Cartegena July 15, 2009 to January 2010

 We arrived back at the boat in Cartagena, Colombia the first part of November.  Technically the name of the city is Cartagena de los Indias.  The city was named after Cartagena, Spain and to distinguish it from the Spanish city the phrase “de los Indes” (of the Indias) was tagged onto the city, but everybody just calls it Cartagena. 

It had been three months that we were in the states and we wondered what shape Equinox would be in.  There are always problems when leaving a boat, would it be covered with mold inside from lack of air circulation and too much moisture, would the lines and fenders protect it from being damaged by the docks, would the electronics escape a lightning strike from the frequent storms.  All these worries and many more were a concern.  We had left our boat in Club de Pesca under the watchful eye of Fernando, he is pushing the luggage cart in the picture with Betsy.  He was to air the boat out, keep it washed, check on the sun/rain covers, and generally take care of it while we were gone.  It was about 5 in the afternoon when we got out of the taxi with out with our two computers, two back packs and 6 pieces of luggage.  Boat parts, repairs and spares, were the major part of our luggage.  We paid dearly for the extra bags but we figured it was still better than not having the desired parts

The boat looked wonderful, we rearranged things inside so that we could get to our cabin, unload a few things, and head out to find some dinner.  We had no fresh food and decided to eat out for a few days while we reorganized the boat.  Finally it was time to head to the grocery store and stock up on meat, fresh vegetables and bread.  There are several great markets in the city so it was no problem to load up the refrigerator and get back to a regular routine. We also fell into a routine with cruiser activities; there was bridge on Tuesday night, happy hour on Wednesday with the cruisers, happy hour at the marina on Friday afternoon, and Mexican Train on Sunday afternoon.  There was to be a gals’ luncheon three days after we arrived.  It would be a lunch at Mi Dolche and then a talk on emeralds at Mister Emeralds.  As it turns out Fernando was recommended by Lee Miles (Mr. Emerald) so we had a way to find out if there were any problems with Equinox while we were gone.  Lee is married to Pachi Roman who is the dockmaster at Club de Pesca so Equinox was really in great hands. 

November 11^th is Cartagena’s Independence Day and it is really celebrated in the city.  There were parades for four days, the beauty contest for Miss Cartagena and for Miss Colombia, and many dinner activities at the convention center. We went to one of the parades by walking all the way through Old Town and going to area outside the wall.  This area was not so heavily populated and seemed to be more of a family environment.  You must be very careful when you are in large crowded areas for the pickpockets were out in force.  One tactic was to spray you in the face with a canister of bubble foam and while you were putting your hands up to protect your eyes, they would take things out of your pockets.  Most people were told to carry very little, but you did need a few coins to pay off the young men who were covered in motor oil.  If you had nothing for them, they might put oil on you.  We had no problems and felt very safe in the area that we found.  The parade was extremely colorful with all sorts of dance groups, floats for the queen contestants and marching musical troupes. 

There is a radio net every morning except Sunday to let cruisers know what was happening in the city and with each other.  The first major activity was a Thanksgiving dinner to be held at the restaurant Pacho y Guillo.  We brought pot luck desserts and they prepared the turkeys, dressing, mashed potatoes and salad.  It was a fun time and the food was great!  Hank and some of the other guys pitched in to help carve the turkeys.  We enjoyed our time together from about 3:30 to 8pm, thankful for our many blessing and for the warmth the countries that we visit have shown us.

Club de Pesca, the marina we were staying at, held a Festival Del Mar on the 4^th-7^th of December.   It was a sail fish tournament, sailing regatta and activity filled 4 days.  The first night was the Celebrity Chefs’ night or concurso culinario where about 20 cooks had volunteered to cook their specialty to serve the judges and the crowd.  Hank decided that he would like to participate and cook gumbo.  We started to shop for the food and ran into a problem finding okra.  We tried all over the city, from the central markets to the grocery stores in the tourist areas, and thought that we might have to think of a substitute for it.  Finally we traveled to Boca Grande and found 4 packages at the Olympia Market.  Wow that was a relief, we had shrimp, crab, chicken all sorts of sausage, and even turkey stock that Hank had made from a small turkey that we cooked after Thanksgiving.  The night of the activity Hank arrived at his booth with all his chopped ingredients, to find that the propane used for cooking would not be delivered for another hour.  So his gumbo would not get to cook as long as normal but there was nothing that could be done about the situation.  We were also given the rules of the Chefs’ night, we were not originally told that this was a competition, judging was to be done on presentation, taste, punctuality and crowd appeal.  The judges were to be served first and then you served the line in front of your booth. Hank started to cook as soon as possible.

We were pleased by the friendliness of the club members and amazed at how many of them spoke English.  When the awards were presented, Hank was excited to find that he was in the winners’ circle even though we never got to officially taste the gumbo.  We ran out and had to try the competitors’ entrees instead of our own.  We enjoyed the other night’s activities which were a bazaar, fashion show, children’s fishing tournament, and a belly dancer.  The weekend went by so fast with all the activities. After cooking Hank snuck over to a lady’s jewelry booth so he could get her contact info and  sneak off and buy Betsy a Christmas present later in the month.

We went on a Chiva bus to see the lights and holiday decorations. Now a Chiva is a rather open bus that serves rum and coke as it travels along on its route, so usually by the end of the tour the crowd is rather boisterous.  Well, we each got one little glass of rum and coke, so it must have been the budget tour.  We did drive all over the city, stopping at lighted parks and we walked down one residential block that was highly decorated.  Finally the bus stopped and many people went into little stores for a beer or two.  Hank chose to watch a local woman making an arepa, which he later sampled.  We got off the bus in Boca Grande to take pictures by the large tree but decided to let the Chiva bus go on without us as we headed back to the historical district called Old Town.  We had had fun but the driver’s idea of seeing the lights of Christmas and ours were different. 

Thursday night we headed to the convention center for a ballet performance by the Dance Academy Los Cisnes. This is a dance school that offers classes to the very young to the most accomplished ballerina.  We sat for about 3 hours and watched the story unveil and smiled when we recognized so many of the pieces of contemporary music.  It was truly a magical evening and being in the gorgeous convention center added to the evening.  Betsy’s new camera has image stabilization so we were able to take photos without flash from the back row.  Not bad eh? 

We love this beautiful town, with its colonial, republican (Note: not democratic), and baroque style of architecture.  The city is alive at night, people walking, enjoying the parks, listening to music and just feeling the rhythms of the night.  We couldn’t wait for our daughter to arrive so that we could show this gorgeous city to her.  One of the first activities we did with her was go on a walking tour with the tour guide Alex Rocha.  Alex's contact information is listed on the Favorites page.  We walked all over the city listening while Alex explained the history, architecture and the important statues and building. This was Hank and Betsy’s second tour with Alex so they knew enough to ask that we did not walk the wall in the midday heat.  We learned that the clock tower that is a famous part of Old Town was built in 1888. Betsy bought a water color of the clock tower and someday it will get framed as a reminder of this wonderful adventure.   Also some of the wall that surrounded the old city was knocked down to allow more air or the breeze to get into the town. 

Christmas was a family time, with cruising friends invited to share in our love of cooking.  We didn’t do our regular tamales for Christmas Eve because it was difficult finding the corn husks.  But we did do our shrimp, goat cheese, and feta stuffed peppers.  Usually these peppers are slightly hot for we use pacilla chili’s but they don’t have hot peppers here so we used small bell peppers.  We did try a new recipe of pork that was wrapped in corn leaves and served with a mango, cranberry, and avocado salsa.  Since I couldn’t find the dried corn leaves, I bought several ears of corn that had green leaves and used them with aluminum foil.  It was a great way to fix the pork for it came out very tender.  We did fix our traditional beef wellington on Christmas and it came off without a hitch.  Of course I was hoping that our daughter would be bringing filo dough but with all she had to remember, it was not high on the list.  We made a regular pie crust which was great. 

After Christmas it was also our daughter’s time to shop, for even though she got a few emeralds as presents, she had been looking for a few other pieces of her own choosing.  Now to us there are only two places to go for emeralds and that is to Lucys in Old Town or Mr. Emeralds in Pierino Gallo, El Laguito.  Both proprietors greet us as long lost relatives for we have stopped in to visit, learn and buy many times.  Both have the unheard of practice of allowing you to take your treasure home without completely paying for it.  They understand that if you want to pay cash and get the best price, you can only get so much out of an ATM machine a day.  We visited Lucy’s several times before Betsy completely owned her Christmas bracelet. 

The Castillo de San Felipe is Cartagena’s largest and most impregnable fort tower.  It is set on a hill east of the historic center and is the strongest fortress ever built by the Spanish.   A matrix of underground tunnels leads back into the city.  This enabled supplies to always reach the fort even in times of siege.   You can explore with a guide some of the tunnels but many of them are filled with water.  The acoustics in the tunnels are so good for they were built to maximize even the smallest sound of an approaching army.   Now tourists flock to see the fort, no you don’t want to be there when a cruise ship is in port as it is way too crowded, but if you go early in the morning you will have a delightful time.  Another interesting part of the fort is that you will be greeted by a trumpet player who will guess your nationality and play your own national anthem.  When he saw us, he played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” not sure what that was all about, possibly it was because both Jen and I had big umbrella up to keep out of the sun, and not a reflection on our government!   

All too soon Jen went home and we had to prepare the boat for our haul out, bottom painting and boot strip painting that would be done at Ferroalquimar on the 4^th of January. We had made arrangements to live in one of the basic apartments there at the boat yard so that we could watch the progress that the workers did.  This was the first haul out where the lift was not large enough to totally accommodate Equinox. We either had the choise of removing he back stays and radar pole that would have required to dismantle the davits and solar panels, or we could drop the two forstays. Hank elected to disconnect the forestays, something we had never done.   Disconnecting was much easier then reconnecting them.  Tip if you are going to loosen turnbuckle on the rigging put electricians tape on the threads to locate the original position of the turnbuckle, worked great. 

Also it allowed Hank to do the projects that he had lined up for himself while the boat was out of the water.  It is always important to clean, check and paint the bow thrusters and to sand and grease the propeller.  A boat yard is a dusty place and with all the sanding of old bottom paint, gel coating that is sprayed and other stuff that is in the air, we got filthy.  We tried not to walk into the apartment, tile floors, without taking our shoes off, but the bottoms of our feet were still black.  Scrubbing them in the shower was a must!  Betsy was not a fan of the apartment, but she did get some sewing done, enjoyed the cruiser get togethers at the end of the day, and gained a few pounds from the wonderful cooking that was served every noon.  The boat yard’s kitchen served all the workers and guests for about $5500 (pesos) a person.  At an exchange rate of $2000 (pesos)to $1(usd) not a bad price for lunch.  Breakfast was even better at $2500 pesos.  It was filling, tasteful, and different every meal, I must comment the women who worked there for they did a fantastic job.  We were very lucky that the amount of time that was estimated for the job was accurate and we were splashed back into the water on Saturday afternoon.  Equinox looks beautiful with a new green keel.  If you compare the first picture we took of her when she was brand new and had just had the bottom painted, which is on the web site somewhere, with the picture we took just before splash in, the only difference is that the people don’t look as clean and as fresh as they did back in June of 06.

The only other thing you might want to know is that Cartagena has a very robust cruising community.  We stayed at Club de Pesca others stay at Club Nautico and most everyone else anchors out by Club Nautico.   While we were in Cartagena we saw many things change at Club Nautico.  In July when we left our boat they had just started some construction of what was to be a new club.  They had removed most of the old building, showers and bathrooms.  They brought in Porta-potties, and had a hose for the shower.  No they didn’t reduce the price to the people who were using the docks.  Basically the place is a mess and construction has stopped due to a tug of war between the city mayor and the owner of Club Nautico.  Several times the place looked like an armed camp, for the police were there to make sure that a no work order was enforced.  We don’t know what will happen to this club, the neighbors don’t like the eye sore and it seems dangerous walking on the docks. There has been talk that it might be bull dozed in the middle of the night like the marina at Panama was.  

In the meantime a local restaurant has taken over as the gathering place for all cruisers.  Pancho and Guillo’s has really stepped up, they host the happy hour every Wednesday with $1 beers, have the Mexican Train dominos on Sunday afternoon and sell pizza by the slice to the players.  One Sunday they even let us have a swap meet before the dominos.    The owner Sandro is from Naples, FL and wife Suzann is Columbian and makes a great pizza, besides being a great people.