Down Town Cartagena on a Sunday Morning

Well this was different experience I can tell you! If you can imagine being in a traditional but poor suburb of Barcelona then this is the old town of Cartagena but with a twist thrown in. The twist being that most people around you are tooting side arms, and to top it all we figured there must have been a VIP at church as there were police, bodyguards and soldiers wearing just about every bit of fire power that you can imagine. Even the car park attendants and trolley collectors wear side arms, gives you a warm fuzzy feeling doesn’t it! This certainly is a lawless country, seems as if most people are very security conscious all the time. Ted and Nigel quite enjoyed it but to be honest I was glad to get out of the place – it was a bundle of laughs when a motorbike backfired – NOT! You thought that a gun battle was about to take place around you.

I will go back in again as the material shops are so cheap and I want to buy some material to trade for molas in the San Blas Islands; which we intend to be our next stop. Life out on the anchorage isn’t much different to being in the city – only quieter, at night it is patrolled by the coastguard and military. Yesterday we had 2 black hawk helicopters fly low over us and land on the opposite shore, and this morning we woke to find what we have named ‘The Stealth Boat’ docked at the quay opposite. We now know why the DEA boat doesn’t show up on your radar at sea, this thing is shaped like a nautical stealth bomber and coated in Radar Absorbing Material, must scare the hell out of you if it suddenly comes up on your stern in the middle of the night.

We are hoping to get the last of our repairs done here and finally depart for hopefully what will be the start of our tropical island adventure, apart from our (hopefully) brief stopover in Colon before transiting the Canal. Colon is one place I will NOT being going ashore, so I’m really hoping that we can get a place in a marina on the other shore.

Shopping is turning out to be very interesting, I’m discovering lots of new and exotic fruit and veg, and eating out has turned into a real adventure I can tell you – half the time we don’t know what we are ordering – some tastes good – some doesn’t. Nigel has given up being a vegetarian and is back into being a carnivore again, but he did turn his nose up at the ‘beef’? we had yesterday. It was more like buffalo and you could have soled your boots with it. Stocking up with 6 months worth of food here is going to be a nightmare, not only have I got to figure out what to buy, we’ve got to find homes for storing it. At the moment half of Ted’s berth is full of storage boxes loaded with stores, soon mine and Nigel’s cabin will be full, looks a if our pillows will be bags of rice and flour for a while (guess who’s will get eaten first? Seeing I’m the only one who cooks when it’s rough).

It’s difficult to load photos – it’s going to be very sporadic I’m afraid but I’ll try when ever I can.