We are now in this season’s final destination ‘Cartagena’ and what a beautiful big city it is. Our first impression was how much it was like Vancouver but without the mountains in the background.Our journey here took us southeast along the coast of Panama as far as a small Kuna village called ‘Achitupu’. The village occupies a small island and appears to be bursting at the seams. A steady stream of children ventured out to visit us. They came on board to see how we lived and were very taken with pictures of our family back home. With our limited Spanish we had a great time. We passed out the rest of the school supplies we had brought with us and lots of homemade cookies and the children all left with happy smiles. The San Blas Islands are now our favourite cruising experience.
Our first landfall in Columbia was Isla Tintipan where we found some lovely private haciendas but as it was the off season, they were pretty much deserted. We moved northeast to the Rosario’s, a grouping of small island’s only 20 miles from Cartagena. This is a very funky area that has lots of fishermen’s cottages and weekend homes for some wealthy people in Cartagena. Lively music, clean warm water and a lovely atmosphere made this an area we hope to visit again soon. We visited an aquarium there and saw lots of sharks up close and a very good dolphin show.. The feeding frenzy of the sharks, I won’t soon forget! Yikes!!
The old city is just gorgeous. The architecture just amazing and makes me wish that in Canada we weren’t so quick to tear down the old and put up modern buildings with no character. Lovely narrow streets with over hanging balconies and flowers spilling down towards the street. Just lovely! Surrounding the old city, the walls of the fortress are massive and very well preserved. So much history here!!
It’s time to do some serious boat projects over the next couple of months as well as investigate the many sites and sounds of the city. Icarian is getting a new bimini and will be hauled out for some TLC. We’re heading back to Vancouver (Marilyn July 8 and Brian Aug 12) to visits the clan and friends
Hasta luego!!
