Curacao, Aruba & the Colombian Coast

Curaçao

Someone once said of cruising “I’ve got no plans and I’m sticking to them!” Well, that’s true of the crew of Calypso right now. Until a few weeks ago, we were planning our trip up to Jamaica and Cuba. The following will explain.

Upon leaving Bonaire (Paul had to drag me away kicking & screaming), our travels continued westwards to Curaçao, the middle of the three Nederlands Antilles islands just north of Venezuela. Curaçao is the most populace of the ABC’s, ten times that of Bonaire with all the amenities that support a larger population so provisioning was very good. We found a great social life there but it lacked the ease of diving we had so come to enjoy in Bonaire, hence, we didn’t manage any diving at all. However, we still thoroughly enjoyed our stay.

Aruba, Bonaire & Curaçao (ABC’s) were all self governing states of the Kingdom of the Nederlands, however, Aruba has since gained independence and the others are discussing following the same path. The people of these three islands are a mix of many races & cultures and most speak at least four languages, Dutch, Spanish, English & Papiamentu (an interesting mixture of Dutch, Spanish & English as well as some Portuguese and African languages thrown in for good measure). The history of the ABC’s starts with the Arawak Amerindians with the first Europeans (Spaniards) arriving around 1500. Between the Dutch, Spanish, British and the slaves from Africa, a real melting pot of peoples inhabit the islands today.

While planning our passage northwards, we met up with two catamarans, one Aussie and the other from the States who were waiting for a weather window to head over to Aruba and then down to day hop along the coast of Colombia to Cartagena. Somehow, this sounded so much more appealing than taking our now very delayed trip up to Cuba and then battling the winds & currents to return southwards prior to the onset of hurricane season. Within 24 hours of chatting to them over the usual Happy Hour refreshments, we had opted to join their wagon train westwards instead!

Meanwhile at anchor, for those of you who know anything about cricket, you will know that the World Cup is taking place in the Caribbean. Well, here we were, in the Caribbean and do you think we could find any of the dozens of satellite channels showing the games? No such luck! So, as a compromise, we had our own game! Two dozen cruisers from everywhere, even the States & Canada where the game is virtually unheard of, got together and had a ball! Don’t think we’d have been much of a challenge to any of the cricket playing nations, but I’ll bet we had more fun despite the very biased umpires!

Aruba

When the first opportunity arose, we all headed northwards to the tip of Curaçao for an overnight stop before crossing to Aruba the next morning where another catamaran joined our train. It hadn’t been our intention to stay any longer than one night, however, the weather closed in along the Colombian coast making it dangerous to make that passage. This gave us the chance to stop to enjoy Aruba, a real tourist spot with some magnificent white sandy beaches but with an incredibly windy anchorage. We anchored off the beaches of the large hotels chains and were able to wander around their magnificent gardens. As it was Easter, the hotels were full of overseas tourists soaking up the sun and enjoying the beaches and water sports.

The Colombian Coast

The weather window arrived a week later so we set off for the Venezuelan island of Monjes del Sur en route to our first stop in Colombia. This proved to be an intriguing anchorage as the tiny island is a bit like a moonscape with no vegetation and solely a lighthouse and the Venezuelan coast guard doing their bit to hinder the drug traffic. As the little bay is too deep to anchor in, there is a thick rope stretched across it allowing any visiting yachts to tie up to that. The information we received stated that there was room for six yachts but, as we were three catamarans and one monohull, there was little room for much else! We again set off, at three in the morning to ensure that we arrived at the next anchorage in daylight. Altogether, we stopped at three other spots along the Colombian coast where we found the people to be incredibly friendly and the villages impeccably clean!

Five days after leaving Aruba, we arrived in the historical city of Cartagena where we intend to stay for a few weeks. Unfortunately, Calypso sustained some damage to her keel as we were entering the bay. We had full sails up traveling at 7½ knots with the depth gauge telling us we had plenty of depth under the keel when, all of a sudden, we hit something very hard! As we rushed to pull the sails down, we hit again. Not a pleasant feeling! Once we were settled into the Cartagena anchorage, Paul dived to check for damage. Fortunately, it was just the keel but we thought it would mean hauling out again to repair. Lady Luck was with us, a fellow cruiser had some underwater epoxy which Paul was able to spread over the damaged area and this should hold until the next time we have to haul, hopefully in a year’s time.

It’s early days here yet but the city of Cartagena (pronounced Cart-a-hayna) seems steeped in some very interesting history with an old walled city and huge fort. We’re dying to get out to investigate which we’ll do once we’re through all the check-in red tape (4 days so far – all part of the fun!). When we’ve learned a bit more, we’ll write all about it in our next entry.