With 9 countries north of us, six months of time spent eating, drinking and surfing through countries, a van locked and loaded in a container bound for Cartagena, Colombia and a backpack full of sunscreen, bathing suits and booze we loaded a couple of pongas and headed out to El Gitano Del Mar, a 54’ catamaran, to sail through the San Blas Islands for three days before a 36 hour open water crossing into Cartagena to meet Dolores.
We had dreams of an incredibly romantic sailing trip. We were sailing with our friends, Sara & Dean (that were also our shipping partners) and Katie O, who’d come to visit us. All along we knew that there would be other people on our boat, but we didn’t know that there would be almost 20 other people on our boat. Originally we understood the max booking number was 12. In total there were 23 of us (5 girls and 18 guys – yikes!). So the romantic idea of sailing was confined only to the stunning views of the islands -boat life with 23 people was not so romantic.
The 3 days of bouncing from one little uninhabited island to another, snorkeling, drinking from coconuts and taking in the clear water of the Caribbean was stunning. The highlight of the trip for Rachel happened when we were fishing during the open water crossing. We were trolling a few lines and finally caught a few fish. We had two on that were being reeled in when a third fish hit. As the crew turned their attention to the reel in the third line she was looking out at the water to see if she could tell what we had on. Right at that moment a huge shark flew about 5 or 10 feet out of the water to gobble up whatever we’d had on the line. It was like was watching National Geographic, but big and loud and real.
Sailing into Cartagena through the bay we encountered fleets of multiple countries’ old war ships as a US Coast Guard ship flanked us to our starboard. After a quick dinghy ride to shore the Captain handed over a bag of passports to the Immigration office and away we went to explore the city with our new Colombian passport stamp. Why can’t all border crossings be this easy? We quickly found a hotel, freshened up and hit the streets for food.
Cartagena felt that it had more history, life and passion than any place that we had visited before on this journey. We finally came back to a land of spices, sauces, and creativity. We sampled empanadas, arepes, kabobs of meat, sausages, fried cheese balls, tinto (black coffee), and more! Cartagena easily won us over with its organized chaos and friendly vibes. This town has renewed our sense of adventure for the trip and has us stoked for the rest of Colombia. If the rest of Colombia is half as awesome as Cartagena then it may be one of the best places on earth.
fried cheese balls, yummy!
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