Un-Real Time

OK this is definitely a brief one. We left Oriental ( and all our good friends there ) on Tues 22nd Oct. (2013 ) The wind heard that we were heading SW so it started blowing from there ,just for a day , but enough to send us down the dreaded ICW to Cape Fear. Actually it was quite pleasant, but bloody cold !
Stopped at Mile Hammock Bay for the night.All sorts of military training going on so not peaceful but interesting.Boys racing around in RIBs and helicopters buzzing the bay Pretty cool.

 

Next day down to Carolina Beach for the night and then racing with the current out of Cape Fear at a lively 8 knots.and picked up with 10 to 25 northerlies that got us down to the St Mary river ,which is the border of Georgia and Florida . Were going to go in there but it was just too nice out in the Atlantic so our 3rd night at sea was spent "drifting" with the current (the wind dropped out altogether) at about 11/2 kts .A very restful night and when the sun popped up on Monday morning we fired up the motor and chugged in on a glorious morning to the beautiful St Augustine.

The fort 

 

The oldest wood school

 

And a peacock doing a Johnny Winter impression.

It's the oldest ( European ) city in the US having been set up by the Spanish in the 1500's.

 

So........here we are

Cartagena

Somehow I gotta keep this brief so lots of pics and not so much gab....But there you go I'm gabbin' already. It seemed easier to stay at Santa Marta and bus in to Cartagena and see some countryside at the same time so we hopped on a bus and bypassing Baranquilla went past this semi aquatic village with half the houses built on the water. Looks like its a subsistence thing as they have a bunch camerones (prawns/shrimp ) stands. Guess it's just good to be there.
 The outskirts of Cartagena were a jumble of markets and humanity and just one of those things you only get a chance to snap on the way past in yer air conditioned bus

 

Then you get to this beautiful walled city.

 

Overlooked by the mighty old fort.(con grande zapatas )

 

 

People going about their business

 

 

Artists like this guy, Enrique Grou , (self portrait )

 

He also sculpted this

 

It's the kind of city you can wander around for days just soaking up the history.

And the artisanship.

 

 

The shoe shine tree.

 

Amateur photographers tryin' to be arty

 

Every bar and TV shop with a crowd watching Colombia nearly beat Brazil.

 

More people

 

 

 

Gail disappearing into the labyrinth tunnels of the fort.

 

 

There's a whole other part of the Cart. built out on a large sandspit (beach ) It's the Nuevo city.

Looks pretty much Surfers Paradise or Fort Lauderdale and has every fast food and coffee and retail outlet you could possibly want.........or not.

Then there's the monastery up on the hill where the indigenous folk or the slaves or something threw the  megalomaniac missionary/priest off the cliff onto the rocks far below.

Got a chuckle out of that one.

Anyway we bussed back to Santa Marta and after doing 'stuff ' on Jabiru took off on the 24th Nov out around Baranquilla and the tremendous outflow of the massive Rio Magdalena which kicks up all sorts of currents and sloppy waves and carrying all sorts garbage from trees to cows and fridges. Mind you we didn't see any of that huge stuff ourselves......although Bob swore that Spirit was under attack or de-laminating or something.

Anchored at Punta Hermosa for the night and sailed into Cartagena the next day. That was a trip on its own....what a place....viva Colombia!

Our friends from Filia Maris were at the abchorage.

That's the young couple from Holland/France that met in Singapore.

Ain't they sweet

 

 

Ya gotta keep moving,so after contracting an awful flu we set sail via overnight anchorages at a couple of Colombian islands then an overnighter to Puerto Obaldia on the border of Panama and Colombia.On the way I had a coughing fit and gave myself another hernia.

This getting old definitely ain't for sissies..

Anyway lunch is served so I'll leave the exiting story of my operation 'til later.

Cheers.

(PS ..Don't forget ,if you click on any photo you get slide show )

 

 

 

 

Colombia

You'll get a bunch of these guys coming over for a play on most trips but these little fellers were shouldering each other out of the way to get to the bow wave then one of them started jumping and spinning. Blew us away but we found out later that this breed always does that  and they're called Spinners........Amazing.

Did get a video on the Ipad but don't know how to edit then transfer to the laptop to upload to the blog so.......you'll just have to believe me.

So after a night and a day of sailing/motoring and sailing again we rounded the northernmost tip of South America  and nearing dawn the next day we decided that with 45 hrs to go before we got to Santa Marta and with a strong current against us and heavy weather approaching Santa Marta we'd play it safe and duck into Bahia Honda ,which was about 25 miles behind us. As soon as we started back it seemed that the current turned as well so about 11am wefinally dropped anchor in this huge bay,got the binoculars out and looked around. Couple of broken down looking farm houses, a couple of horses a goat and now and then a person walking or riding a bike. The next day 3 guys in a dugout canoe with an old sheet for a sail slowly drifted over and hopped on board. I was going to explain to them that the polite thing to do is ask for permission to come aboard but then I realized all I could say was 'buenas dias ' and como estas?' So they just nodded and said bien  or something and they sat around and smoked our cigarettes and using the half dozen or so words we knew of each others language ,passed a reasonably pleasant hour or so. Una mas cigarillo amigos ? ...Si gracias. What they really wanted was clothes , shoes and water of all things. I've never seen such poor people. We gave them some caps and a couple of shirts and bought a couple of lobsters but being so ,comparatively, filthy rich does embarrass me and 4 days later when the wind and waves dropped and we'd almost run out of food and already run out of cigs we continued on or way to Santa Marta .

Of course I didn't think to take any photos.

After a night and a day and another night , very happy to have a stiff breeze blowing us toward the rugged headlands.

 

And into the calm harbor/marina.

 

In a nutshell ,Santa Marta is a lovely town full of lovely people.

There's a great beach just round the next headland.

 

A couple of very talented sand sculpturers

 

 Hand cranked slushies

 

Back to town....There's a group of expats with a terrace overlooking the marina.

 

There was Haloween with hundreds of little Colombians hitting the streets all looking very scary/cute and stuffing their little faces with lollies/candys.

Forgot the camera.

And these statues of the indigenous people all along the waterfront.

 

A delightful bar and restaurant scene round the many beautiful piazzas.

 

Then there was the community beach clean-up aided by some of the cruisers.

Gail's in there somewhere......I was .....busy with something.

 

Strangely...there were 2 other Aussie boats there as well.

A Darwin family on a big catamaran ,and a couple on a 28ft Compass same as the boat we sailed up to the Barrier Reef a few years ago and decided that we'd like to go cruising ...but have to get a bigger boat.They've been on theirs for 25 years and been round the world.

He's Phil ,a Taree lad and she's Di from Canada.More about them later.

 

Had enough for today ...Cartagena next.

 

Curacau ( the Island not the booze )

Of course there's supposed to be a little squiggly thing under the second c but my 'friend' only speaks English , or the American version of that particular language......never mind. The booze , or to put it nicely the liqueur , comes from here too.
Of historical interest ......we were here in 1975,probably around Augustish ,when on our honeymoon 'cruise' from New Zealand to Italy. The cruise ship was docked just to left of this big boy , before the bridge .This time it was in September (2012) for time orientation after the that little trip into the future /present. We stayed about 2 months this time,mainly because it was a pleasant place and also we'd caught up with a few friends so were having a some nice little 'socials' and even found time to install our solar panel to help the old wind generator supply us with electricity. Add to that a very fancy resort with a great beach just round the corner from the anchorage and an American embassy where we could apply for (and did ) (and got ) another 5 year visa.

These are our friends  that we caught up with. A delightful bunch of 'kids'. They thought we were weird calling them kids but they were all younger than ours !

From the left...'er indoors..Dianna and Jerry ,Netherlanders who skipper and hostess cruise boats in Dutch St Maarten in the sailing season.......Bob....Heather ( Yank ) who is the wife of the English lad we went to the cricket with in Dominica. He was back in the USA getting his green card/citizenship whatever. Lucky bastard. Just after this Heather got an offer from UNICEF to get back to her old job "saving the world " instead sailing round it. So she is now based in Bankok looking out for kids all over SE Asia. On the right of the pic is Peter (pronounced Paiter in Clog ) and his lady Florence from France (Flo from France is less confusing ). They met when they were both working in ........you guessed it..........Singapore . Oh and barely visible is Arvid . Jerry's mate from Holland.

 

Anyway, Willemstad ,the big smoke on Curacao , is very Dutch......but still a whole lot Caribbean. 

 

Looks good in the day.

And at night

That's a full moon up there.

 

Cosmopolitan

 

Giving a damaged tree back its............dignity

The bridge is famous , the big attraction really. It's a line of pontoons on a hinge, basically. The whole thing is swung round by the pontoon on the end which has a motor.

 

That's the basic idea. Real one on the right.

 

You've got beaches here there and everywhere . You've got a fairly scrubby landscape but things like Flamingos are about

 

And there's always a guitar player to annoy.

 

 

And then you realize .....it's all a dream.

 

We set sail for the Island of Aruba at 1535 on the 17th of October 2012 and got there at 0800 on the 18th. We looked around for a couple of days.......bars, restaurants an' everything.

Anchor weighed at 2230 on 20th Oct 2012. Destination Santa Marta...COLOMBIA

 

Back to the Future

While in the process of catching up,which I don't seem to able to do the short way , I've decided to update to last weekend cos......I dunno. We decided to take a drive up to the Smokey Mountains to see the Fall colours and visit some friends while there. We took off with Perry and Susan and Holly on Friday and headed up to Ashville ,about a 6 hour drive, tostart our lil ol' trip.Ashville is a very pretty and cool town. It's a university town and very arty/hippie sorta place.Would really have liked to spend more time as it's full of art and craft galleries and music venues and the whole street scene is lots of fun with buskers and mimes and even a regular Friday drum "fest " in the central park. I'm not a fan of large gatherings of  "drummers " belting it out but these people had a huge variety of drums from bass to bongo and it was very atmospheric ........ .and stuff. Of course I left the camera back at the motel. Never the less it was a great afternoon and night and the next morning ,in the car park ,Perry recognized this guy he'd met a few years ago at his studio and called me over to meet him .His name had come up a few days before when we were jammin'/singalongin'  so we had to get a photo and he gave us a couple of CD's .   Cool.

 

                                             Perry  LEON REDBONE and me
Anyway we took off along the beautiful Blueridge Parkway ,a specially built scenic roadway ,and stopped at numerous lookouts or overlooks as they call them round here and went for a couple of little hikes...............not forgetting scenic lunch.

 

I dunno ,maybe 100 miles or so north up the Parkway ,we got to the Jefferson area where our friends Richard and Jina have got a beautiful house nestled in the trees.Had a great night at their place and the next day we hiked around the area. Guess we were a few days early for the full  "leaf show" but it sure is beautiful. It was a dogathon too and Holly had a ball running around with R and J's 3.

Group shot.That's Holly on the left then Perry ,Richard holding Mike ,Murphy almost hidden behind him then Jina ,Gail and Susan and Maurice tucked under my arm.

 

We all went over to visit Roger and Evans , who live a little further over towards the Tennessee border,and have just about finished their new house. Of course I forgot my camera but this is them when we were cruising with them in the Bahamas

And this is their pit bull Chester who we baby sat a couple of years ago.

When I say baby sat ...I mean it.You have to hold his hand/paw to keep him happy/secure.

And that's the house they built themselves..now finished.

We had another night at Richard and Jina's place and did some more hiking in the woods .

 

 

 

Then we left 'em on the front porch and headed back down the coast.

 

 Gotta say Jina's much prettier than the last chic he was hangin' out with.