Colombia - Bogota

Bogota, city of taxis - 52,000 of them if I remember correctly, but according to whom I'm not sure. We arrived in Bogota on Friday afternoon and took a taxi (and we thought the drivers in Cartegena and Panama were crazy!) to the hostel in Candelaria district that we were staying at. This would be our first time sleeping on land for some five months. I can asure you I had no trouble adjusting to sleeping on land in a larger (normal sized) bed.

We spent a good part of the weekend with Verne and Troy who are now living in Bogota while Verne undertakes a PhD in dolphin research. We met Verne through our mutual friends Merril and Chris when we were visiting Cambodia a few years ago. Verne and Troy showed us a great time. First up was a party on Friday night, next day lunch at Crepes and Waffles and on to a huge park to see the summer festival (although it pretty much seemed to be all over), then Saturday night they introduced us to their favourite pizza place that rapidly became Ivan's favourite Bogota eatery before joining some of their friends at a new restaurant in a dodgy part of town. Sunday morning we all took the cable car ride up to the top of Montserrate, a mountain overlooking Bogota. The view is pretty amazing up there and makes you realise what a densely populated city Bogota is. We said goodbye to Verne and Troy and Ivan and I went off to the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum). Definitely worth a visit.



Bogota viewed from Montserrate

 Ivan spent the next day recovering from a mild bout of gastro (we think picked up at lunch the day before) and I visited the Museo Bottero and the old mint and art gallery. Museo Bottero is a collection of works from the artist Ferdinand Bottero. His works are best described as fat and round and I think you either love or hate them, there's no in between. I really love them, because they are so fun.

Bottero's fat, round guerillas

dang that finger on the mobile phone camera lens

Err yum?

Although we had a great time with Verne and Troy, and there are some interesting museums and art gallerys to explore, I didn't really like Bogota. I found it a bit creepy - probably partly due to all the bad stories you hear about what happens to people, partly due to all the warnings people give you to be careful, partly due to the high presence of security guards and razor wire fences and partly because it is a city like any other with poor people, beggars and street kids.


with Verne and Troy



Colombia - Cartegena

We had at one stage thought we would sail to Cartegena before going through the Panama Canal and make use of what we had heard were good marina facilities to slip the boat and do some work on her before entering the Pacific. More recently though we had heard that the harbour was a pretty dirty place to keep the boat as well as it being terribly hot and humid so we decided to see Cartegena and some other parts of Colombia by plane and land travel.

We left Bocas del Toro on the 7th of August on an early morning flight to Panama city. It was fantastice to see the Bocas archipelago which we had just sailed around from the air. Mangroves and reefs everywhere! It was equally fascinating, but quite a different type of view, to see the hundreds of yachts and ships moored and anchored outside the entrance of the Panama Canal as we came in to land.

Bocas archipelago from the air

After a night in Panama city we flew to Cartegena and spent 4 days there with our friend John on his yacht Sapphire M, a Westsail 32, which he had at anchor at Club Nautico in Cartegena. Cartegena is a nice city to explore. It reminded me of Phnom Penh - the humidity, the deteriorating footpaths, the juxtaposition of the old eg. hawkers on the street and the new eg. Crocs shop. Once known as the major trouble spot in Colombia for drug related crime, things have apparently got better in recent years and with police on just about every street corner, it has become safer for tourists. John had organised for the 3 of us to go on a guided tour of the city, particularly the old section. Our guide, Duran Duran (!!) was a font of information and we had a very enjoyable time.

John, Louise and Ivan at the old fort

While in Cartegena we had a crazy bus ride - jump on, hang on and don't look ahead; visited the naval museum which as well as housing displays of things naval was memorable for the very loud accordian bands playing in the hall and for the torrential rainstorm that came while we were inside.

view from John's anchorage at Club Nautico

On the morning we left Cartegena we woke to a rising wind that was causing some of the boats around us to drag their anchor. It was somewhat nerve wracking at the point when a 50ft schooner drifted close enough to the boat next to John's to glance off it just as the owner started the engine to motor away. We would have been next in line for a sizeable knock, although John was ready to pull the anchor and motor away from danger if necessary. We were surprised that a number of people leave their boats at anchor in the harbour without remaining on board and of course inevitably some of them drag in high winds or sails flap loose, just becoming a danger to those around them. Fortunately for us the wind dropped after about an hour and John was able to take us to the dinghy dock so we could catch our flight to Bogota.

Bocas Archipelago - Punta Laurel Bay and beyond



Brio at anchor near 'the farm'



From Bluefields we motored (again not enough wind) south of Cayo de Agua and into a small bay on the south side of Isla Popa called Laurel Bay, arriving at about 4 pm. We had intended to go further that day, but we had not left Bluefields until about 1pm and as it gets later in the day it is much harder to judge the depths of water and see the coral heads and reefs that are all around. Getting into Laurel Bay was a little tricky, but between Ivan's sooper dooper polarizing sunglasses and the chart notes we had, we got in without mishap although there were a couple of moments when the depth suddenly reduced and we had to pick our way around a shallow spot. The bay was delightful with five dwellings visible on the shore including one half-submerged house and one house on an islet that we called 'the farm' because judging from the noises we heard, the family there kept pigs, chooks and dogs. As with most of the places we stayed during our tour of the archipelago we were the only yacht to be seen. No sooner had we arrived than a gringo came over to us in his runabout, introduced himself as Ken, from Florida, but now living in a house he built on the point overlooking the bay, gave us an avocado from his garden, but as he was on his way out to dinner he couldn't stop long to talk.

When the stumps fail

The following day we explored a narrow creek that led into the bay that Ken had told us about. We were able to go a long way up it using the oars as paddles as it was too narrow to row normally. I ( Louise) caught a glimpse of a cayman at one stage and we saw a few birds that looked like and behaved like kingfishers.

A wider section of the creek we paddled up

After visiting Ken at his house the next morning we rowed back to our boat to head off, but rain forced us to wait until the afternoon. When we finally left we had to navigate our way through a lot of shallows to reach the Sumwood Channel. It was quite tense, particularly as we found that our Autohelm GPS did not give the same reading as our Garmin Chartplotter GPS. To navigate I was constantly looking at the coordinates on the Autohelm GPS and those on the chartlet in the cruising guide, so didn't get to enjoy the scenery. We only touched bottom once! The Sumwood Channel was a little easier and from there we steered past lots of mangrove islets and into Porras Lagoon. The lagoon is home to dolphins and we were lucky enough to see a few as we entered it. We stayed the night near a small village in the lagoon, hoping we could buy some fish from the shop. There was no shop there, but we were directed to a small fuel depot and the man there sold us a decent sized snapper from the freezer in his home. So we got our fish, but unfortunately as it was frozen, it would be the next night when we ate it!

House on Palos Lagoon Cut

We got off to an early start the next morning and motored through a small cut to the next lagoon, Palos Lagoon and from there out into Bahia Almirante, which although was nice deep, clear water, once again there was no wind so the motor stayed running. We headed over to Isla Colon and, checking out a few different anchorages along the way, anchored at Starfish Beach around lunchtime. There were a couple of other yachts anchored here, including a small one near us called 'Leaf' of Freemantle. Owners Adam and Hannah had bought her in the US, prepared her for sail in Canada and were now doing as we were and making the journey home. They had started with next to no experience of sailing, but they seemed to have picked it up very quickly, albeit with a few lessons learned on the way.

We had a pleasant time swimming over to the shore and looking at the big orange starfish and walking along the beach. Unfortunately the popularity of the beach has resulted in local tourist operators setting up beach chairs and playing loud Carribean music for the day trippers which was quite annoying by the end of the day.

The next morning we made the short hop back to Isla Carenero and tied up at the berth in the marina where we will leave the boat for the next 7 months.

Bocas Archipelago - over to Bluefields

After Red Frog we motored a little further down Hospital Bight (so named for the hospital that was there in the early 20th century) to Bahia Honda. Bahia Honda was a relatively tranquil spot for the night. Just the usual noise of children playing and dogs barking as there was a small village nearby.

The next morning we had a look at a tiny marina that we had been able to see from our Red Frog anchorage. As we were to discover there were hundreds of very sheltered spots amongst the mangroves of the archipelago and obviously some people had taken the opportunity to create mini-marinas for people looking to leave their boat in a safe, cheap place. This particular marina was full with about 8 yachts on the dock.

Entering The Gap

From Bahia Honda we motored through a very narrow channel known as The Gap. The channel wasn't very long and was shallow in parts so we had one eye on the depth sounder all the way.

The Gap opened out into a large expanse of mangrove islets that we cautiously motored through, again having to watch the depths closely, as we made our way in a generally south direction. While mostly there is mud on the bottom there are also coral heads, hence the need to move slowly and being alert to changes in the colour of the water indicating a change in depth and possibly coral. Nice to be in a steel boat though!

Mangrove islets south of The Gap

Once out past the mangrove islets, we passed between Isla Bastimentos and Isla Popa and made a change in plan to head for Laguna de Bluefields, another hour and a half or so away, rather than stick to our original plan to stop at Cayos Zapatilla (2 small coral cays known for white sand and snorkelling). We were able to hoist the genoa, although still ran the engine as the wind was light.

We arrived at Bluefields mid-afternoon, having an impromptu race as we entered the Laguna with a kiyuku (local indian canoe) that was sailing along. Ivan did stop the engine to try to make it a more even competition. We set anchor at Punta Allegre once we had established where the coral reef was in order to make sure we weren't in danger of drifting on to it. There was another yacht in the tiny bay, flying a British flag. We didn't waste any time getting into the water to cool off and swam over to introduce ourselves to Frank. Frank has a 44ft Herreshof steel ketch  that he built himself in London 20 or so years ago. He kindly pointed the local man selling crayfish from his kiyuka in our direction that night!



Kiyuka under sail at Bluefields





Dinner!



The next day we began a walk across the tip of the island, through the forest from Punta Allegre village to another village called Cusapin, but gave up after about an hour as we could see the mud was just going to continue, making it very slow going. The locals had warned us it was a 3 hour trip and very muddy!

Punta Allegre village

We stayed 2 nights at Bluefields, enjoying some swimming and watching the locals paddle their kiyukas past us. Sometimes they would have a handful of fruit or vegetables to sell us. Othertimes they would just look at our boat or test out their English on us. Ivan got quite a funny fright once to look up from something he was doing in the cockpit to find two young children peering over the edge of the cockpit from their kiyuka! They are quite silent when they paddle up.

Track to Cusapin

Bocas Archipelago - Red Frog

We have just returned from 10 days touring in Brio around the Bocas del Toro archipelago. I'll keep this post fairly brief as it is late and we are up very early tomorrow morning to go to Colombia (by plane) for a couple of weeks.

We left Marina Carenero on the morning of Wednesday 27 July for a short (motoring) trip to Isla Bastimentos with the intention of stopping near the old town on the island. Before we realised it, we had passed the anchorage so, with an 'oh well' we continued a little further and anchored outside Red Frog Marina. The marina is named after the beach on the island that has lots of little red frogs on it. We went to the beach but didn't even think to look for the frogs while we were there. We had actually seen some when we visited the chocolate farm on Isla Colon so we weren't thinking about looking for more of them. The beach was very nice to walk along and Ivan went for a bit of a body surf in some pretty poor waves in the beach next door.

On Red Frog Beach not looking for frogs

We had only intended to spend one night in the area, however as we needed to communicate with our travel agent about some incorrect ticketing dates he had sent us, we ended up spending a good part of the next day making use of the free internet in the restaurant up the hill to try and sort out the problem. It was a rainy day anyway so  not much chop for sailing and so we spent a second night at anchor there. It was quite a busy little place with Pangas (water taxis) zipping around us and through the mangroves dropping people off at the island.