage, they said it was OK but gave me a phone number of a guy owning a restaurant to call in case of emergency. We feel that we are in good hands here!

Poor Sid wasn’t feeling good the entire trip, sore muscles, headachy and later on that day he came down with a high fever. Knowing of Steve’s dengue he caught in Santa Marta we feared the worst. The following morning he had a slight temperature and it went away. But we decided to stay put and let him rest. Later as the fever returned with a vengeance we decided to boogy to Cartagena the following day to be close to any medical facility if needed.

The wind had subsided, we could have used at least 5 more knots of it to be able to sail, should have left the previous day, oh well. The last two hours of the trip we were finally able to turn the engine off and quietly sail slowly along the Colombian coast, while we wanted for Wind Shear to catch up with us. It was exciting to finally see all the high rise buildings of Boca Grande on the horizon and our anticipation rose. Approaching the old town brought nothing but good memories back and heading into Boca Grande we noticed there were now two instead of just one buoy. Sailing between the buys into Boca Grande we realized that we just had circumnavigated the Caribbean, wow it took us 10 years, could have gone around the world a couple of times. Hey after all we are the Turtle Express!!!

A huge dark cloud was hovering over the entrance and it looked like we were going to get some rain, yeah, rain we needed it. But of course the cloud was just teasing us it released the rain somewhere away from us.

Wind Shear followed us into the harbor and we found Club Nautico exactly where we left it plus a whole bunch of boats in the anchorage. Last time we arrived there where only 6 boats anchored including us. Not just are there many more boats in the anchorages but also many, many more high-rise buildings wow this place has blossomed. This anchorage has nothing but a thick mud bottom which is hard to get hooked, first try was a miss so we moved to a different area and before pulling back on the anchor let is sit for a while. We’re settled in and are just excited to be back in beautiful Cartagena.

Club Nautico

Our first sunset

Cartagena Vieja

Sid still wasn’t feeling better it was coming and going, not just that I came up with the same thing and Debi started as well. We did go a shore to Club Nautico for paper work and surprised Keith on Tortuga. Last we’d seen him was a couple of years ago in Trinidad and before that 10 years ago in Cartagena and it was a happy reunion.

Club Nautico Marina was a crappy marina 10 years ago but ohmygosh is pitiful now, the docks are falling apart and where the once so much fun restaurant was it’s just a pile of rubble with a tarp for a roof and a huge mess. The showers are horrible, the bathroom portapotties, man what a dump. We pay 20 bucks a week to be able to tie the dinghy to the dock and go ashore but it comes with unlimited use of water and shower. Imagine, this marina has hours for water usage from 08:00 – 12:00, 14:00 – 19:00, so no showers after 7 o’clock! WI-FI is horrible so for now we have to go to the Internet Café.

Anyway, we’re feeling a lot better and are enjoying discovering Cartagena again and will be in this area for a while

Getting spoiled with 2 foot long yummy bacon!

Minca

2011-02-13T12:29:00.000-08:00

Minca is a small town of about 500 hundred people 660 meters (about 2000 feet) above sea level, nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and hidden in lush vegetation. Guides say the 14 mile winding road is traveled in 25 minutes. I guess that was when the road still was free of potholes; it took us an hour on a very bumpy road, a beautiful drive though. The Sierra Nevada, in the shape of a pyramid, rises from the sunny coasts of the Caribbean tropics to the chilly, snow-capped peaks that reach a height of 17,000 (5775 m) feet above sea level, which makes it the highest tropical mountain in the world. Within just 30 miles/fifty kilometers the northern slopes descend from the snow capped peaks to the turquoise waters, tropical jungle shores and coral reefs of the Caribbean ocean.

Here you find trees of up to 40 meter (130 feet) heights. The Fauna supposedly they say is full of bears, deer and smaller species like armadillos, hedgehogs, ocelots and monkeys. Didn’t see any but we did hear the roar of howler monkeys. Thousands of birds, insects and butterflies are at home in this tropical forest, we saw many colorful hummingbirds. Minca is an ecological paradise with uncountable rivers, waterfalls and immense green vegetation which hides the archaeological remains of its ancestors the Tayrona Indians. Today in the highlands you can still find indigenous people belonging to Kággaba (Kogi), Ijka (Arhuaco), Wiwa (Arzario) and Kankuamo tribes, direct descendants of the Tayrona Indians keeping up with all the traditions.

We stayed at a cute Finka (Ranch) “Sierra Sound” which is located right next to a river with a stairway down to the river bed for bathing, a very, very beautiful place.

You can stay at least a week here and hike each day a different path and find a different river or waterfall. We decided to visit the Arimaka Fall an hour hike up the mountain (years ago it was used by the Indians for religious ceremonies). On the way up the hill we ran into two local women chatting along the path, one was on her way home with her son and his donkey and motioned to follow her after I asked if this was the right way to the fall. She even offered us to ride the donkey which we declined. It was a fun walk up the hill and finally she pointed us into the direction of the waterfall while she headed another 25 minutes up the mountain to her home.

It was about another 10 minutes before we arrived at the entrance to the waterfall. A friendly farmer chopping down some weeds greeted us and stopped what his was doing and nodded for us to go ahead that he will catch up with us at the waterfalls as this was his coffee plantation. We followed the narrow path and found the waterfall or falls in a hidden valley surrounded with lush vegetation. We climbed the many stairs down and were in awe as we finally stood under the waterfall. Since it was almost noon I brought a bottle of wine and snacks out and we sat there enjoying it. There came Juaquin the plantation owner down the steep steps balancing a tray in his hand with 4 cups of his freshly brewed coffee, wow what a treat. I offered him some wine and cheese we still had and Andy gave his 4 year old son a breakfast bar he really enjoyed.

Juaquin invited us to go swim in the waterfall and told us that the better bathing is in the fall above the Arimaka. Sid and Susan braved it into the water, brrrr it was cold.

BRRRRR is it cold!

Where is it?!! OH NO It's gone and I forgot to tie a string to it!

On the upper fall “Marinka” I dared going into the water as well but oh boy was it cold but it was fun sitting under the water fall with water pounding on your head and shoulder but not for too long. After the refreshing shower we headed back to a thatched roof overhanging the hill with view of both waterfalls where Juaquin served us ice cold beer.

We had all kinds of questions for him and his coffee plantation and so he invited us to his Finka. He showed us step by step all the processes of coffee making , all a lot of manual labor, including roasting the coffee, which each one of us was taking part, then he took a hand cranked grinder out, ground the coffee we just had roasted and made us some more coffee, wow what a wonderful flavor especially sweetened by panela (raw cane sugar).

Finka Esperanza

Drying coffee beans

Juaquin roasting coffee

Charcoal stove

A real Redneck

This area is known for its wonderful coffee and has supposedly the best coffee world wide. I think this is also the only place where they roast coffee over charcoal.

On any hike you will be able to find a coffee plantation here, each with different methods. I always thought that coffee grows on bushes not on trees, here they are all wild old trees and one had to climb the tree on steep hills to harvest the beans.

Rob was mentioning to us that he wanted to find some coca leaves so I asked the guy if they grow it in this are. Juaqin then started to tell us about coca and the Indians and invited us on a walk to visit Samuel one of the Arhuaco Indians who lives in the rain forest not far from him. It was a good 30 minutes walk when we arrived at his Finka. Joaquin told us also that the Mamas the spiritual leaders of the Kogi are getting together here in a few days for rituals. Koqui/Kogi Mamas are chosen from birth and spend the first nine years of childhood in a cave in total darkness learning the ancient secrets of the spiritual world or Aluna. They are the priests and judges who control Kogi society. Their culture it’s fascinating Samuel was quite excited to meet us and showed off his Indian outfit that he put on especially for us to see and allowed us to take pictures for a donation of course.

He is really proud of his ancestry and we felt pretty honored to be able to visit him and get such an insight. He brought us over to a coca bush and explained what they do with it. He took off his Lime container which is a small slightly pear-shaped gourd and perforated along the top. While all lime gourds consist of the same raw material, the wood of the stick which is inserted into it and is chosen by each owner for his own personality and identification. Samuel then explained that while slowly chewing some twenty or thirty toasted leaves, the man will wet the lower and slightly pointed end of the stick with saliva and will insert it into the gourd and he rotated it. Withdrawing the stick again he will put the adhering lime into his mouth. Immediately he will rub the stick around the top of the gourd in a circular motion. Eventually, this daily repeated action of rubbing the stick on the gourd surface begins to form a thin layered crust of yellowish-white lime that covers the upper part of the container.

He gave us each a leaf to chew on. Of course our anticipation was enormous to find out what will happen as we had no idea what to expect……………… Absolutely nothing!!!

I think in general we are so miss informed about coca chewing. The coca plant was domesticated in Peru 7000 years ago and was traditionally used for initiations of marriages and to strengthen kinship and mainly medicinal purposes. It is also a common-practice for the Kogi Indians in the Andes, who, after puberty under go an initiation in which they are given coca leaves in small gourds. Within it, coca leaves are mixed with an alkali “Lime” produced from crushing seashells. When combined with saliva the alkaline will unleash the powers of the coca leaves which combats hunger, high altitude sickness and fatigue.

A Peruvian Study sh0ws that coca can help with asthma and depression or can be used as substitute for coffee to increase alertness (although coca does not have any caffeine). Further the study revealed an aid to metabolism of carbohydrates, combat diarrhea, increase sexual powers and also relieves muscle aches and inflammation. (Wow, I guess we came to the right place, I might be able to shed some weight!) They also make tea from coca leaves. A tea bag containing 1 gram of coca-leaf contains roughly 0.8 mg of Calcium, 3. 84 mg of Phosphorous, 1.26 mg of Magnesium and 30 mg of Potassium, as well as small percentage of Iron, including alkaloids, fiber, ash and vitamin A, B, C and E. Although the coca-leaf is grown in large amounts for cocaine production, it is also cultivated for tea-export from Peru. (I need to find me some of that).

After Samuel’s gourd demonstration we follow him into the ceremonial clay hut which took him 8 years to build; the same hut the ceremony took place a couple of days after our visit, wow. During the ceremony the Kogi produce Lime by burning sea shells on a small pyre carefully constructed with chosen splints. The fine white powder is then sifted into a ritual gourd which is carried by all men. In a special double-handed pottery vessel they then toast the coca leaves inside the temple (clay hut).

Small plantations of coca shrubs are found near all Kogi settlements, Coca shrubs are planted and tended by the men but the leaves are gathered by women. It is a part of the Kogi way of life, deeply involved with their traditions, religion, work and medicine

The tribe known as 'Los Kogui' are today's custodians of the Tayrona culture. They have a population of approximately 12,000 people. The Kogi plant crops and live off the land. They prefer not to mix with outsiders. Few Colombians, or those from the outside worlds, are allowed to enter their mountains. They marry in their culture. The Kogi constantly move about from place to place, between their different abodes spread among the different levels of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. This is looked upon as taking care of their nutritional needs without abusing the environment.

In 1990 the Kogi noticed a change in their environment and decided they must speak out to the rest of the world. The snows had stopped falling and the rivers were not full, so if their mountain was ill then the whole world was in trouble. The Mamas sent one of the Kogi who spoke Spanish to contact a British film maker who was in Colombia at that time. They asked BBC to make a film to tell the Younger Brother about their concern. It was called 'The Elder Brother's Warning 'or' The Message from the Heart of the World'. Alan Ereira, the producer, has also written a book about the Kogi called The Heart of the World. The film had a major impact on the Colombian Government and also on the grave robbers and things changed. The grave robbers felt that they should stop because they felt bad about disturbing their ancestors. There are now two Kogi members in parliament. To read more about the Kogi go to: http://www.crystalinks.com/kogi.html

On our hike back to Sierra Sound we relived the whole incredible day again, we all were just taken by what we all learned this day. We were so tired from all the walking we sank into the patio chairs and didn’t get out of them for hours. Partly because our legs were sore and the beer just tasted too good. All the fresh air gave us a good appetite and since they only had one order of the four cheese ravioli left we decided to share that for an appetizer. Ohmygosh was it good, not just were they home made and cooked to perfection but it was smothered in the creamiest sauce with flavor of cheeses and caramelized onions.

After a well deserved hot shower we all enjoyed a wonderful dinner overlooking the river with the acoustics of the water rushing over the river bed rocks. We retreated back into the sun chairs and enjoyed an after dinner drink. What a relaxing place!

Sid and I were up early on the terrace the following morning enjoying many cups of the wonderful local grown and brewed coffee and just enjoying this beautiful scenery. After a hardy breakfast we ventured off to the Pozo Azul Waterfall, an hour hike. Since I had some bites on my legs from the previous day we all sprayed extra Deep Wood Off on us. Arriving at the beautiful waterfall I noticed right away more of these red blood spots on my legs and sprayed even more juice on us. That should do. (When we arrived at Sierra Sound we met an English lady just leaving who’s legs were bitten up and told us that she got the bites at the waterfall and that the bug spray did not work. I thought to myself that she must have one without deet, well I was wrong, these little teeth with wings critters don’t care about deet).

We waded in the water and oh man was it cold, we were just in ankle deep water that was so cold that we got an ice-cream headache in our ankles, no swimming here that’s for sure. Those little wings with teeth called sancudos or jejenes (blackflies) you don’t even feel them when they bite. My legs were covered with red dots. Susan had a few bites but they left the guys alone. Hmmm I think they don’t like hairy legs, maybe we ladies need to stop shaving our legs?!!! The bites didn’t itch, well not immediately but 24 hours later oh man did they itch.

We hiked a bit further up the mountain but realized that it was time to head back we had one more waterfall on the agenda before heading back to Santa Marta.

Las Piedras, which means, “rocks “,are just about a 5 minute walk from the Sierra Sound Finka. Las Piedras are two rivers coming together forming one, with the water passing quite rapidly over the rock formations. The unique thing about it is the temperature of the water in each of these rivers. One is very cold and the other is quite warm. It is a real beautiful area people visiting like to relax in the water, letting the water massage the body. This time of the year it’s a bit too chilly but we sat in it anyway enjoyed the water rushing by.

After another beautiful day in Minca it was time to say goodbye and head down the mountain again to Santa Marta. This was truly a wonderful experience we will treasure for years to come and who knows we may even return once more before we leave Santa Marta. Minca is a MUST visit. The ride back was fun too as we all had a rum and coke in our hands hanging out side the window so that we would not spill them with all the bumps. I didn’t help that the suspension of out taxi was shot. Sid in the front seat whenever he saw and opportunity to drink he yelled: “Drink! NOW!

Thanks to Sandial’s satellite TV we were all able to sit on the Dock and watch Super Bowl. It was a fun party with a wonderful spread of food.

Mariah and Cruiser

The winds have returned and for many more days we endured getting sand blasted. For a couple of nights we had a steady 30 to 35 knots of wind and gust up to 50.
Orestes on Milacura, we had met in Bonaire, sailed in from Cartagena. He had a miserable trip, lost his mainsail and one of the trampolines was trashed on his catamaran by the heavy seas. He was on his way to the Dominican Republic but decided to leave Milacura behind until the weather calms down some time in April. We had him and his crew Tito over for dinner and had a great time catching up. Orestes is the reason us cruisers found out that there is a marina in Santa Marta, thank you Orestes!

The same day an English single hander limped into the marina. He was on his way from Curacao to Jamaica when he was tossed around so much that one of the high waves smashed him so violently that the house between the pontoons on his small cat had a whole smashed into it. Of course every time he smashed down a wave again more water came in. The poor guy didn’t think he was going to make it and is just so thankful to be here.

We’re definitely are not going to stick our noses into this kind of weather but are looking for a window to sail further south to Cartagena in the next couple of days or three or four. Monday might just be the day.

We finally managed to get Tim and Elena over for dinner. These two have just been wonderful to us and helpful in any way. Tim and Elena thank you so much for everything. (If you stop in Santa Marta don't forget to look them up and enjoy a delicious breakfast at their Cafe).

Santa Marta, Colombia

2011-02-03T19:23:00.000-08:00

We absolutely enjoy Santa Marta. It’s safe to walk around anywhere, the shopping is great, the dollar goes a long ways and to Sid’s liking they sell box rum!!!

But wow what a horny place. You can not even imagine how horny everybody is here. It happens anywhere and at any time. The minute we leave the marina gate, crossing the street, further up the street, around the corner from there, in town, it’s everywhere the same and there is no escape from it. But see for yourself:

We haven’t figured out yet who are the horniest, the taxi drivers or the motorcycle riders, most of the time they honk for no reason. And I tell you they don’t slow down for pedestrians either, on the contrary it seems like that’s when they speed up. We truly believe that they buy the car by the sound of the horn!

Everybody is super friends though even the horny taxi drivers and best yet they do not cheat us on the fair because we are tourists, there is a flat rate of 4000 pesos about US$ 2 in town and to Rodadero or Taganga neighboring villages 8000.

Comparing Colombia now to ten years ago it is a much, much safer place, before we could not leave the city of Cartagena and travel in the country. Thanks to President Álvaro Uribe and President Bush fighting the drug war in Colombia they changed it into a safe place again. Current President Juan Manuel Santos is following Uribes steps and is especially going after corruption and the FARC.

We’ve been walking pretty much anywhere in town. One day we hit the local market, although not very organized looking, it is a fun market to explore and watch people. The fruit and veggie stands are colorful and the meat tables ah, well, hmm, maybe a little gross, I definitely would not buy meat here.

Fish

Wonderful Produce

The fish section is better with a variety of fresh fish to choose from (although I prefer to get the fish from the local fishermen on the beach). One very friendly market girl approached me and showed me a string with some kind of orange/white balls encouraging me to buy the string. Of course I was curious what it was and when she told me they were “Huevos de Iguanas” Iguana eggs! No thanks not today. Not that I wouldn’t try them but how the heck will I find a recipe on how to cook Iguana eggs!

Iguana eggs anyone?!!!

In one corner of the market is one hairdresser after another and since Sid was in need of a haircut he braved it to get one here. The cute hairdresser, ready to pop her baby at any time, was very profession in buzzing his hair short, she even trimmed his eye brows and sprayed some stinky stuff all over him for a shocking price of 5000 Pesos/US$ 2.50. Right next to her stall was a beer joint with 60 cents beer, now that’s what I call a great hair cutting day!

You haven’t seen Santa Marta if you haven’t visited Rodadero which is the Palm Springs of Colombia. And since it was still Christmas Holiday I thought it would be interesting to see the last of the festivities “Three Kings Day”. Every where in the world Three Kings Day is celebrated on the 6^th of January, not here, here they figured out a clever way to extend the Holidays for a few extra days. It is celebrated on the first Monday after the 6^th of January, after that everybody goes back to work. That makes for a one month long holiday.

Remembering my visit to Rodadero 10 years ago it was a busy place then but didn’t quite expect it this busy. The beach was packed, three rows deep with yellow sunshades and not one was vacant. Between the shades and the water you could barely see any sand it was packed with people and the water was filled with bobbing heads. The sidewalk was the same picture packed to the rim with visitors and the air was filled with all the delicious smells of food vendors sold and the laughter and chit chatter of happy families. We had fun mingling and watching everybody. One vendor was of interesting to us “Cocos Frio” chilled coconuts with or without rum. The girl wanted 1 dollar without and 7 US dollar with rum. So we went across the street and purchased an 8 dollar bottle of rum and bought 4 coconuts and poured our own rum, yummy. It was a fun day and we had our fill of being in a crowd and decided it was Margarita time, which turned out to be the worst and most expensive Margarita ever, we don’t always have good luck, that’s when we decided it was time to go home and make a real Margarita.

After weeks of nerve wrecking wind we finally got a break for a couple of days, just enough time to shovel some sand out of our boats. Yes like some of you still shoveling snow we shovel sand (we use the hose as the shovel and have a bathing suit on).

The quiet didn’t last long as three days later the wind picked up again for another 4 days. After shoveling some more sand we finally could relax for about a week. We finally braved it to put our sunshade up as it gets really hot without a breeze. Same night at midnight we scrambled on deck to take the awning down as the wind blew over 30 knots again. We had a heck of a time to roll it up. At last it seemed that the winds were back to normal, normal means there is a breeze starting around four in the afternoon and around 9 it peaks to about 25/30 knots for a couple of hours and by morning it’s calm again. Although we still get occasional gales out in the bay bringing us up to 30+ knots of wind and we do have to bring the shovel out again and again.

Sid’s been doing all kinds of boat projects (climbing up the mast, cleaning the rigging and polishing the mast), replacing the new membrane, while I was sewing up a storm again, this time cloths and new mosquito netting. Bamboo’s spinnaker exploded on their trip to Santa Marta so one afternoon we all met at the parking lot with a drink in one hand and scissors in the other and we cut the spinnaker apart. I made some fun laundry bags out of the material.

The aluminum boom of the main looked pretty corroded it was time to paint it. Sid sanded it down to a smooth finish then we took off into town to find the right paint. Thanks to Tim and Elena from Tim’s Café we found an area in town which has nothing but hardware stores and were able to find a store that had the type paint we needed and they even matched the color perfectly. The customer standing next to us a painter offered to paint it for us. A couple of hours later he came to pick up our 10 foot boom on his motorcycle. Yeah, that’s what we thought, so we ended up walking it to his shop which is behind a car wash on the sidewalk in front of his house. Two hours later it was finished and we picked it up again. Sid was so impressed the next morning he brought the staysail boom to him which he again painted the same day, cost including paint 120 dollars. You should have seen us walking the streets with these 10 foot long things especially crossing intersection. As I said the horny drivers speed up when they see pedestrians.

Tim (Canadian) and Elane (Colombiana) have a Café just around the corner from the marina and started their business 2 months ago. They are wonderful people and very accommodating to us. Friday nights they invite us for Happy Hours, Beer and their wonderful Crepes at half price and Tim always brings a box or two of Colombian cigars out for us to enjoy. I tell you for 15 cent cigars they are a good competition to any cut Havana. Elena overheard us girls talking about doing yoga on the dock and offered the use of an upstairs room and so began our twice a week yoga lessons at 7Am at Tim’s. After yoga Elena teaches us Colombian dances which is always a lot of fun. We gringos just can’t wiggle our butts as the Latinos can, that’s for sure.

It was time to get out of the marina and visit a new place and Taganga sounded good. It turned into a girls-out as all the boys had projects on the boat they didn’t want to drop. Susan (Maggie May), Debi (Wind Shear), Mariah (Sandial) and I took a taxi to Taganga which is just around the corner from the marina about a 5 minute dinghy ride or 20 minute taxi drive on curvy roads over a hill. The view from the top of the hill down to Taganga is breathtaking.

Fernando the taxi driver told us that this bay used to be THE marihuana trafficking place in Colombia. Boats were lined up to wait for a shipment. The town is a hippy town now and filled with European backpackers. Without the tourism Taganga is a small fishing village, the beach is lined with colorful fishing boats and it is fun to watch the little town boys play with the fishing nets pretending they are fishermen.

There is a beautiful hike up the north side of the bay which goes over to the next beach Playa Grande with an even more so breathtaking view. The water there is crystal clear.

Mariah

Playa Grande

Although tempted to walk down to this beautiful beach the thought of having to climb that hill back made us decided to return to Taganga instead. There we found a nice restaurant and enjoyed a wonderful meal with many beers and in no time it was time to head home as Fernando our Taxi driver returned to pick us up. We all had a wonderful time.

Wind Shear, Maggie May and Paradise planned an overnight trip to Minca. Unfortunately Debi had a family emergency and flew home immediately so only Susanne and Andy joined us but this story you will have to read in the next posting…………

Charming Santa Marta

2011-01-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

The following photo is of the Monjes del Sur anchorage where we landed on the rocks (red line)

We were looking forward to spending a nice and quite Christmas just with our friends Debi, Rob and Captain Jack, but the weather had other plans for us. A tropical wave came by and brought us one squall after another with a sustained 22 to 25 knots of wind and gusts up to 35 knots. The holding in this bay is great but we did get the wind chop and started hobby horsing up and down and were unable to leave the boats and visit each other. It was rough so we celebrated Christmas via VHF radio and took some photos of each others boats during a squall or when a rainbow towered over a boat. We managed to get some sleep but it was like being underway but we were not going anywhere.

The fishermen even stayed away from our boats. We couldn’t even enjoy our Christmas decoration, it was wildly swinging in the cockpit therefore it was stored down below. It blew for 5 sad days straight and we were stuck. Originally we had planned to spend Christmas here then sail to Cabo de Vela for one day then to the 5 Bays and arrive in Santa Marta just before New Years Eve.

Christmas Zopf

Mario

Blue Button Jelly

Happy Birthday Debi

On the 27^th we finally departed and we had only a 2 day weather window with 15 to 18 knots before very heavy winds would start. Although the next anchorage Cabo de Vela was only about 30 miles away, we decided to head straight to Santa Marta a 160 mile stretch. The weather prognoses didn’t look too good for several weeks so we didn’t want to get stuck in another rolly anchorage. We had a fairly good sail for several hours then the wind started to pick up and the swells 7 to 9 feet were from beam to quarter. With the wind behind us we had to double reef the main, then a couple hours later triple reefed and before sunset we took the main down since the boat was twisting from side to side bringing the high waves on the beam, not a good thing with swells up to 12 feet and only 5 to 6 seconds apart,wind 25 + this could be disastrous. The Jib was on a tipple reef as well and we still did over 7 knots and an occasional swell pushed us as fast as 8.7 knots. Our hull speed is 6 knots so we had to slow down again (don’t you hate when that happens?!!!) to make it more comfortable. We also had a 1 ½ knot current with us which shortened the trip by many hours.

Towards the morning the swells seemed to relax a bit so did the wind but when we were 40 miles away from the 5 Bays the wind started to blow with 20 knots then a steady 25 with higher gusts and the swells picked up accordingly. 10 miles out from the 5 Bays we finally started seeing land and in clear conditions the snow capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta can be seen. Unfortunately we did not have a clear day but what we saw was non the least spectacular. The coast is surrounded by tall lush mountains with mountains in the background towering over them while several fords cut into the mountain range along the coast which is the Tayrona National Park (referred to as 5 Bays by cruisers, beautiful bays to spend days and days but with 30 plus knots of wind it would be too rolly in there). Around the corner from the Tayrona National Park some 15 miles away lies Santa Marta.

7 Miles out of the 5 Bays we encountered so much debris it took all our concentration to dodge around the many lily pads, wooden boards, banana trees and tree trunks it was a big challenge. 5 miles out, we now encountered winds at 30 plus knots and then it went up to a steady 38 knots as we rounded the corner and headed towards Santa Marta. The wind kept howling at 38 knots but at least here we were sheltered from the 12 foot seas as we motored towards Santa Marta. Wind Shear was 5 miles ahead of us and had arrived in front of the Santa Marta Marina. An hour later as we were just outside the bay next to Santa Marta “Taganga” Wind Shear called us, the Guarda Costa forbid them to anchor in front of the marina and there was no way they could go into the marina in 38 Knots of wind. They also said it was too shallow too anchor, (later we found out that they tried to anchor where the small fishermen keep their boats therefore shallow and no room for a sailboat their size, hence the Guardia sending them away. To the right of there just before the entrance of the marina it’s suitable for us to anchor. When they told us about this we changed directions towards the Taganga anchorage to check it out if we could anchor over night. It turned out to be not just a beautiful and well protected anchorage but the closer we came to land the calmer the wind became and when we anchored in 12 feet of water we only had 15 knots of wind while it still roared 38 knots outside the bay. A while later Wind Shear dropped the anchor behind us lowered the dinghy and joined us for a Swiss Cheese Pie I had prepared for us. This bay is absolutely gorgeous surrounded by tall mountains belonging to the Sierra Nevada.

At one point the Guardia came buy and tied up next to us. We thought they wanted to see our paper work and we might be in trouble for not being checked in yet in Sana Marta. But that was not the case, they were very friendly welcomed us to Colombia and told us that this anchorage is only good during the day as it is questionable safety wise at night and recommended us to anchor in front of the Santa Marta Marina. Wow that was nice of them, good to know that the Coastguard here look out for us cruisers. Around 4 PM the wind seemed to have died down a bit so we pulled anchor and headed to the marina. We were going to anchor out but the marina hailed us on the radio and invited us to take a slip and since the wind was only blowing 15 knots we took them up on it. Not even 20 minutes later securely tide up in the slip the wind started to blow over 30 knots again and stayed that way for 5, 6, 7 days straight with gusts over 40 knots. The funny thing about this is we’re in a marina and the stove is on gimbal. The not so funny thing is the wind blows sand from the beach and covers the boats inside and out. Not even here could I enjoy my Christmas decoration as the wind blew it all over the place so on the second I took it all down.

The view from the marina was incredible as the sun was just setting the city lights lit this place up into the brightest Christmas scene. Since my childhood in Switzerland I have never seen Christmas decoration as bright as this. The Malecon was covered with lights and there were people all over the place, it gave it this incredible homey feeling. The Christmas season here is until 3 Kings day, which is held on the first Monday after the 6^th of January, this years on the 10^th. From early morning to late at night the streets are filled with people and Happiness.

New Year’s Eve approached and Fine Line, Bamboo and Paradise decided to celebrate with the locals. We heard that the locals stay home until Midnight than all come out and the fireworks show begins. At 10 PM we all left the marina and headed into town to find the normally bustling streets and beach empty, there was nobody but us on the streets, it was like a ghost tow. A few restaurants on the Malecon were open and were only visited by a few people, probably tourists like us. We sat down and enjoyed a drink wondering when all will come out to the beach. Three minutes before midnight of the New Year we paid the bill, crossed the street to the beach and waited for midnight. Midnight came and only a few people were on the beach and it stayed that way, no fireworks either. After wishing each other a Happy New Year we disappointedly went back to our boats and I was even more disappointed as nobody was interested in a champagne toast so a bit later I sat on deck by myself with a glass of champagne in my hand toasting into the New Year. Happy New Year everyone!!!

We realized that the marina was a better deal than anchoring out especially with these wind conditions. The marina is fairly new and the slips are now all hooked up with water and power but around the marina there is still a lot of construction going on including the bathrooms and showers so for the moment we have to take sun showers in the cockpit until the bathrooms are finished (another month we were told). Luckily there are no boats next to us so we do have our privacy. At the moment the price is negotiable and pretty much everybody gets 20% off the price. The dock boys clean the docks in the morning and take our trash away. Around 9 a security guard comes by with coffee which they call tinto (a shot of strong coffee served with lots of sugar, in every street of every town you find tinto sellers each carrying up to 6 bottles walking tintos for 10 cents). If we need ice we can just call the marina and they will deliver ice to the boat. Margy a nice Colombiana comes to the marina on call to pick up our laundry and two days later they come back not just clean but nice smelling and ironed. There’s nothing better than the feel of an ironed T-shirt on your body LOL.

Oh by the way boat “B” is just half way down the dock from us! After he greeted me like we are old pals or friends for life, I had a few questions for him, why he let his boat drift into our boats hindering us from escaping. His answer was when you’re tide up to a line you never let go. And to the fact that he was hindering us he just said that he gives a sh… about other’s property! Nice guy.

The dock across from us harbors our friendly neighbors Fine Line, Bamboo, Sandial, Dragon Fly and Wind Hound and 2 more Dutch boats. One dock further out on the big docks is Wind Shear also happy to have made it safely here before the wind kicked in. Occasionally we all get together on the middle dock for Sundowners. It was great to catch up with every body and share each adventure story sailing along this wild coast. By the way I read that this trip from Aruba to Santa Marta is one of the 5 most treacherous places in the world to sail! I believe it!!!

Santa Marta is a very charming town and is the oldest surviving city in South America and the second most important colonial city on the Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Although the city’s glory days are long past it still is a bustling commercial city. The long waterfront beach is a favorite vacation spot for Colombians especially at Easter and Christmas time. Every morning right after sunrise the beaches are filled with the laughter of children splashing in the water. The Malecon (Boardwalk) is lined with venders selling anything from cotton candy, souvenirs, snow cones, beers, arts and crafts until the sun sets and the streets seem never to die down, (except for New Years Eve LOL).

Even cruise ships sail into Santa Marta a couple times a week and the stores are open every day even on most Holidays.

After the first few days of cleaning and straightening up Paradise we realized that this was an endless effort as the wind was howling 30 knots and gusts over 40 for days and days tugging on our nerves, not to mention the sand that accumulates in every crack and corner. Sunglasses are a must at any time as the sand will get into your eyes. Going into town makes you forget about the wind misery. Santa Marta is an amazingly charming town with narrow roads and alleys reminding me of Cartagena except not as well kept up but they are trying hard to make it more comparable to Cartagena. The grocery stores are great and along the every street there are many vendors with tropical fruits sweet and juicy as they can only be freshly picked from the trees. It’s nice to be in a place again where a dollar goes a long ways, a bottle of beer costs 60 cents and a local cigar only 15 cents, not bad either we heard just as good as good Cuban cigars. The restaurants are wonderful and the meals are around 10 dollars for good quality food. Our favorite so far is “Agave Azul” a Mexican/Cuban type restaurant with the yummiest Mojitos (rum, sugar and mint blended with ice) on Happy Hour daily from 5 to 8 PM. The food is fabulous.

Wind Shear, Bamboo, Fine Line & Paradise

We like it so much here we singed up with the marina for one month and if we can find a place that will have Super Bowl on we’ll stay a bit longer. In the mean time we have lots to do, I found myself some sewing projects (Bamboo blew out their spinnaker on the way down, the other day over cocktails we cut it apart and all got a piece of he material, I’m sewing laundry bags and I’m sure I can come up with other ideas). I have a lot of fabrics which I will turn into dresses and tops. Our boom took a beating weather wise, Sid is sanding all the corrosion off and his quest will be to find primer and paint for it. Of course we are planning to travel this area a bit as well. So if you don’t hear from us in a couple of weeks, we’re still busy sewing, painting, repairing and discovering this incredible part of Colombia.

PS: I posted the new Turtle Express from Curacao to Aruba, if you like to see the photo stories go to:
http://turtle-express36.blogspot.com/ and scroll to the end. Enjoy!