Colombian Coastline

ISLAS ROSARIOS
Calypso finally pulled up a rather muddy anchor from the Cartagena anchorage and made her way through the bay, past more amazing forts, heading southwest for the Islas Rosarios, a group of small islands further down the Colombian coast. After four or five hours, we, along with our cruising catamaran buddies, dropped anchor inside the small reef north of the largest island and immediately fell in love with the place.

There were no roads, only thin paths and a small village, where the people were welcoming and friendly. We managed to do very little during our two week stay, walking around the island, swimming in water that was finally clear enough to see around, BBQing on the pier and visiting the privately owned bird park with its incredible array of exotic birds. It was also the ideal opportunity to scrub the hull of a month's worth of Cartagena grunge.

ISLAS BERNARDOS
The other three boats decided to leave the Rosarios and travel overnight straight for the Colombia/Panama border, however, we opted for a stop off at Islas Bernardos and were so thrilled that we did. There we met a Colombian businessman who invited us aboard his catarmaran for a 'few drinks'. The 'few' turned into many which then led to possibly the most delicious crab lunch we have ever tasted, accompanied by a wonderful bottle of wine. He continued this hospitality by having one of his employees take us on a tour of the tiny island of Islote which boasts wall to wall houses where one has to negotiate through tiny 'streets' and back yards to get around. Despite the fact that these folk must see very few 'gringos', they appeared to be quite nonplussed at our wanderings.

We were then taken on a dinghy tour for several hours right around the main island of Tintipan, in and out of the vast mangrove lagoons that cover a good proportion of this island. The homes on Tintiplan are larger, fancier holiday residences owned by wealthy mainlanders, all of which were empty during our stay.

We were then returned to our host for a 'few drinks' again! We finally had to pull ourselves away and couldn't thank him enough for his generosity and the great insight he gave us into his country, a country which has had a checkered past, has since made major advances and is now trying desperately to change the outdated and incorrect perceptions still hanging over it. Colombia has certainly impressed us!

SAPZURRO
An overnight trip saw us on our way to the border town of SapZurro at Cabo Tiburon. This passage proved to be somewhat 'hairy' as we spent most of the night dodging violent squalls accompanied with spectacular displays of lightning. Lightning is always a tad unnerving when one is sailing around with a big stick poking up in the air, however, we managed to work our way around them. Our next hiccup happened when we were about two hours away from our destination, the engine puttered to a stop. Apart from the squalls, we had had no wind whatsoever so were forced to charge up the iron jenny to have any hope of arriving that day.

Our erstwhile resident engineer took it all very calmly, stated he'd have a cup of coffee and breakfast and then put his mind to the problem. We wallowed around for a while when, lo and behold, the wind arrived! Up went the sails, down went the fortified engineer and, voila, our trusty engine kicked back into life again! The culprit, dirty fuel and clogged filters.

SapZurro is a little piece of heaven! Resting in a small bay, this absolutely charming town has proven to be one of the nicest stops ever. We have obviously timed it ideally as it is mango and avocado season and these are here in abundance just for the taking! We also discovered a starfruit tree today but have given the plentiful almonds a miss - too much like hard work!

Here, we have managed several hikes. The first was over the hill to a Panama border post then down the other side to a gorgeous sandy bay where we were able to cool off before heading back up and over again. Next, we had a 2-1/2 hour hike through the rainforest and over to the slightly larger neighbouring town of Capurgana, another wonderful village with no motorised vehicles whatsoever. A local taxi is a donkey cart with legless plastic seats nailed around the outside edge. Our third hike was to have been up in the mountains to a waterfall but we went a little astray and wandered for several hours along paths through the most incredible rainforest filled with enormous plants which would have cost the earth back home. We encountered numerous mountain streams and small waterfalls where we washed off the heat of the day.

As my camera died whilst in Cartagena, I have no photos of Islas Bernardos. I have been relying on our travelling buddies for photos but Murphy just caught up and their camera has been hit with the same ailment. I hate to think that we'll be passing through the whole of the San Blas Islands without a means of recording them but I'm afraid that's going to be the case. With luck, I should be reunited with my camera once we get to Colon or Panama City but we'll have missed out on all the colourful Kuna Indians by that stage.

We'll be leaving Colombia in the next day or two and it will be with fond memories and a fair amount of sadness as we have thorougly enjoyed our stay and definitely plan to revisit when we make our final trip towards transitting the 'big ditch'.