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.