We made it to San Andres last Sunday.
We sailed faster than expected from eastern Panama and made the crossing in about 45 hours. The first 24 were a little rougher than we hoped but the seas flattened out on the second day to make for a smooth ride across the south west Caribbean. Rather than enter the channel in the dark we delayed 2 hours until first light to safely navigate the 5 miles into the anchorage.
This place is a really great little island to spend a week or two. It is a tourist destination for Colombians; a good description would be that it is their Hawaii. It certainly caters to the Colombian vacation lifestyle with lots of loud music and cheap food and drinks. I never thought that I could get sick of hearing Bob Marley tunes but they play the same 4 songs all day! There are all sorts of Hotels offering the full range of tourist activities such as jet ski rentals, scuba trips to the reef, party boat cruises, you name it, etc. Vendors sell coconut drinks on the beach and tacky little souvenirs on every corner. There are lots of stores for us to provision for the upcoming leg of the journey. Apparently the island was built into a resort in the 70's and 80's with cartel drug-money. Pablo Escobar invested by building many hotels on the island including one that is by far the largest building for hundreds of miles. The hotels land were later seized and the area became a government owned and controlled tourist destination (if i have my facts straight).
San Andres could get old pretty quickly but it is nice to be in civilization again. It's strange to think that we just spent 4 weeks in Kuna Yala without seeing a car, or a paved road.
I spent my birthday with George and our Dad as we treated ourselves to a rental car (gas powered golf cart with a bigger engine). There are not too many cars around as about %85 of vehicles on the road are scooters or small motorbikes and roughly %10 golf carts. We were able to see the entire island in 4 hours with stops along the way at some historic sites and churches.
The other big news down here is our crew change. Our Dad flew home yesterday to get back to semi retired life in Vancouver. He was here for 7 full weeks and he seemed to love it all. Like the rest of us he didn't cough or sneeze once during his time in the sun, further convincing himself that he should be living back in Aus. It was really helpful to have him here for all the the little boat jobs that we have been doing in the mornings. My buddy Kostya is arriving later today and he is going to spend a couple weeks with us as we head north to Guanaja and Roatan. He was already in southern Mexico so he jumped at the chance to get a quick flight across here to join us for the longest sail of the season.
We are looking at a departure from here by mid-week, weather permitting. The next sail is about 450 miles (north, then west around the 'shoulder' of Central America) to the Bay Islands off the north coast of Honduras. As this is the one place where piracy is a real concern our course will keep us far away from the mainland and we'll sail at night with all of our lights turned off and radar on.
I've haven't taken too many photos of San Andres and I'm not sure how to upload them without our laptop here at an internet cafe so pictures will have to wait.
smooth sailing,
Jamie
