Providencia

A very pleasant 2 day sail north from Bocas is the island of Providencia . It's just north of San Andreas which is the touristy/party island.They both belong to Colombia although they are off the coast of Nicaragua. We went straight to Providencia as we were seriously trying to make our way back to the USA....slowly.....there's no such thing as fast on a sailboat anyway.Not the lushness of the eastern Caribbean but pretty enough and the people ,I thought ,were the happiest, smileyest we'd come across in the islands.
We spent a few days there waiting 'til the wind and waves were more or less going in a helpful direction for our next leg up to the Caymans.
One day a few of us hired scooters and did a trip round the island. Providencia means Heaven so we called ourselves Heavens Angels.
                            And a more dangerous looking gang you never saw.

From the left..Bob..Dennis and Heidi on Centime... Dave and Gail on Wildest Dream and Gail on Jabiru who was with the photographer

We were checked out by the police.

Saw some folks crushing cane.

Could have been for sugar but most likely rum.

How about wake-boarding.....1 horsepower.

School kids under a giant stingray bus stop.

Another one. A local artist builds these things all over the island.

That's him with his shirt off.

They were still unloading this ship after we left.Huge bags of gravel for road building,loaded on to the fleet of local fishing and dive boats  as the bay is too shallow to get to the dock.

Then unloaded with a front end loader.Nice little earner for the local lads with a boat.

A big highlight though was meeting and getting a photo with the vice president of Colombia Angelino Garzon. We were standing around drinking rum and cokes at the market area when someone pointed him out to us and we said hello and asked if we could take photo and he was more than gracious....despite his worried looking security man!

 

Anyway a couple of days later we took off for the Caymans and during the first night it was getting so bumpy and waves getting bigger that we decided to head more east and get the wind and waves more behind us. So forget the Caymans and off we went to Isla Mujeres ...Mexico.