After the couple of hour’s pit stop in Bahia Obladia where we checked out of Panama, we hurried northward along Colombia’s coast towards Cartagena.  Puerto Obladia was a charming little Guna Indian village.  We would have liked to spend some time here, but the bay is completely open to the ocean swells and easterly winds.  No place to anchor unless you like rock and roll all day and all night long.  The current weather window is only two days, so we need to hurry to make the 180nm from Puerto Obladia to Cartagena.

No wind at all until late afternoon when the sea breeze kicked in.  It came from the east but we were able to motorsail.  Windy (our weather forecast program) had said we would have to run on the engine the entire trip.  Weather forecasts – you can’t trust them.  That evening, the winds continued but now we were seeing 2-3 meter high swells coming right on our nose.  Capri is beginning to bury her bows in the waves.

Shit!  The wind also shifts and now we have to take in our sails and proceed only on our engine.  There is a small island group up ahead we have to pass and if we start tacking (to keep using our sails), then we’ll use several hours at least on that and won’t make it into Cartagena before the really nasty weather hits.

Nasty weather meaning gale force winds (30-40 knots) and 4-5 meter swells, all right on our nose.  We’ve tried that several times.  Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  No thanks.

This is crappy sailing (well what do you expect?  It is Vinni and Carsten sailing).  I find it almost impossible to fall asleep when the seas are this heavy.  Carsten goes below and the snoring starts before his head hits the pillow (damn him).  I take a seasick tablet before I go below.  The tablets make me drowsy and I finally fall asleep.  Unfortunately, when I wake and it is my turn to take the dogwatch, the seas have gotten much heavier and Capri is bouncing around like a ping-pong ball.  I feel terrible but as I’ve noted before, when you sail double-handed, there is no else to take your watch, all you can do is grit your teeth and try to grin and bear it.

After 15 hours of this, we reach the entrance to Cartagena harbor.  There are actually two entrances.  One is wide and looks inviting until you read that the Spanish built an underwater wall 250 years ago designed to rip the keels off any ships trying to enter by that inlet.  The water over the wall is supposedly 9 feet deep.  Capri is over 7 feet – no thanks, we’ll take the other entrance.  The other entrance sails right under the guns of the old Spanish fort.  The fort is magnificent with high stone walls and escarpments with slots for the many cannon that were mounted here at one point. 

This entrance sounds fine, but then the charts notes say that since it is narrow and drains a large inland bay, the current frequently runs 5-6 knots.  Smaller boats should sue the channel with caution – it says.

Ah yes, life as a cruising sailor is filled with these unexpected pleasures.

We made it in through the channel without incident and sailed the couple of hours up through the inland bay where we enjoyed a running view of Cartagena’s skyline.

We prefer safety and therefore we have reserved a slip in one of the marinas here.  The marina has armed guards 24/7 and if you leave your boat, they recommend that you lock everything up tightly and make sure there is nothing loose on deck or in the cockpit that can be stolen.  They also recommend that you chain your outboard motor to the boat even though you are in the marina.  In the marina we are in, an armed guard patrols the docks all night long.  Another armed guard sits on the long finger dock we are tied onto. 

An unpleasant surprise is just how rolly lying here is.  There is a constant back and forth traffic of speedboats that have no regard for the 3-knot speed limit and throw off gigantic wakes.  Capri slams into the dock every few minutes.  When the speedboats with tourists aren’t passing, it is fast sailing pangas with fishermen.  One day a police patrol lies here in the middle of the channel.  Now everyone seems to be able to sail slowly and obey the speed limit.  As soon as the patrol boat leaves, we are back to gigantic wakes. 

Cartagena has a beautiful old part of the city, located within the ramparts of the huge fortress.  This is the original city, “The city behind the wall”.  We walk over to visit, but are disappointed.  Not so much in the architecture, which is wonderful.  Old stylish houses with long wooden balconies line the narrow streets.  But the area is one huge tourist trap.  It is impossible to walk more than a few feet before being accosted by a street seller flogging water, cigars, hats, and every other touristy ornament imaginable.  They don’t take “no” for an answer.  You have to say “no” several times and usually in a nasty tone of voice before they go away.  Another irritant is that the streets are very narrow, but they have not closed this old city off to vehicular traffic.  So there are cars everywhere, the sidewalks are so narrow that you can’t walk two persons side by side on them and with all the cars; you can’t walk in the street.  The stores sell only tourist items.  The restaurant menus look inviting, until you see the tourist trap prices.

Carsten and I prefer to walk in another section of town, where the houses are almost as old, but there are no street sellers and the restaurants are patronized by the local Colombians.  This part of Cartagena reminds us of the old town part of San Juan, Puerto Rico we visited 8 years ago.  We liked San Juan very much.

A “must see” when visiting here is the Emeralds museum.  Colombia is the largest supplier of emeralds in the world (60% of the world’s supply of emeralds come from here) and they have a museum.  A guide shows us around the museum.  Her English is perfect and she explains not only how the emeralds are mined but also how they are classified, what to look for to see if the stone is a good quality or not.  The last stop on the tour is the emerald shop (naturally).  Beautiful emerald jewelry everywhere.  I will leave it to the reader’s imagination regarding the prices.  Suffice to say that poor cruising sailors can’t afford to shop here.

We have to wait for a proper weather window to cross the Caribbean and that may take several weeks.  The statistics say that the trade winds lessen and turn a bit so they are coming from the southeast in the latter part of May.  We may have to wait three weeks or more before we get a proper window.  We don’t want to stay here in Cartagena.  The rolling slip is dreadful and we have seen what we need to see of the city.  We are not impressed.  We decide to sail the 110nm further up the coast to the city of Santa Marta and stay in the marina there.

We motored the entire 110nm to Santa Marta.  No wind. Nada.  That is also cruising life.  As usual, when we have been lying idle for a couple of weeks, our log is encrusted with barnacles and other nasty little creatures and needs cleaning. 

Santa Marta, according to the guidebook, was the first European settlement in South America.  The locals here are very proud of the fact the Simon Bolivar (known as the liberator of South America) lived her his last few years.  Not only did he live her, but he is also buried here and not in his native Venezuela.  Simon Bolivar led the armies that defeated the Spanish and liberated all of the northern part of South America.  Virtually every home here has a picture of him on the wall.  We visited the local museum, where, of course, there is a large exhibition about Bolivar.

The marina lies in the middle of town with a fine Malecon (promenade) along the beach. There are a number of walking streets in the old part of the city.  This area is lined with restaurants.  In the evenings, the streets are filled with families going out for dinner, party-goers getting started and gawking tourists (like us), out to see the sights.  This marina is very protected from the sea so here Capri lies quietly.  The marina is expensive, but there is no choice.  We simply aren’t brave enough to lie at anchor out in the bay.  This marina also has armed guards.  No one else is anchored out.

We learned that Santa Marta is THE shipping port for most of Colombia’s cocaine.  This is where most of the banana export is shipped from and apparently, cocaine smugglers like to hide the drugs in the boxes of bananas. The biggest shipping line in and out of Santa Marta is the Danish Maersk.  They are fully aware of what is going on and try to avoid being used but if a container is sealed and has a customs sticker on it, there is little they can do.  As we walk around town, we are surprised by the number of police we see.  They are everywhere. 

One of the big attractions here is visiting the “Hidden City” or forgotten city.  It is an Inca ruin.  The Incas say it has neither been forgotten nor hidden, they simply don’t bother going there anymore, but it is supposed to be spectacular.  We really wanted to make the trek and see it, but have to reluctantly decide not to.

1. Neither Carsten nor I are in a good enough physical condition to make this trek.  We read that most consider it to be just as strenuous as the trek up to Machu Picchu in Peru.  Carsten and I have been sailing transport sailing for the past six months and just sitting on our butts.
2. The trip is 3-4 days through the jungle.  The rainy season has begun and the trails are slippery as all get out.   If one of us slips and breaks a leg, then we won’t be able to sail across the Caribbean and that means Capri will have to stay here in Colombia for a year.
3. During the rainy season, the mosquitos carrying Dengue fever are particularly active.  The last thing we need is for one of us to contract dengue fever.

A real bummer, since we are sure it would have been a fantastic experience.  Searching around on the net for “What to see and do in Santa Marta” doesn’t reveal much that we haven’t already done or seen.  We’ve experienced so much over the past 8 years that many things would just be repeats.

We are impatient to get to the Dominican Republic, but as I’m writing this, we have been here for 10days and there will not be a weather window for at least the next 10 days.

One of our neighbors on the dock, a local fisherman stops by one day and asks, “Do you like lobster?”  What a silly question.  Of course, we like lobster.  Where after we end up with a monster lobster for dinner.

With nothing else to do, we are lucky the marina gives us access to the swimming pool at the Marriott hotel.  So we spend our afternoons lying by the pool with a cool drink.  It is far too hot to be on the beach. Life is a question of compromises.