Hola chicos,

I´m writing this from Playa del Carmen in Mexico, my final stop before flying to New York tomorrow….the last city before heading for sunny England!

SAILING TO SAN BLAS - SAVED BY THE KUNA´S!

There were a few options to get to Central America from Columbia and instead of risking my life crossing the Darien Gap, I opted for a `safe` sailing trip to the San Blas Islands on the Panamanian coast.

In hindsight, you could see the whole trip going down the toilet from Day 1, however one thing traveling has taught me is to go with the flow and NORMALLY things work themselves out. Unfortunately this time it backfired!

El Capitan was the most laid back guy I have ever crossed paths with, which meant that setting sail on Fri at 2pm turned into Sat at 7am. We were a crew of 4, and when we turned up at the boat in a tropical style rainstorm, 6 litres of rum and 4 crates of beer in hand, he gave us a slight nod and directed us to his sorry dinghy to take us out to the boat. Due to a broken motor he had to row us there with a Kuna Indian-made teak oar - with all our stuff we sat an inch above the water and almost sank before we even got aboard! On arrival we found the reason for delay - an all day private party with 2 locals! When we finally got moving it was at snails pace as the propeller was clogged up with sea life growing in the severely polluted Cartagena Bay. Nick, a fellow shipmate had to row the remaining Cartagenian back to the shore as we brought diesel and prepped for the seas! After what seemed like half a day we finally got out into open water, cleaned the propeller, hoisted the sails and started to fly at a lightning speed of 3 knots (about 3.5mph)! Due to the wind directly against us, that continued for the entire journey and when we didn't get a single bite on our deep sea fishing line we thought it couldn't get much worse. Then there was an omen, a bad one. A small bird landed on the boat and after a few hours, enough time for Ryan (USA) to name it Charlie, it keeled over and died right there in front of us. Ryan´s attempts to revive him by pouring half a litre of water on top finished him off in my opinion! On the plus side we had dolphins swimming in front of the boat, and for most of the time it was bliss…all you could see was deep blue water and not a single landmass or boat on any horizon - I wondered what it would be like to be lost at sea.

On day 3 knowing we were about to arrive, we drank a lot of rum and rolled into San Blas over flat mirror-like water.The sunset was a stunning mix of purples and pinks, and we were sailing right into it. As if too good to be true, the dead Charlie sign was about to materialise. We dropped anchor next to a small island, ready for a relaxing day snorkeling and fishing in the morning.Sitting back we toasted arrival and surviving the seas only for El Capitan to say we were drifting. As Nick pulled up the anchor (I mean literally pulled up the chain), he reached the end of the chain and held it up. No anchor!Being pretty drunk we thought it was hilarious, that is until the 1st bang - we had hit the reef! We spent the entire night trying to free the boat by directing Capitan from in the water but to no avail. To top it off I stepped on a sea urchin - the pain! According to Jon (shipmate 3), urinating on it would fix it, but I didn´t fancy pouring on my foot what he brought me in a cup 5mins later! The Kuna Indians arrived in the morning with their little fishing boat and managed to tow us off. Finally, we found out the rudder had broken when we hit the reef. So with no way to stop the boat from drifting, and no way to stay in a straight line we had to ABANDON SHIP!

Luckily the Kuna´s dropped us off on a nearby island and we spent the next two days eating lobster and crab and visiting a real life desert island. It literally had a few palm trees and sand. Fantastic.

I´ve run out of time now, so I´ll leave you there - I´m off for some enchiladas and to see a Mexican throw his wife off a cliff. Why? Tequila!!

Greek.