Well we arrived in Cartagena in Colombia last Thursday after a trip that was more Black Sabbath with a bit of Ossie Osbourne thrown in than Rock & Roll. The trip from Aruba to Cartagena is one of the 5 roughest sea passages in the world and let me tell you it lived up to its name! We had 35 foot swells and 40 knots of wind, Honalee handled it great although we were on our side a couple of times but nothing that she couldn´t handle.
Poor old Nigel dosn´t sleep too well when its rough and was suffering from sleep depravation to the point where he was hallucinating. At one point he came out with an Ossie Classic - ´F*ck me Sharon - I just saw a red chinese dragon come out of the water!´and for those of you that know Nigel well he is 1. not prone to swearing and 2. dosn´t usually come out with wierd stuff like that. Anyhow he has now recovered.
What can I say about Cartagena - pretty dodgy! everyone carries side arms, even the trolley collector at the supermarket! In general the people are pretty friendly but very security concious most of the time, most streets hire their own security guard who is armed at all times. I came out of the supermarket not looking where I was going the other day - looked up and had a chrome pump action shotgun a foot from my head - Brinks Matt were delivering/collecting money.
Last night 34 of us went into the old town for a meal at the local cattering school, which was fun - food wasn´t great but we had a great time. After the meal 4 of us went to one of the local salsa bars, wow - everyone dances here! it spills out onto the pavement with people dancing in the road and cars driving round them. We got home at 1:30 after an interesting taxi ride back to the marina - not quite like the one back from New Years Eve more hariy driving than anything.
We think we will be leaving for the San Blas at the weekend as long as we can get the work done. These are a group of islands off the coast of Panama inhabited by the Kuna indians - google them they look fantastic.
Oh - we didn´t get stopped by the DEA but the boys from Troutbridge did, they got harangued for half an hour or so before being let under way. We thought it a big exageration about the DEA, but when we got here we are anchored opposite the Naval Base where they seem to be based. Everyday we are flown over by Blackhawk helicopters, and at the weekend we had the pleasure of the stealth boat being alongside - spooky looking thing - now we know it really does exhist!
Anyow I will close now - hopefully more to come tommorrow and some photos.
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