Woah. Well there´s so much to catch up on I´m not sure where to start... ok when I last wrote I was in Panama City which now seems like such a long time ago. I had booked myself on a sailboat to Cartagena and I was hanging out doing very little in the days running up to my voyage. So as I waited more and more people signed up to come with me. All my boat buddies seemed really nice. An amiable Californian girl named Piper, an excitable Israeli named Yaron, another American from all over the place named Ben, a Swiss German who sounds like Arnie named Matthias and a Belgiun girl who speaks English with an Irish accent named Katrin. So we were a pretty international bunch. The day came to make our way to the port town of Portobelo to meet our Spanish captain, Javier, and check out our boat which would be our home for the next 5 or 6 days. So we all packed up and set off together. We had one other travel companion to meet there too. So we arrived and met Javier and all seemed fine. He took us to our boat which was very nice but as we all stepped on we realised that it was going to be a very cramped 5 days at sea. The boat was only 40 foot and Javier was wanting to sail with 9 passengers. He had said he was happy to leave with 7 but it became clear that he wanted to hang around in port for another day and wait for more passengers. This seemed totally ridiculous as some of us were having to sleep on the floor as it was. I didn´t feel very confident about how safe it was for him to have as many as we were already. I felt a little naive to have not checked out the boat size before signing up but I wouldn´t have really understood how big 40 foot was anyway not being much of a yachtie type. Anyway, we were all a little sceptical but were more or less happy as we all got along well. Then Javier´s waiting paid off and 3 more people came to town asking about boats to Colombia... so now we were 10 which was totally ridiculous. We felt a bit trapped as we´d already paid our deposits and were reliant on Javier to ferry us back and forth to the dock with our things. But then one passenger decided to pull out after spending one night squidged in on the boat. The rest of us resigned ourselves to a cramped but fun trip. With the benefit of hindsight we all wished we had come straight to the dock and bypassed the hostel middle man. That way we could have bargained with different captains and checkout out our boat and sleeping arrangements before we committed ourselves to anything. But it was fine. The boat was certainly sea worthy and Javier seemed to know what he was doing.

So after a day and a half hanging out in the pretty little town of Portobelo we set sail for the San Blas Islands. It took about 10 hours of sailing to get there. As we set off one by one each of us began to get sea sick! It was just myself, Ben and Matthias sat on deck enjoying the scenery and not suffering with the motion of the waves. I was pretty sure that I didn´t suffer with sea sickness so I wasn´t too surprised that I wasn´t one of the unlucky people with their head over the edge of the boat... but I spoke too soon. After about an hour of sailing it suddenly kicked in with me as well and before I knew it I was sitting on the side of the boat trying my best not to throw up! Then I just gave into it and spent the next few hours cussing myself for signing up to the trip at all! I felt so crappy that I had just got over weeks of parasite induced nausea only to voluntarily sign up for what I feared might be 5 days of self inflicted puking! Not fun at all! It even crossed my mind that I would jump ship when we arrived at San Blas and make my way to Cartagena by plane... so much for the romantic seafaring adventure I thought... at one interval between vomiting I tried to distract myself by scanning the surface of the sea, ever hopeful that I might spot dolphins... and just as I thought it low and behold there was a splash in the distance... then another... then I saw fins! I shouted ´dolphins´ to the rest of the group and everyone momentarily forgot their nausea and jumped across the boat to get a look. There were two of them and they were swimming towards us. Unfortunately they didn´t come too close but close enough that I could see the shape of them under the surface. Then they changed their course and swam off the other way. It was enough for me though and I was happy.

As it got dark the puking stopped, for me at least, and the nausea was still present but tolerable so long as I stayed on deck and didn´t try to go downstairs to the cabin. So I found myself a little place to curl up and snooze. The sea was really rough and even the captain commented that it was unusually bad. Eventually things calmed down and we arrived to the tranquility of San Blas. The area is surrounded by coral reef so the sea is very calm. We dropped anchor and put our weary selves to bed. In the morning we awoke to find ourselves in paradise. Unfortunately Piper, who had set off feeling a little under the weather, had in addition to the sea sickness, developed a fever and decided to cut her losses and go back to Panama to see a doctor and then take a flight to Cartagena. I was so close to going with her and save myself from the prospect of more sickness but Javier, obviously not wanting to lose any more business, convinced me that the first day is always the worst and the sea was unusually rough. Piper gave me her supply of sea sickness tablets so I decided to stick it out. It was going to be an adventure and besides the next two days would be an easy itinerary of island lazing... So Piper made her way to one of the islands from where she could take a flight back in the morning. We were all sorry to see Piper go as she was a fun member of the group but it was better that she saw a doctor and didn´t spend 5 days at sea with a fever... especially as fevers often indicate Dengue in these parts. So after getting our passports stamped to leave Panama we made our way to some more picturesque islands. We spent the first day swimming in the beautiful Caribbean waters, snorkeling and exploring the islands. The pictures describe it best really. San Blas is truly a beautiful place.

The following day was filled with more of the same. In the evening we sat down to a fresh fish dinner prepared by one of the Kuna families. Unfortunately they didn´t join us to eat. That was my only regret really is that we didn´t get much of a chance to mingle with the Kuna people. But each island we went to was so sparsely inhabited and people just seem to go about their day fishing and making their brightly coloured Molas... the traditional patterned fabrics they use to makes clothes. When we finished eating I left the group at table still talking and drinking and I walked down to shore on my own. I paddled in the warm gentle waves and looked up at the stars and the brightness of the moon. There aren´t many moments in your life when you get to experience such natural beauty and I wanted to breathe it all in while I could.

We went back to the boat and slept in preparation for setting sail the following morning. The next day Javier busied himself around preparing the boat and we sat playing cards and dropping sea sickness pills in preparation for our imminent trip! We set off and things were decidedly more comfortable this time. The seas were calmer, we were all prepared and dosed up with tablets and were probably also a little more accustomed to the bobbing around. I still couldn´t spent too much time below deck but it was all much more enjoyable. We realised that there really isn´t much to do at sea! The sickness made reading impossible for most of us, playing cards was out as they blew all over the place... so we sat around, chatted, napped and snacked. Luckily we had the wind on our side and we were making good progress. The first night at sea we woke up to find ourselves in a storm and stuck at a rather worrying angle. I peeked upstairs to see Javier harnessed to the boat, endlessly tugging at ropes and frantically trying to right us. All I could hear was the wind howling through above us and I started to get a little nervous. Javier hadn´t gone through any safety talks with us or told us what to do if anything happened to him. Luckily there were one or two people on the boat who knew how to sail but still it wasn´t all that comforting... anyway, it turned out fine, he righted the boat, the weather calmed down and we were on our way again. Still, I found it hard to get back to sleep.

The following day the sea was a lot calmer. We had a good amount of wind in our favour and we were on target to arrive about 12 hours early. We started to see giant ships on their way out of the Cartagena docks on their way to the Panama Canal. I was still scanning the sea for more dolphins but this time they didn´t appear. As we got closer to Cartagena we finally got a bite on our fishing line which we had left trailing behind us as we sailed. Oscar, one of our boat mates reeled it in and we found that we had ourselves a nice juicy tuna fish. So Javier cooked us up a tasty dinner of peppers, rice and tuna steaks. The freshest fish I´ve ever eaten and a really perfect end to our adventure. I really enjoyed the sunset that evening too... I was more relaxed as I knew we were close to our destination and the sea was lovely and peaceful. I had already started to enjoy sailing by this point but I decided I probably wasn´t the most natural sailer! You feel lonely and isolated bobbing around in such a large expanse of water. The water also starts to look quite surreal when that´s all you can see for hours on end as well. I was glad to be on the homeward stretch.

So we arrived in Cartagena and spent a night in dock. We got up in the morning to see the city towering around us. I was so excited to be in Colombia. We came ashore and all had a much needed scrub down at the marina. Once we got through tiresome immigration formalities we made our way together to a hostel in the historic centre of Cartagena. It was so nice. We were such a mixed group of people but had all become quite close... we had to really as we were so cramped up together for such a long time!

The old town immediately looked so fascinating. We got into the hostel and I went to email Piper as promised so that she could be reunited with us. She had already emailed to say that she did indeed have Dengue (I´ve met 5 people in 6 months who´ve had Dengue... those aren´t very promising odds! I´m feeling lucky to have got off with parasites!) but she was feeling better and suffering from worse cabin fever than us being stuck back in the same hostel in Panama City. So she took a flight that evening to come and meet us. We went out for a couple of drinks in town and took up the buzzing salsa atmosphere.

The following day a much invigorated Piper joined me and Ben for a day of sight seeing around Cartagena. We explored all day together in the blistering heat. It´s a really beautiful place with a contagious vibrance that I could see could keep you stuck there for days and days. I couldn´t help harking back to scenes I remembered from the film romancing the stone. As we walked around the city walls I was looking everywhere for underground pits filled with crocodiles!!! Of course I didn´t find any or any mullet sporting Michael Douglas lookie likies! But it still more than lived up to how I imagined it to be.

We all decided to leave the following day and make our way along the coast to a village called Taganga from where it´s possible to arrange a 6 day hike to a lost city hidden deep in the jungle and also to take trips to the surround Tayrona National Park. On the way we took a trip to a famous volcano which erupts mud instead of molten lava. The place was quite touristy but it was great fun climbing to the top and bathing in the mineral rich mud. We bobbed around in there, got a muddy massage and then splashed down in the lake nearby. It was like a spa treatment only more fun! We all looked like horrible monsters! We then carried on to Taganga where we parted ways. Ben and Matthias signed up for the 6 day trek through the jungle to the lost city and Piper, Yaron and I decided to spend the weekend exploring the beautiful Tayrona National Park. The lost city hike sounded exciting but I thought that I´d have plenty of opportunities to go on jungle hikes in South America and I was having fun hanging out with Piper who is only here on a short trip.

So after 2 days surrounded by the natural beauty of the park the 3 of us headed over night to the city of Medellin. There is currently an annual flower festival here which is been enthusiastically recommended by many Colombians who we´ve met. The festival includes parades each day, the largest of which will be this Sunday where hundreds of campasinos come down from the surrounding mountains carrying great wreaths of flowers on their backs. It seems like there are lots of parties going on in the evenings too. The city sounds interesting itself despite the festivities so I might spend a few days here before heading to Bogota.

So my experiences in Colombia so far have been fantastic. Colombian people are by far the friendliest I´ve encountered anywhere... people go out of their way to help you, greet you and welcome you. I have not once felt in any danger. A lot has been done to improve security here and if you stick to main routes, towns and cities it is no less safe than anywhere else in latin america. An example we´ve encountered so far is that, due to tiredness, confusion and miscommunication (which I have to say I was largely responsible for) one of Pipers bags got left in the back of a taxi. We called around all the cab companies and eventually decided to make our way back to the taxi rank where we got it from and asked around. We described the interior of the car to the other cabbies standing around and as soon as they realised who it was the called him and he drove immediately back and returned Piper´s bag to her completely untouched. Everyone was so helpful and concerned that she got her things back and they seemed very keen that we knew that Colombian people were honest. I guess they are very aware what a bad reputation the country has. We were so amazed and doubted that we would have that much luck getting a lost bag back in our home towns. So all in all I´m really glad I changed my route to come here.

Well I´m off with Piper to see some parades. I have a tonne of pics to upload and I´m sure I´ll have even more after a few days in Medellin.

Lots of love from Colombia x