Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Sunset over Cartagena
Sailing along the coast near Cartagena

Some of the people at our welcome party. Liquid Courage
brought over a bottle of Don Julio tequila





We really enjoyed Bonaire. We met a lot of nice people, celebrated Thanksgiving, Liz's birthday, Christmas and New Years. It is a great place and the water is clear and warm.







We left Bonaire the week after New Years and headed back to Curacao to provision for the San Blas Islands. There is not much in the way of grocery stores in the San Blas. We rented a car and provisioned like mad - food, wine and booze.







After waiting for a good weather window we headed for Aruba. Aruba is a great place if you are staying in a big hotel. It is not so fun if you are staying on a small boat. The ride in our little dinghy from the anchorage to the dinghy dock was death defying and wet. nuff said. We did enjoy Aruba tho.







We were in Aruba for about 10 days when we got the all important weather window to make the dreaded passage to Cartagena, Columbia. This is listed as one of the 5 worst passages in the world - the waves and wind can be huge. So, with butterflies, our convoy including Makai and Liquid Courage headed into the big blue sea. It is around 400 and some odd miles to Cartagena. We had 25 to 30 knots of breeze and 8' seas when we left Aruba. By nightfall the wind and seas had died way down and we actually had to motor sail. We had such a benign trip, we motor sailed at least half of the way. Oh well! We passed the also dreaded Rio Magdalena which can be quite nasty with logs and debris floating down the river from inland. We only knew we were there because the water turned brown. Ho Hum! We stopped in a bay called Punta Hermosa and anchored for the night so we would sail into Cartagena in daylight. We did indeed sail into Cartagena in day light and what a beautiful city. There is just an energy in the air - we could feel it in the anchorage. Several boats that we had met along the way were here and High Five and Solange came over to welcome us and we ended up feeling very welcomed!

More about Bonaire


New Year's Eve

We spent New Year's Eve in Bonaire - we went out to dinner with several other cruisers at Paradise Moon - one of our favorite places. We dinghied back to the boat around 10:30 pm and hung out. At midnight there was a fireworks display that was unreal. We have never seen anything like it. The islands is like a wide horseshoe and from one end to the other there were about 10 different displays of fireworks that were even better than Disneyland's. We did not know where to look - of course, there was lots of music coming from shore. We took the bean bag pillows and went up to the trampoline and just watched in awe. It was really something.