Sailing to Colombia

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I know I'm more than 10 days late, but there is too much to talk about and too little time left before I have to be in Brazil, so please be patient. For a quick update: I'm still in Colombia and I'm loving it. I just finished a diving course at Tayrona National Park, area controlled by the paramilitary, so it's pretty safe for turists. I'm heading to Venezuela tomorrow.

First day on boat:

The group on the boat was composed of the capitan, Hernando Higuera, five of guys from the hostel, myself and a Dutch girl that we were going to meet in El Porvenir, where the boat was going to leave from. Some gender imbalance there? You can add that the boat is 33 feet in length and smaller than my kitchen in Oakland inside. There were only six beds but eight of us.
The guys from the hostel were two Americans that went to school in Stanford, Greg and Ross; two Dutch brothers, Paul and Sjoerd, that had nothing better to do but travel, they were both "between jobs" or something like that and Phil, from England. Phil is used to be a computer programmer had a good job in Winsor, bought a house about three years ago. The value of his house doubled in two years, he sold it, quit his job, and decided to travel for a living. He has been traveling for 10 (ten!) months in Central America. This week he finally made his way to South America.
El Porvenir is on an island, or better, on a bunch of islands in the arquipelago of San Blas, inside a Kuna indian reservation. It's just a little over one hundred kilometers from Panama city, but the options to get there are quite limited. I could go by bus until Miramar, from where I would have to get a ride on a boat for another 4 hours, more if it's a slow one. There are no passenger boats, I would have to get to the port and hope that someone with a boat with space available and a big heart is heading that direction. I talked with people on the hostel and a group of them had gone to Miramar hoping to catch a ride to El Porvenir, waited the entire day and had to bus back to Panama because there were no boats available. I didn't want to take the risk of missing the other boat to Cartagena, so I prefered to fly with the rest of the group. It turned out that it was one of the most amazing experiences of the entire trip.
We woke up at 4 am to catch the flight. The airport was small, it only had three gates. We had been warned multiple times that the limit for checked in luggage was 25 pounds, so I had carefully selected the heaviest of my belongings to go on my hand luggage, including my car radio and my three books and had got rid of everything that was not strictly necessary for the rest of the trip. I got to the check in counter and put my backpack on the scale: 38 pounds. I'm screwed, I didn't even try to convince the attendant to be nice. She looked at the bag and said: "Unfortunately I will have to charge you for the extra weight." I was ready... "$3.25" $3.25, that's it? If I knew that that it was going to be that cheap I wouldn't have been carring that car radio around. Soon we realized why the weight limit was so low. The aircraft was a 20 seat propeler plane that could have been used in WWII. I've traveled in small airplanes before, but this one wasn't just small, it was really old.
The flight was suprisingly smooth considering the condition of the plane. Or maybe I was completely awed by the views and didn't notice the turbulence. We flew to the Caribbean coast and over several islands. The water was so clear that you could see the coral reefs on the botton of the ocean, contrasting with the many shades of blue and green.
In 20 minutes we landed on a tiny island, right next to a bunch of trees and a small hut which was probably the main terminal. The pilot opened the door and lowered the steps (manually, of course) and we were received by a dozen kuna indians, wearing their usual costumes, with a lot of yellow and red. I was getting off the plane when the pilot told me that we were in Carti, not El Porvenir. I was confused because I had been told that El Porvenir was going to be the first stop, maybe they changed their minds. I didn't care, I was enjoying the flight over the arquipelago too much. With less weight we took off a little easier this time. We flew over another bunch of islands and coral reefs and landed on another island just a few minutes later. This island was considerably more populated. There were as many as 5 huts and 3 white people, besides the dozen kuna indians. The 3 white people were our Dutch girl, Eva, and two American women that looked so out of place that it took some time to realize that they were actually there. Obviously our group called a lot of attention, being six backpackers speaking English with some Dutch in between. The two of them soon started a conversation, and they said they had been on the island for two days, but were bored out of their minds being the only people in a 50 mile radius that didn't have a boat. Unfortunately (or not) we were too croweded to take anyone else, so we left the Americans behind.
Hernando also have a friend, Humberto, an indian that conveniently spoke Spanish (most of them spoke nothing but kuna). Eva, Humberto and I left on the ding, an inflatable boat, to buy some supplies. We bought 16 gallons of water, 14 gallons of beer, some vegetables, rice and other things we were missing. We had to hop from one island to another collecting the items that couldn't possibly be sold on the same place. It was incredible to go through the indian huts and see the way live.
We got everything we needed but couldn't find ice anywhere, very disappointing after getting all the beer.
We sailed to another island called Chichime, where Humberto lives with another 3 or four families. If there is a paradise on Earth I just found it. There are other smaller islands around, some of them with not more than a couple of coconut trees, but all of them surrounded with white sand. We swam and snorkelled through the coral reefs until dark, had lobster and crab for dinner cooked by Humberto's wife and slept inside the overcrowded boat because it was raining outside. We did find a little space for everyone, but it was way too hot to fall asleep so I moved outside as soon as the rain stopped.

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