Voyage to Colombia
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2007
1
103
114
Trip End
Jan 25, 2008
San Blas Islands,
Panama
Monday, November 12, 2007
Since thereīs no road, thereīs two options, you can fly or for more or less the same price you can sail there via the San Blas Islands. Obviously I was going to go for the second option.
The trip started at 5.30am with an early morning 4wd pick up. We were then taken on a cool two hour drive through the jungle to where we got a water taxi to our boat. Our captain was the crazy Daniel form France along with his wife Suzanne. Theyīd been sailing for about thirty years and you could tell that this amount of time at sea had taken itīs toll on their sanity a bit
.
.We had a crew of seven for the journey, me, James and Karen from Ireland, Jens and Marc from Germany and Linsey and Steve from the US.
The first couple of days were spent sailing around the amazing San Blas Islands. Picture perfect Carribean Islands, there are hardly any tourists there and just a few local inhabitants, the Kuna people. We spent a few relaxing days sailing around, swimming and snorkelling.
Day three it was time to leave Panama and begin the voyage to Colombia. Of course the night before we had all overindulgedin a large bottle of Flor de Caņa rum and once we got out into the open seas we knew that this had been a mistake. The sea was getting progressively worse and one by one we succumbed to sea sickness. James was basically down for the entire voyage, unable to go down below as it was too stuffy and so slept up on the deck the whole time and I mean the whole time. By the end he had worked a groove into the deck in the shape of his body. I was pretty sick too, by the end of the second day my abs felt sore from so much retching. Only Steve, Linsey and Karen were able to not get sick, even the Captain and Suzanne succumbed a few times.
In spite of the rough seas, we still took turns sailing the boat. Some times it would be a case of running to the side for a quick retch and then back to the wheel
.
. Even through the night there was always someone on the wheel and we took one hour shifts each, fixing on a start to set us in the right direction. This was the coolest part of the trip, in the middle of the night out in the open sea with only stars to sail by and the wind lashing down against us. You would take sleep whenever you could and hope that you could keep the food down long enough so your body could absorb some nutrients from it.By the third day I was feeling fine and was ready to eat a bit more. The standard of the food had been pretty poor up to this point, mainly consisting of bread and some pasta. But on the last day they pulled out some corn flakes for breakfast. Never had we been so happy to see something so simple as a bowl of conrflakes and it was exactly what we needed at this point,
Feeling a lot better I was able to take the wheel for a fair bit of the way as we drew near the Colombian coast. Everyone was relieved to see land again and was looking forward to getting onto dry land again. Taking the ship into the harbou was good fun and once we had anchored we presumed that the voyage was nearly over. What we didnīt count on was Colombian immigration which had gone for lunch and wouldnīt be back for about four hours. This meant about four hours of waiting in the harbour before we could finally set foot on land again after what had been a few pretty tough although ultimately rewarding few days.
