San Blas, paradise on earth!!!!!!!!!!!

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After saying our good byes to Santa Marta and Katrym, we sat course towards Cartagena our last stop in South America.
Cartagena is a beautiful colonial city and a place I coulda woulda shoulda spent more time, but we had a date with a captain to take us over the sea to Panama only days after our arrival.
There's said amongst backpackers to do some serious research towards which captain you choose to go with. And I could not agree more!
We were able to meet up with him and see his boat before we decided to go with him, which is all very good.
But, there is a diffence between 15 min. as a guest and potential customer while still anchored, and sitting in the "crossfire" when the captain is all stressed out mid-sea!
The boat we went with is called "Modus Vivendi" and we were told before we booked the trip that maximum people on board was 7 including the captain.
When he met us at the harbour on the day of departure, he told us that we were 8 people and a motorcycle strapped on deck..
So, there went our sundeck!
And, we were told that he wanted us to leave Cartagena early. Well, we passed the skyline of Cartagena by night.
I'm not gonna be all negative, because we had a really good trip. But, it was a little unorganised to say the least.
On our second day at sea we saw nothing but rain, ocean and eachother. Which was swell enough (the latter I mean). We had a really good group of people, where I was the only girl though.
But, everybody was really easygoing which was crusial to this trip I think!

Suddenly Thomas came into the cabin where I was lying and screamed, "haven't you heard us??, we've caught a tuna!!"
And so they had. The guys were really phsyced up and the captain was about to show us how to filete it.
Thomas was at the same time a little bummed out, because he had caught an even bigger one earlier and then the captain lost it shen he tried to detangled it from the hook.
Later that evening we had ourselves as fresh-as-you-can-get-it-tuna-steak!
we went to bed early that evening because we were gonna have to sit night watch from 3pm to 5pm.
We all had to contribute to this, and it is quite normal. No worries about this, and we had a really nice night too. With starry skies and relatively calm sea.
What wasn't all that worry-free, was when we were about to go back to bed.
When entering the cabin I felt water under my feets, and then I saw it. The whole bed was filled with it, and our backpacks!
The hatch was open, and sometime during our watch when the water apparently hadn't been all that calm, it had splashed down our hatch..
I was really annoyd, but at the same time very glad we weren't asleep at that time. That would not have been cool!
So, we decided to stay on deck an watch the sunrise.
Unfortunately there were none. It got overcast just before.
But, the good news was that we saw land and were finally arrived in the San Blas!
Or so we thought.
Our captain had done another mistake.
It turned out that he had forgotten about the days. And we had to go to the immigration office on our first day instead of the last.
He had left Colombia on a wednesday which means the intended arrival day in Panama would've been on a Sunday i.e immigration closed.
Since it had started to rain it was ok for us to sit on board the boat for three hours more, but I'll tell you that's only why it was ok!!
This must be the most laidback immigration in the world. We dived off the boat and swam ashore, entering the little island in only our swimwear. No questioned asked. But, they has a sign next to their office "forbidden to take coconuts".
So, there's some rules there..
Later that day we arrived paradise. We couldn't see it with all the rain, but as soon as the skies cleared up it litterallly became crystal clear.
Again, we dived off the boat with a bottle of rum, coke and our scuba gear.
In my mind, we were the pirates of the Caribbean.. almost..
We spent the rest of the day snorkeling, bathing, drinking rum and just having a really really good time!!

The next day, we sailed further to another island were a local man took us out snorkeling for lobsters.
Well, he wasn't exactly the best guide. He just gave us some equipment and disappeared under the water without telling us how they worked.
Needless to say we didn't get any! But saw heaps of them though.
When the time was up, our local had caught one for each of us.
But, this wasn't enough for the whole group so we ended up buying more from some other locals.

That afternoon I ended up having a little argument with the captain. This all started when he asked us to do the dishes.
I don't mind contributing to stuff like that, but what I do mind is doing a job that I've paid a alot of money (400$)for so that he could slack off.
I told him this and he responded by saying that we had been off snorkeling the whole day while he was making food. And, that he hadn't had the chance of going into the water yet.
That's it!
No respect for cry babies.
We parted in disagreement, but as adults with different opinion.
He had also been bugged out about small stuff the last day, starting to yell at us for rules he hadn't told us.
The thing is, this captain is a really nice guy but in my opinion he's not cut out to be a "tour operator".
After this, we "abandoned" the ship and stayed as much as we could either in the water or out at one of the islands.
That evnening we made a bonfire on the beach, and had ourselves a really funny "full moon party"!
I'm so glad we netted with the rest of the group, or else it would've been 5 loooong days on board a really small sailboat.

When on dry land in Panama city, we got us a culture shock of our own culture!
Imagine that..
There we stood on the sidewalk, barefoot, dirty, stinking, and everybody looked so clean and normal!
No honking horns in traffic, shiny cars, McDonal's signs everywhere and huge billboards next to the roads.
We were definately not in South America anymore, we had reached a western influenced country..
We agreed that it was a little sad! It felt a bit like our travel was over.
But, it's not!
So stay tuned..

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