All at sea

OK. It's a weak title. But it kind of came into my head and then persisted, judo-blocking any decent titles.

Well, here I am, safe and sound in Cartagena, Colombia! I never thought I'd say I'd feel safe to arrive in one of Robert Young Pelton's 5-star "World's Most Dangerous Places". But after the last 5 days, I was happy to embrace the docks of any country that would have me.

So, last Tuesday morning at 5am me and Jasper the Swede got a cab to Panama City´s cute little domestic airport. Pretty much spaced, we crowd together in a tiny 30-seat propeller plane and a week of fear begins. Flying low over the city was pretty fun actually - it was amazing to see that although downtown PC is all North-American style high-rises, it ends abruptly and is surrounded by lush green rainsforest.

In a half hour we arrived on the football-pitch-sized island of El Porvenir airport. The plane trundles over the grass like a bus to a small thatched shack where we meet a crazed and incomprehensible Italian who it turns out is our capitano, and David, his French Tintin-like skipper. They take our passports off, and we get our shoes off, roll up our trousers, and generally make like we're in the Caribbean. Apart from an airstrip, there is only white sand beach, palms, a few thatched huts, and a few yachts in the bay. The rusty one is ours.

There are seven of us in total. Notably, there is Jono, a fat arrogant bigoted Philadelphan, who is trying to take charge already. Then there is Runa, a 63yo Norwegian lady who seems pretty cool. Colin the Icelandic Dane is skinny, white, and wearing all synthetics, and is kind of comically chav-like. Also there is Maria, another Swede, who is 20 and cute like a girl from a previous century. Then there is a strange middle-aged man with staring eyes and a distracted air. Maria tells me she heard him talking to himself in their hostel, which I take to be a joke. Ah how wrong I was.

So eventually we all get ferried into the yacht which is unbelievably small, and smells of mildew. Three of us guys are sharing a V-shaped sort of almost-double bed in the prow. Jono and Colin are sharing the kitchen table which folds down into another bed. And Runa and Maria get to share the bed in the rear cabin. Our stuff goes everywhere there is a nook or cranny.

We motor off, and over the next two days get to know each other a bit, whilst visiting a few of the beautiful tropical islands of the San Blas Archipelago. David the American keeps himself to himself, mostly talking to himself whilst staring fixedly at random, although we do learn that he has spent 5 months on a yacht before, single-handing it up the East Coast of the US. I am worried, since I am sharing a bed with him, that when the Voices tell him to kill someone, I will naturally be first. David the skipper, the Frenchman, wows us with his culinary skills the first night, and does not let us down from then on in. Every meal is a 3-course extravaganza. Fabio and David communicate in shouted Spanish, but talk to us only in English (annoying for me since I speak both French and Spanish, which they both speak better, but necessary for the monolinguists among us: the Americans.) We hardly get to use the sails in these two days, but we do learn that sailing in the rain is not that fun. At least it is warm rain. We also learn that docking the boat in the river mouth means that sandflies get in, and spend the next four days jumping out from unexpected hiding holes and consuming us. One might have expected that Fabio the Professional Sailor would have realised that.

So, we eat well, we spend some time at sea thinking, wow, being in a 30-foot boat for 5 days is going to be pretty boring actually, and we realise, after swimming in the sea and walking the sandy beaches, that a 30-foot yacht doesn't have a shower, or even any notable source of fresh water. So it looks like we are going to be salt-encrusted sweaty beasts for the rest of the jouney.

This turns out to be true. As we make for the open sea on the third day, David makes up the "rota". Ah. It turns out that Fabio will spend nearly all the time of the trip sleeping or getting stoned. David will cook and sleep. We will be sailing. Naturally, we are not told how to do this. Any instructions are shouted in incomprehensibly accented English, like "All!", when practically the only thing communicated is a sense of extreme urgency. Not conducive to a relaxing trip.

However, after that, we don't see any rain, and the wind seems to be behind us. W get going, with Jasper on the tiller, and everything seems to be going well. Jono, Maria and I sit upstairs till midnight, taking turns trying to keep the ship pointed east. The ship has an unlit compass, so we do this by watching the stars, and someone shining a torch on the compass and shouting out the reading. It actually starts to be quite fun, and its certainly exciting. David the American is immediately and from then on in, extremely seasick. He sleeps on the upper deck, in the open air and sea spray, in only a pair of shorts. It turns out he thinks that wearing more clothing, for instance waterproofs, would be missing an opportunity to burn calories by sweating. Er, yes David.

At midnight, we are all getting too tired to drive, so we wake Jasper and Colin, the poor bastards, and ourselves lie downstairs in the bucking and heaving beds which stink. We have to keep the hatches shut so we don't get wet, so the smell and humidity has no escape. No-one changes as there doesn't seem any point when we can't wash.

The next morning (a few hours later), I wake up realising I must have slept, and get up to watch the dawn. Unfortunately the sun is obscured by a large and unpleasant looking stack of storm clouds. It's amazing how much more real weather is at sea. Runa has slept in the footwell all night as she couldnt bear the stink of fumes in the rear cabin: she's right, it is pretty strong. Maria, instead, just stayed up and helped drive.

During the day, we mostly talk about cultural differences, as travellers are wont to do. The sea is getting pretty choppy now, and we get rained on a fair bit too. It's hard to chart the passage of the day. The view doesn't change, except for the position of the sun and clouds, and the angle of the boat depending on winds. The food is still good though. Jasper does a long 6-hour stint on the tiller. He seems happy enough. He was in the Navy during his National Service. Fabio and David get high and pass out.

The following night, everyone is basically a little less cheerful than the night before, knowing that the crew are no help, and having had very little sleep. Also, although the rain has stopped, the sea is super choppy, and the possibility of the boat just disappearing into the briny deep is starting to worry everybody, and there are clouds all around making star-navigating challenging.

We basically follow the same pattern as the previous night. Runa stays upstairs again, but since the boat is on a 30 degree angle all night long, with everyone hanging on for dear life, no sleep is to be gotten. I go below for a couple of hours in the early hours, to be bounced around in the cabin and think dark thoughts.

The next day, we are all extremely tired and although we expect to land anytime soon, are having trouble keeping our spirits up. But the sun in shining, Jasper lends me on of his walkman headphones, and we start to share around some of the Balboas we have to finish before we dock. Life on the open wave starts to seem good again, except for David the American who as well as talking to himself was obliged to take of his pants and generally void himself from all orifices off the back of the boat all night as he suffered from diarrhoea too. So that's why its called the poop deck. Also, we did actually learn a bit about sailing, as when we "sailed close to the wind", we got the best speed, but at times would go to close and the whole sail would whip round, sending the boat plunging to the other side, and the people below tumbling out of their beds. Fabio, upset at having his 3day siesta disturbed, came up and starting shouting out instructions which no-one understood. By this point tho everyone just laughed at him. Unfortunately Runa was thrown across the deck and banged her head. I tried to step down into the cabin but the ladder was not secured properly and slipped away from me. Somehow I held on averting a nasty fall.

Once we asked about lifejackets, but we didn't understand the answer.

At around midday, we sailed into the port of Cartagena. Dizzy with lack of sleep and 5 days on a rocking boat, we then had to wait for wo hours for immigration to clear. Still, we were so happy to be on dry land, we celebrated with an absurdly overpricd lunch in the yacht club (since we couldnt go any further into the country without our passports).

I wish I could post some pictures. Later hopefully I will. Of course, the experience was an amazing challenge, on a social, physical, and emotional lever, and a lot more "first" experiences for me too. I wish I could say that we bonded and it was the most amazing group of people I ever met, but as often in real life that wasn't quite the case. David was crazy, Jono was an opinionated bigot, and Fabio was an irresponsible stoner. The others were cool, but naturally the Meanies loom larger! I would never recommend the trip to someone else, but on the other hand it was a more or less unique experience, and as you know for me a big part of this is not having fun.

And there was one important side-effect: when we finally came into Cartagena, we simply had no energy left to expend on being nervous about Colombia itself. I just slept for 13 hours straight, and today we have done hardly anything except wash, eat and use the Net. It is certainly a pretty place, reminding me a bit of Casco Vieja, Panama City's old centre, and Havana, Cuba. But it is Sunday, so empty and closed for the most part, and hard to judge. Tonight we go out to celebrate Jasper the Swede's birthday, and our arrival on dry land!