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The starfish trio
Water like a swimming poolSo like we said, there is no road between Colombia and Panama. Also the flights are outrageously expensive. We decided to make our way across the Caribbean to Panama at a more leisurely pace--about 5 MPH to be exact. We originally planned on carefully selecting our captain and vessle for the trip but it didn´t quite work out that way. The reality is that the sailboats leave very irregularly and you must work around their schedules and demand for spots on the boats. For the dates we needed to leave Cartagena, we had one choice: Remi. Glorious Captain Remi.
Remi´s reputation proceded him. We had heard many things about this crusty French captain, but one thing was consistent: his taste for cheap rum. He was impossible to communicate with, speaking in a strange mix of unconjugated Spanish and English, neither of which he knew much. Fortunately, we had other people to talk to. Accompanying us on our adventure was Remi´s Afro-Colombian girlfriend Ana, easily 35 years his junior; Ben and Brendan, 2 cool guys from the DC area who clicked with us really well; and Gigi, a pregnant Colombian woman, who managed to escape nightwatch duty and get the best
bed on the boat (she was hardly pregnant, the royal treatment wasn´t necessary).
We left the harbor in Cartagena as the sun was going down. Five minutes into the trip, we were positive we had made a mistake. As the boat swayed back and forth over very large, rolling waves, we asked ourselves, what the
hell were we thinking? Never having been on a sail boat, it was at first very scary and very uncomfortable. John was fairly certain that we were going to die.
We actually contemplated asking the captain to turn around and take us back to shore, no refund necessary, but we gradually began to realize that the boat was not going to tip over, this is just how sailboats work. For those who don´t know, sailboats are heavily weighted on the bottom of the boat. Barring terrible conditions, the weighted bottom keeps the boat from ever flipping over, and were that ever to happen, it would quickly return to its upright position. This very reassuring to us.
After a couple of hours at sea, we became accustomed to the way this little boat manuevered its way through large swells. The real adventure began,
however, when we went below into the cabin to sleep. However rough the seas feel atop the boat, they are two or three times worse below. That, combined with the fact that it was about 100 degrees down there, made sleep nearly impossible. Also, we each had to take two hour shifts throughout the night keeping watch while Remi slept off his booze (except for Gigi, of course) but this was actually the best part of the night because above deck was less rocky and more breezy (fo sheezy) John preferred it up there so much that he decided to stay above deck for Ben and Sarah's shifts too.
After a pretty rough, sleepless, and hot first night, we emerged from the cabin to much smaller waves and a beautiful sunny day. Now that we were finally used to the motion of the boat, we were totally relaxed. We even squeezed in (a couple) lovely naps on the upperdeck during the morning. This second day was our only day spent entirely on the open sea. There really wasn´t much to do but sit on the deck, share travel stories and look out at the navy blue water, but time
actually flew by and I think everyone had a pretty good time.
The highlight of the day undoubtedly came when three dolphins swam along side us for a wondrous 15 minutes. We have seen dolphins before, but never wild ones that were so close. It was exhilarating to lay on the front of the boat only a few feet above them and watch them jump and play together.
The morning of our third day at sea, we arrived at the San Blas Archipelago. This is when we really started to realize that what we were doing was so special. These 365 islands, off the Caribbean coast of Panama, are ruled by the indigenous and politically sovereign Kuna people. If you could look up "Paradise" in a dictionary of images, you would unquestionably find pictures of the San Blas Islands (Kuna Yala). We're afraid we have overused this word, "paradise," in our descriptions of our travels to places like Floripa and Isla Grande in Brazil. Those places were nice, sure, but nothing like this. You literally feel like you are inside the cover of some travel magazine or one of those posters that hang in dorm rooms with "RELAX"
Barracuda
Acting like I actually had something to do with catching it printed in big letters. And you more or less have the whole place to yourself, give or take a few Kuna.
The water, an amazing escape from the near triple digit temperatures, is teaming with tropical fish and coral reefs. It must be the clearest water in the world, in beautiful shades of aquamarine to turquoise. We spent the next two days marveling at at the beautiful setting, swimming, snorkeling, exploring, and eating fresh seafood (5 small lobsters for $4!). We shared a big feast of the freshest fish of our lives with another boat.
Also, a really weird thing happened the first night at the islands. We think plankton or krill or some small organism must have been mating, because all of a sudden, there were these neon green glow-in-the-dark explosions of color in the water...everywhere. It mesmerized us for at least an hour. Maybe it happens everyday, maybe it was something special, either way, it was very cool. So was laying on the deck and watching the millions of stars above us, with no city lights to distract from their glory.
I doubt, unless you have been there, that you have ever heard San Blas--I
know we hadn´t. Although we were anchored in between two of the islands with maybe seven other sailboats, very few people ever get to see these islands. That what's so special, you feel like you know of this secret paradise that hardly any other place can come close to comparing to.
We arrived in Portobello, Panama at about 6 AM on the fifth day, ready for dry land, showers, and a decent night's sleep but satisfied with our sailing voyage through the Caribbean. It was an opportunity to do something we would probably never get to do otherwise and though we got off to a rocky start, looking back, every moment was part of the adventure.
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philip
non-member comment
i hate you
bastards!!looks so incredible