Dancing with Jesus.

One of my favorite effects of traveling is the tendency to feel (at least functionally) comfortable in nearly any situation. This is easier some times than others. Eating with your right hand in Nepal? No problem. Scooping up fried worms in Zambia? Okey dokey. Dancing in Cartagena? Gulp.

It was some Italian guy's birthday (I never find out whose exactly) and a few of us went out dancing. To me, dancing is something your body does with the music, fairly automatically. If necessary, all you have to do is repeat a mantra of "why NOT embarrass yourself?" or "is it really embarrassing if you'll never see these people again?" or even "is being embarrassed really that bad?" That thing some people do that they've studied, learned, memorized? More power to them, but that's something else. Some sort of performance art (or just an infallible technique for getting laid) but not dancing as I understand it.

So there I was, doing my little white boy dance, which has served me well enough in various countries. But now I'm in a part of the world where they start salsa dancing at age 14 months. Seriously. I have seen tots, barely able to walk, bopping and swaying to the beat. Pint-sized show-offs with rhythm.

My Colombian companions were tolerant of my gringo disability, but I was definitely bringing down their average. Then I found salvation. I found redemption. I found Jesus.

He came from out of the flashing lights, across the smooth floor, hips shaking, arms swinging, hips gelatinous. All those paintings you've seen of Jesus were wrong. He's not an anorexic victim of a gang beating, eyes rolling up into his head of long hair in a divine seizure. No, he has short hair, latino-tan skin, bright white teeth, fairly tight pants, and a silky shirt unbuttoned a bit, not a puncture wound in sight.

And he's about 19.

Jesus posted up next to me, pointed at my relatively sedate feet, then down at his own which proceeded to swing and kick impishly. He stopped and looked at me expectantly. I gave it a try, although I felt a bit like I was doing the Running Man. He nodded in acceptance, if not enthusiasm.

Then he put his hand on my hip and pushed. My own poor British-descendant joints did their best to duplicate his gooey torso slide, and again I got a resigned nod.

Jesus reached down and tapped my wrist, where it was hanging uselessly at hip level, then raised his finger and wagged it back and forth, no no no, like a teacher at a high school dance. His own hands took up swinging forward and backward, much higher and faster than mine. I gave it a go, feeling a bit like I was on a Nordic-track infomercial.

Put all of this together and you had one rockin white boy, looking down in incomprehension at what his body was doing, afraid at any time that it would all fall apart, like the riding a homemade bicycle down a precipitous mountainside.

Jesus nodded and smiled, the Colombianas laughed, the music continued, the aguardiente flowed like water, and I dare to hope I didn't embarrass myself too badly that night. Praise Jesus.

Making it to Cartagena

Rudy is a fan of dawn departures, so as the sun rose we were pointed towards Colombia, engines humming, relentless and calm. The crossing would take a day and a half, most of it out of sight of land.

Open ocean. The waves weren't that bad, but as they approached the prow I understood the phrase "wall of water" better, and was surprised again and again when our hulls lifted effortlessly over what had a moment before looked like a monster about to swamp us. The motion was enough to prevent things like reading or being inside, and leaving poor Jamila without appetite by the time she finished making food each evening in the stuffy galley. We spent one dinner watching Rudy hold her around the waist as she leaned overboard to lose her lunch. She recovered with impressive speed and the Spanish (language) torrent commenced anew.

There’s really not much to do on a heaving ship, and people tended to fall asleep in random locations. Rudy and Jamila often stretched out in the main mess room (which we never used for anything else) while us passengers could be found in the stern or on deck, sun permitting. My main periods of excitement were clinging on the back of the heaving ship to wizz into the sea.

We almost caught one large silver streak of pelagic fish ferocity, but it escaped with about two meters to go. Rudy looked like he needed a hug. Imagining what it must take for a fish to get off a hook like that…I wondered if it should have just come onboard. Poor fishy. I hope they have good oral surgeons down there. (Oral sturgeons? Ichthydontists?)

That night we all took turns standing watch for oncoming boats. I sat in each of the twinned white plastic fishing/captain’s chairs in turn, peering occasionally into the impenetrable darkness in front of us, but mostly watching the stars overhead and listening to the waves passing around and beneath us, occasional slaps against the catamaran’s hull. There were sparkles of bioluminescence in our wake throughout the whole night and I let my two hour shift drift into three.

It felt like a very romantic date with Poseidon.

Sunset at sea.

I sat in the stillness, feeling like I was approaching a whole new planet. South America! A new continent. The impending weight of all those places to see, people to meet, and memories to form was like...well, there's nothing quite like it. Each invisible nautical mile was bringing me closer to a whole new touch of life.

By the following afternoon I was impatient for the continent, and generally pretty dang ready for solid ground again, and was pleased to see the skyscrapers of Cartagena on the horizon.

Jamila apparently was too, as she started cheering and clapping from where she was sitting at the bow. I was surprised at her enthusiasm until I realized she was shouting “bravo!” to the 6 or 7 dolphins who had arrived (literally) out of the blue to play in the modest bow crest of a catamaran. Not sure if it was her acclaim or not, but they stayed with us for a good long while, even Rudy’s reticent seaman’s face opening in broad smiles and laughter. Those animals are joy incarnate.

It takes awhile to reach the horizon when you’re chugging along at 6.5 knots, but finally we were pulling into Cartagena. Giant freighters glided out to sea on one side while power boats douche-bagged around the harbor mouth on the other. A line of tall glassy skyscrapers stretched impressively far down the coast, none of them a staid square, all instead sporting curves, angles, and frills.

“Like Miami, but smaller” was Jamila’s observation.

We pulled into Bocagrande, the yacht harbor area, past a statue of the Virgin Mary waiting in salty patience for her festival day of the year, and parked among the other yachts, our German flag comfortable amidst those of America, Canada, France, Switzerland, a couple Scandinavian crosses (who can remember which is which?), and my own personal least favorite, the Cayman Islands.

I don’t understand how anyone can bear to fly that flag. It is basically shouting “Hey everyone! I got rich in a system built by our forefathers, and I ain’t paying shit back into it! Suck it!”

Oh well. I shouldered my bag and headed into Colombia, looking for nonseafood, a shower, and stationary earth.

Andiamo a la African Queen

The Cartagena heat melted all my words, which ran down in an inky slide into the off-gray mattress, perplexing the mosquitoes along the way, but here I sit in Bogota, the next chapter beginning tonight...so I gotta get this ship to harbor, as it were.

Definitely no booze cruise, but there
are always bottles on board.

After my dolphinous morning swim in Chichime we spent a languorous morning doing very little on the Andiamo, the Spettiamo, before sailing to another island, where a Kuna in a palm frond hut was happy to sell us cold beer. Most of the islands have nothing on them, or just a few huts, but the ships know each and every stretch of sand with a bar.

All 5 of us wanted to explore the new island, but there was only room for 4 in the dinghy so I happily volunteered to swim instead. At first I enjoyed pushing a little, but man, that swimming stuff is hard, so I latched on and rode the last part to shore like a barnacle, gazing down through shallow water filled with the fragile remains of sea urchins and sand dollars, sea grass growing up through sand like mud in the still water.

Adios Andiamo!

Fabio finally reached the captain of my next ship, the African Queen, and we set up a rendezvous point. We motored a little farther down the island chain and just before sunset the African Queen glided in from the horizon, a gleaming white catamaran flying the flags of Panama and Germany. I rowed over with Fabio as my shipmates sat on the deck of the Andiamo waving farewell.

It felt really weird to be on the new ship, new people, with my old companions lined up opposite watching and occasionally shouting remarks. Like switching high schools your sophomore year, only the new one is across the street. I tried to find ways to say “don’t worry, I’m sure you’re nice, I will like you too” to my new shipmates.

Rudy looking positively captainy.

My new captain was Rudy, an Italian (who apparently has a business in Germany?), assisted by Jamila his Colombian…something. Not girlfriend…not mistress…but not just staff either. Whatever. Rudy has that taciturn likeability like a calm gravitational pull, and Jamila provided all the energy and enthusiasm we could ask for with her (what I would come to learn is distinctly Colombian) machine-gun speech pacing, with nasal overtones and enthusiasm eruptions. Colombians are a people always primed to laugh.

The other passengers were Steve and Brett, and Australian father and son. One of the first things Steve told me about was his obsession with torches. This got slightly less weird when I realized he meant flashlights, not Medieval flamesticks, but still. I thought he was kidding at first, but no, he talked about flashlights regularly, and seemed to have brought at least four with him.

Steve examining lunch

His son Brett was somewhat press ganged into this enthusiasm. Whenever he’d use his own (admittedly excellent) flashlight Steve would say “thet’s a nayce loit ye got there Brit, where’dya geddit? How miny lumens duzzit hiv?”

Brett’s own positive attitude was nearly unshakable, only giving a slight ripple once when his vegetarian meal was clearly lacking, while the rest of us munched grilled lobster audibly and kinetically in front of him. He also managed to walk a perfect line between super-chill and flamboyantly gay.

Jamila's not so sure.

We spent the night alongside the Andiamo, including some tension when the current shifted and we found ourselves floating dangerously close together. The next morning the Queen was up and gone by 6:00, a lone hand on the Andiamo waving farewell from where the crew slept in the stern.

First we headed to Porvenir, an unlovely little city-island where I got my Panamanian exit stamp in a time-honored example of the illogical obstinacy of bureaucracy. Then we sailed to our next island, fishing poles on either side of the stern tugged gently by the current behind us.

We arrived at the new place to find two islands, and a tiny third, ringed by a reef and sand bar…two wrecks… Daggnabit. We were back in Chichime. My attempt to finagle a longer San Blas tour and save some money ended up costing full price and including the same island for the majority of the time. Oh well, you win some you lose some, and if this was what losing looked like, I ain’t complaining.

Grocery shopping. The guy in the blue hat...

was holding hands with his buddy.

Arguably Brett's lowest moment.

The same Kuna vendors pulled up in their canoes (except the cute one with the impressive bosom who came out to visit Fabio specifically, although there has never been a single case of a Kuna marrying an outsider [without leaving the culture/country entirely at least]).

Lotsa time for cool blue chillin. Somebody put on some Coltrane.

The experience was of course different now, with more snorkeling (ooh, sting ray!) as well as swimming ashore to find myself embraced by a gaggle of elderly Colombian fishermen who may or may not be in the mafia. They poured me a substantial amount of whiskey and a good time was had by all. Rudy and Jamila came by to make sure I was okay, surrounded by what looked like a scene from a Godfather movie filmed in Miami.

Heat lightening was a nightly occurrence.

Around midnight one of the Colombian ships inexplicably pulled up anchor and started backing around the other ships anchored in the lagoon. Remembering all their questions as to how many of us were onboard, the ship, and how much we paid, I mused aloud about them being Colombian pirates. Brett’s answer of “a shipload of handsome pirates? Okay.” cracked me up for a good half hour.

Today's Schedule (with pictures)

6:30 Get up after third night where I wake up disoriented and feeling the motion of the boat. Sweating already.
7:00 Breakfast at El Gato Negro, whose staff are my Colombian buddies. I’ll miss them, and their cat too.
8:15 Shower, ask staff about odd insect bites that have showed up around my torso and give him a calm “bullshit” look when he says mosquitoes, pay room, walk to bus stop zone.
8:45 Step onto bus/sauna, dripping sweat.
8:46 Smile apologetically at girl sitting next to me.

9:00 Arrive at airport for 10:50 departure, learn of 2 hour delay. Sudoku.
10:50 Scheduled departure time comes and goes.
11:00 Go through security to waiting room.
12:00 Getting a bit hungry, eat the free “snack” offered by airline as apology for delay, snack is the smallest corner of bread ever to be called a sandwich, features 1 sliver colorless bolognaesque “meat” and melted-at-room-temperature “cheese.”

13:50 Board plane, 3 hours behind schedule.
14:10 Pilot announces additional 40 minute delay, passengers laugh.
14:50 Take-off, 4 hours behind schedule.
15:30 Seeing juice box on beverage cart finally learn what mora is (blackberry).
16:20 Land in Bogota, pilot announces the airport has no available gates so they’ll drop us off outside, where a bus will pick us up to take us to the terminal, passengers laugh again.

16:40 Get a taxi to my chosen hostel, chatting amiably with driver. Pre-set price for 15km ride into town: 20,400 Colombian pesos.
16:50 Arrive at hostel to find it is an abandoned building full of shattered bricks, can just make out the painted sign on the wall. Ask driver to take me to tourist district a couple kilometers away, he says he’ll charge me additional 3,000 pesos. (Thus: 23,400 pesos.)
16:55 Arrive in tourist district, driver says I owe 46,000 pesos.
17:00 Starving hungry, headache, poorly rested, yelling match with asshole driver on the streets of Bogota.

17:10 Enter nearby hostel whose description sounded good to find that there is a Platypus (hostel which I was looking for) and a Casa Platypus (restored colonial house 3-4 times as attractive as any place I’ve ever stayed in my life). The prices are at least twice what I wanted to pay, but I am so tired, the lady is so friendly, and K is arriving tomorrow so I book a dorm for myself for tonight, a double for tomorrow.

17:20 Stomach is digesting itself, go looking for food in a neighborhood that is unexpectedly Bohemian, cool street art, and nice restaurants…all of which seem to only serve breakfast.
17:40 Walk around in daze saying “where the f*** am I?! Only breakfast? Is that Krishna in that graffiti?” out loud to myself until finding a little café/bar run by Colombian abuelo.
17:50 Eat “Combo Mexicano” which is unlike anything I ever ate in Mexico. BBQ sauce, hominy, and French fries?
18:20 Finish eating and go for a short walk around downtown B….where am I?…Bogota. That’s it. Trying to take it in while looking bored and familiar with it so the hustlers don’t bug me.

18:50 Back to hotel, type this. Add pictures to try and make it interesting and cuz Cartagena was just so damn beautiful.
Next: take badly needed shower.
Shortly there after: sleeeeep.

A Cartagena Surprise.

Old Town, Cathedral on
right, Botero on the left.

Buy a coconut, carriage
ride, or colonial balcony.

Cartagena has three main sections (plus the long expanse of skyscraper hotels and offices stretching off down the coast). The Old Town is the primary tourist section, with museums, shops, and discotecas, where old walls, either crumbling or restored, line the narrow streets with colorful exuberance and colonial history. (There’s an expensive restaurant where the slave market used to be.)  Rooms here cost 3-4 suitcases full of money.

San Diego.

To the northeast is San Diego, for the still-affluent but not extravagantly so. The buildings are all in good condition, the paint new, the personality slightly bleached. A relative bargain, it only takes one suitcase full of cash to spend the night here. This is where the well-to-do Colombian tourists seem to stay.

Then there’s Getsemani. Guidebooks describe neighborhoods like this as “gritty.” There are stray dogs, homeless, expanses of rotting garbage, and flocks of backpackers cramming into party hostels. A meal here costs about $4, there are real people in the street and plazas, and you don’t get hassled nearly as much.

Getsemani. Home sweet home.

I got lucky when I rocked up off the boat, Australians in tow, and ended up at the quiet one. There is no real common area to meet people, and there have only been a few other travelers. After a few days the Aussies left and, missing human contact, I went to look at other options. Each time I found a typical backpacker hostel, crammed with drunken kids chasing into each other’s underwear, for about twice the price. I’m too old and spoiled for that crap right now.

So I’ve been enjoying the quiet comfort of the Hotel Familiar (remember, it's Spanish). I got lucky though and met a little group of travelers in a restaurant a couple nights ago, so get to hang out with people as long as I want, then have a quiet place to sleep. We also made friends with the restaurant staff, who have been hanging out with us after work.

Today I ran into one of the waitresses out front (the restaurant is 2 doors down) waiting in the blazing sun for her shift to start. It was brutally hot and I offered to let her wait in my room, which has no aircon but does have a good fan. She hung out for about 10 minutes, checked her facebook on my computer and talked at that machine-gun speed about her family (talking to Colombians is maybe the world’s most challenging and interesting Spanish class) then went to work.

After she left the hotel staff informed me that there is a charge of 15,000 Colombian pesos (about $8) for visitors.

Sorry for the distraction, they just have
such kickass doors here. I have dozens
of pictures like this.

What?!? They pointed to a small sign up in the corner saying as much. Oh. This was one of the stranger things I’ve encountered…it took me a few minutes to figure it out.

Prostitution is legal in Colombia. Apparently the way it works here is they go to the specific bars, pick their girl, then either take them back to their hotel or to another one, which charges an hourly rate. Saying this, I suspect that is how prostitution works all over the world, but I hadn’t really thought about it as being different from the European Red Light Districts, where they have their own little rooms.

Once I started thinking about it I got a new impression of the rooms upstairs, since there is no stairwell that I have seen, nor any people up there, other than what I assumed was a couple getting intimate up there a few days ago.

For the last week I have been living in a brothel.

Well, not really a brothel, per se, but still. The “visitor” charge must be for prostitutes, but since it’s a general-language rule, they’re going to charge me for letting a friend browse her facebook here for 10 minutes. I can’t think of a more peculiar way to throw away $8.

Sailing to Chichime for dinner.

There is not much wind down here in May, but we managed to sail for an hour or two (and I didn’t mind the tenuous wind because it meant I got to help tack and reset the sail a couple times) on our way to Chichimé island, where we would spend the night.

Chichime is actually 2 islands. I‘m not sure which one (both?) is actually Chichime, and I suspect no one really cares, although one has more Kuna huts than the other. Both islands are small, covered in palm trees and white sand, maximum elevation of about a foot. There is technically a third island, although since it’s about the size of a dorm room, it doesn’t count (but it's a nice place to swim to).

Not Javier's boat. No one was quite sure where that one is.

The islands have a great little lagoon in the middle, and the whole shebang is enclosed by a reef and sandbar ring that makes it a fantastic port. The area gets extra credit from the two visible wrecks, one a thoroughly mangled small hull, the other a looming lump of rust out on the reef.

There is a third wreck nearby, that of the local legend Javier.

Javier was another one of the local captains, ferrying tourists back and forth between Panama and Colombia. Then he got into drugs. The details get murky, but at some point he sank his own boat here…and killed somebody, faked paperwork for the purchase of their house and tried to basically take over their life. Some say they caught him up in Costa Rica, some say he’s still lurking around somewhere.

Within a few minutes of pulling into the lagoon the Kuna dugouts were alongside us. The first was two women selling molas and bracelets. Unsurprisingly I was more interested in the women than the bracelets. Wait, that doesn‘t sound right, let me try that again.

Unsurprisingly, I was more interested in the women’s traditional Kuna dress and ornamentation, than the tourist kitsch they were selling.

Better.

I fear treating people like they’re exhibits in a zoo, so didn’t take any good pictures of them, but here is one of the women heaping the colorful crafts onto the deck. It’s hard to see, but she had a black line painted down the front of her nose, long strings of bracelets wrapping her forearms (and ankles), and more color in her clothes than most of Western Europe combined (no offense K). Some of the women also had gold nose rings, which I initially guessed signified marriage, but it seems to just be personal choice.

Kuna men dress western (or in speedos) and I can’t help but wonder what their traditional garb was like.

Kuna: "How many do you want?"
Fermin: "Well...all of them."

Several men arrived a few minutes later selling fish and conch. Fermin asked for lobster, and an hour later they were back, this time with a hull full of live “langostas.”

A hull full was just enough for Fermin. I think they were surprised at Fermin’s requested purchase.

We saved the lobsters for the next day, and that night dined on paella, salad, and conch ceviche. I ate conch in the Bahamas too, and remembered it as chewier than calamari, not much redeeming value. That impression was reinforced. Not my favorite food. It's an entire animal made of stringy tendon and snot.

Everyone lends a hand on the Andiamo, but the galley was too small for more than a couple bodies, so my chore was cleanup. It was a…unique…cleaning situation. The extremely small amount of counter space was heaped with dirty dishes, a tiny sink, a semi-functional foot pump bringing sea water up to wash with, at the end I unearthed lumps of raw chicken where we’d been setting the clean dishes, and everything was coated in conch slime.

Conch look good in their shells.
I think I'll leave them there from now on.

Conch slime. Conch are snails. Sea snails. So this is slime so thick, so tenacious, so Hollywood ooey-gooey that it coats shifting sand underwater. Not the easiest stuff to get off, especially with just a thin trickle of salt water to work with. (I tried not to wonder how far the sink pump’s intake was from the spout where the pump toilet flushed raw sewage out.)

By the time I finished in the sweltering confines of the ship I was dripping sweat and fairly determined not to use any of those dishes again. (This ship clearly needs a woman, if I may gender stereotypically say so.)

My cabin was directly beneath and behind where they'd been running a generator for a few hours, so once the fumes cleared out I brushed my teeth (with foot-pumped salt water) and went to bed. Sleeping on a rocking ship was a surprisingly peaceful experience, despite the clammy heat of the confined space.

I awoke before dawn and stood up out my overhead hatch to take this picture, already in love with another day.

Good morning, can I interest you in a transcendent moment?

I guess in love with it is a good way to start a day.

Turns out breakfast on the Andiamo was whatever you could rummage up by yourself, and I wrapped the sublime joy of waking up in a place like that around myself  like a protective blanket during my breakfast of a white (white!) bread sandwich filled with 2 individually wrapped slices of that petroleum-product “American cheese.”

“Andiamo” means “let’s go!” in Italian, but we had redubbed her the Spettiamo (“we wait”) or the Princessa Sedentaria, and again, if I started to feel impatient with the lack of movement, I just had to remind myself of the color of the water, the shape of the palm trees, and the smiles of my shipmates.

I was playing cards with those shipmates when Jessica pointed over my shoulder and exclaimed “dolphins!”

2.6 seconds later I was in the water, swimming that way as quickly and softly as I could, although there is nothing like a dolphin to remind you of how clumsy humans really are in water. I had seen some dolphin fins outside the reef the day before, but didn’t think they’d come inside the lagoon. The water in there was surprisingly murky, and as I peered into the gloom, my mind saw all sorts of shapes about to emerge from the silt, but none of them quite did.

Then I heard it, the clicking sound of dolphin sonar.

Then I saw it, a shape of unimaginable grace and power, swimming straight towards me before curving and twisting downwards in a corkscrew to pursue a fish.

Good morning. I’m swimming with wild dolphins.

No me gusta.

Fastforward to Cartagena for a minute.

Too hot, even for the fruit vendors.

The city wants to make sure I know the meaning of the word “enervating.” Apparently it often rains during this month, but none this year, so the city swelters, humidity like a punishment, sweating in the shade and stunned in direct sunlight.

I got a haircut in Leon less than two months ago, but they say your hair grows faster in hot places, and already it feels like a warm washcloth riding around on my head. Plus, K flies down here in a week, and I’d like to look sharp for her first sight of me in months, so off to the barber shop.

This one melted entirely.

Colombia is the ninth country I’ve gotten a haircut in, and all of the other ones went well (Nepali barberji’s assassination attempts notwithstanding) so I wasn’t nervous as I took a seat in the hair-covered chair and told the guy my usual bit about short on the sides and back, and longer on top, with gestures. Since I speak Spanish, I assumed if it went well in Poland, it would work out in Colombia.

The guy grabbed the buzzer and quickly took off most of the hair on the sides and back of my head, standing a pace back and reaching the buzzer towards me like he was offering meat to an alligator. He was fast. Really fast.

Okay, I thought. Feels cooler already.

Then faster than you can say “dagnabbit“ he put the guard one size longer on the buzzer and chopped off the rest. He never even touched the scissors.

I now have basically a buzz cut. Military style. Bullethead.

It wasn’t a haircut, it was a sheep sheering. And it looks baaaaaaad.

I haven’t looked like this since college, and there was a reason I stopped.

I sat in front of the mirror, covered in my own dearly departed hair, slightly wide-eyed, telling myself “well, ain’t shit you can do about it now” as he picked up the straight razor, clearly NOT changing the blade from the 637 guys before me, and scraped bare my sideburns and neck.

Now I hope all I got from him was a bad haircut. How do you say “hepatitis” in Spanish?
(It’s “hepatitis” just with Spanish “titis”.)

The whole incident can’t have taken longer than 4 minutes, and then I was slinking back to my hostel, where thankfully I have a private room. Suddenly all I can think about is our old family dog, Tila, a big old sweetheart with long red-brown hair, including big haunches of it behind her back legs.

We used to take her to the groomer now and then, and she would come home stinking of perfume and with those haunches shaved off, and would immediately slink away to hide in the corner, an expression of embarrassment and reproach in her gentle brown eyes.

So I guess it could be worse…at least he didn’t spray me with perfume.

I’m sorry for my appearance K. I’ll be the army recruit waiting outside your gate in Bogota next week.

Crew and company on the Andiamo.

Our lancha (small motorboat) to the Andiamo was called “Fliper 3” which is a darn good stab at dolphin homage. As the rest of us gathered our things and paid for our Kuna lunch, Fermin (the Venezuelan) stood shin-deep in the water and without fanfare or expression shouted “Fliiiiiii-per!” then climbed aboard.

Captain Robert

We followed after and were soon climbing onto the Andiamo, where we were greeted by Robert, the new captain of the ship. Technically from The Netherlands but raised in Aruba and the US, I enjoyed chatting with him a bit in Dutch. We found each other’s accents entertaining.

The old captain was Fabio, from Italy, who was heading home in a few days for the first time in years. He looked sun-worn and water-weary, though surprisingly young. The third crewmember was Dino, who felt like the team’s anchor with his calm Kuna self assurance and rare facial expressions.

Robert gave us a little speech, trying valiantly in Spanish until we told him that our most-spoken language was English, at which he was relieved, although he had trouble adjusting, with Spanish phrases relentlessly creeping back into his spiel. He took the wheel and we pulled away from the island just as the Mission Impossible theme came on the sound system (aka Fabio’s Ipod). Dino baited a hook and let it fall into the water to trail behind us to start shopping for dinner.

I’d been onboard only a few minutes but it already felt like someplace I wouldn’t want to leave.

Where should we go? I dunno. How about...that one?

This notwithstanding the impressively casual attitudes of the crew. I had an English student in Belgium who was taking a sailing class, and used to explain to me what he was learning as practice. Charting a course on precise maps, compensating for current and wind, calibrating the compass to adjust for the variance between geographic and magnetic north, calculating depth from tidal charts, and navigating via reference points and harbor stats. None of that on the Andiamo.

When Fermin asked Robert where the map was, he pointed at Dino and said “he’s not allowed to fall overboard.” When we asked where we were going, Dino waved vaguely off to the right. (Sorry: starboard.)

We cruised for awhile on diesel then cut the engine, Dino showed me which rope to heave on, the sail was raised, and we were sailing in the San Blas Archipelago. Absence of combustion engine noises, the slap of water, wind all around, soft soft, and our bodies relaxed. The crew facing forward while the passengers chatted about Carnaval.

Lotsa swimming, few pictures. Fernando & Mariana
on the boat, Jessica swimming by El Diablo Rojo,
the boat's dinghy, which trailed along after us. 

We had the Argentinean couple, gently peaceful auras and nothing but kindness in their lives as far as I could tell. Instantly likable, they were exactly the kind of people you want as companions on a tiny boat at sea.

Jessica was my valued companion from before, who I met a few hours after landing in Nicaragua on my first day, then who reappeared a month later with superhero timing as I began to flounder in the Meat Market Madness of Bocas del Toro to save my sanity with intelligent conversation and mature companionship.

Fermin can look comfortable anywhere.

Fermin rounded out the passengers. A Venezuelan former cell-phone magnate of some sort, he fled the country when Chavez came into power in 1999. He had the extrovert ability to chat and playfully harass anyone he met, and had an interesting perspective on anything the conversation touched. He could also eat more lobster than anyone I’ve ever seen. When a Kuna canoe pulled up next to us the next morning with a hull full of live lobsters he told Robert “you take what we need, I’ll buy all the rest.” He had five of them for lunch, and shared several with the rest of us. I've never had peanut butter and jelly...and lobster before. (Actually I had never eaten lobster before Bocas del Toro. The ship was my second time.)

Made for an odd combination.

Panama City to the San Blas Islands

The boat I am no longer on is slowing its pitch and roll in my head, so I guess I can try this typing thing now...but I may need to take a break if I get landsick, okay?

This guy apparently really likes his lawn mower.

We rode to the coastal town of Carti (small enough to not show up on Google Maps) in a well-worn land rover, air conditioner blasting before sunrise, and a mildewy smell to attest to the habit. Already seated in the middle row were two young girls who apparently did not feel like talking to anyone, answering questions in curt, single-word answers and generally pretending they were alone in the car. Turns out they're just Israeli.

Remember Jessica, the 40-something year old in Bocas del Toro who had just submitted the last part of her thesis? She was on the boat too, and turns out her thesis was on the role of Israeli defense forces in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She sat in the front.

We picked up an Argentinean couple whose freshfaced glow immediately shouted honeymoon! to me, then a Venezuelan, so we were 8 in the car, the middle bench comfy with me and the Israelis, the back nook crammed with Argentineans and a Venezuelan.

The road to the coast is an intensely winding string of cracked pavement, one side is Panama, the other is Kuna Yala, a semi-autonomous indigenous region. The Panamanian side is a freshly clearcut horror already eroding away under the road while the Kuna side is healthy untouched jungle where I spotted at least one bird that looked an awful lot like a toucan as we went by.

I felt a tap on my knee and looked up to see a pale and sweating Israeli girl asking me in a breathless voice to get the driver to stop. We pulled over and she took a breather in the bushes. The driver said my seat was better for carsickness than hers, so we switched and set off again. I gave her one of the ginger candies they gave us on the Clipper, neglecting to tell her it had been riding around in my bag for the past two months. It wasn't enough as a minute later she needed a second stop, then a minute after that the Venezuelan in the back needed one too. He barely made it out of the car before blasting.

Fernando and Mariana, my favorite
eternal Argentinean honeymooners

I switched with him, and found myself squished in back with the Argentineans, whose happy glow protected me from motion sickness as we descended to the coast. The Israeli girls were not coming on the boat with us, and as they pulled away in the car the Argentineans confessed that they had thought Jessica and I were a married couple and the Israeli girls were our kids! They added "I thought they were very mad at you, and that is why they would not talk."

Most of the Israeli's I've met traveling, these ones included, are about 20 years old, and have just finished their two year service in the army. I found myself wondering, do I look like I could have 20 year old children?

I in turn voiced my guess that they were on their honeymoon, to find that nope, they've been married three years, have a little boy, and are on a couple day excursion after the husband, Fernando, finished some work in Panama City. I wonder if my people-watching guesses are ever correct?

We passed the sleepy guard with a battered rifle at the Kuna border, paid the $2 Kuna territory entry fee, then the $10 Kuna port fee, then the $30 driver fee, and staggered, stunned and with lightweight wallets, to the dock for our lancha boat to our sailboat. Along the way we examined the Kuna flag, which looks like the Spanish one, only instead of an archaic coat-of-arms, the Kuna have basically a swastika (totally unrelated to Nazism of course). Maybe a good thing the Israeli girls didn't come with us.

They took us out to where to boat was waiting for us... Or rather, where the boat was supposed to be waiting for us. Luckily the Venezuelan, Fermin, had reception on his cell, so we called and discovered that the boat was stuck in customs, and would be a little late. So we swam ashore on one of the Kuna islands, walked around the white sand and palm tree paradise, swam over the rusting wreck offshore, got to know each other better, and had a lunch prepared by the Kuna guy in his palm frond hut.

Turns out the Kuna are like everyone else, and like to make a buck off the tourists. Entry onto the island: $2. Can of soda: $2. Lunch of rice and smoked fish: $10. Being there, and with those people: priceless.

We looked up to find a new sailboat rocking just offshore, and were soon ferried out to climb onboard the Andiamo, which we did with an ocean of excitement tempered with a spoonful of trepidation.

Welcome to the San Blas Islands

Suddenly shipping out to sea tomorrow...

The plans are still evolving as I go. To get from Panama to Colombia there are three options:
1: Fly. Expensive, quick, normal experience.
2: Take a passenger-type boat. They stop in the San Blas Islands along the way, the trip takes about 5 days. Live on a boat for a week as it crosses the lower corner of the Caribbean. Not cheap, but figure in the cost of accommodation for 5 days plus food, and it suddenly ain't so bad.
3: Try and find a cargo boat to take you. Would be the most adventurous option. But. Tales of drug smugglers, robber/pirate-style shady characters etc are rife. Along the lines of "me and one other guy paid for passage to Cartagena and were dropped off in the middle of the night on some random beach. When we finally made it to civilization they said we were incredibly lucky not to have been murdered and dumped over the side." This after spending an hour or so listening to tales of murder on the high seas hereabouts.

There are only a few boats for option 2 around right now, since we are edging closer to hurricane season. The big reputable cargo companies for option 3 most likely don't take on passengers, leaving the smaller and more desperate (ie sketchy) ones.

I was wrestling with my desire to have the best adventure to tell you about, versus my desire to maintain my physical being in a state of reasonably good repair, when the Universe gave me a hint in the form of a friendly Guatemalan lady who runs a boat trip out to the San Blas and back. They can't take me to Colombia, but they can take me out into the islands and leave me on the one farthest out, from where I should be able to catch something for the rest of the trip...

So the car to the port leaves tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM, and I will be at sea for 5-6 days most likely, depending on how the transfer(s) go.

Talk to you next week.
I hope...  ; )

Sex, drugs, and reggaeton.

Aaaand because I’m scared of the bed in there, and turning off the light while I‘m in it, you get two blogs. (The bed is amazing though, when I sit on it, the middle sinks about ten inches, while the foot and head rise an equal amount. Today’s Spanish phrase: “la cama es un pinche taco.” Warning: don’t say “pinche” in polite company.)

So I mentioned changing plans. Last Saturday night I planned on hanging around the hostel on Bastimentos Island talking to P1, the super-awesome French Canadian guy who lives in Costa Rica. When entreated by a Russian-and-Australian couple to share a boat to the nightclub near Bocas Town to lower the price, we looked at each other, shrugged, and agreed with minimal enthusiasm to head over.

P2, an American world citizen who is temporarily living in the hostel got us a ride with his local friends, so P’s 1 and 2 and I found ourselves (the Austrussians dropped out of course) drifting around offshore with the local Rasta guys, smoke billowing out behind us, whether the engine was on or not.

We finally headed over and I suddenly found myself in another transcendent moment. The dark waters of the Caribbean rushing past, perfectly warm wind wrapping everything, flickers of heat lightning on the horizon, Mosquito Coast Creole language in my ears, a bottle of rum being passed around, stars so bright overhead they must have already been drunk. (And no, not that much of the smoke was mine.)

In the dark no one could see my smile.

We were headed to “Aqua Lounge” which is even worse than it sounds. It’s supposedly the most renowned club in Panama, and draws locals and tourists from far away to take water taxis to its dock, drink its alcohol, dance to its Billboard Top 40, swing on its rope swings and jump into its ocean pools.

And did I mention Saturday (and Tuesday?) is Ladies’ Night? P1 and I got our beers and went to sit outside and people watch. It is amazing how Life can give you just the perfect company at the precise time; I enjoyed going around and talking to others too, but without P1 I would have been quickly bored. Hanging out in a meat market when you’re not shopping is more fun if you have a like-minded soul beside you, and after 12 years with his girl, P1 is clearly still besotted with her. (And I accidentally offended a little tourist chicky when I mentioned that I was not trying to sleep with her…I didn’t mean it as an insult! Dang, those scenes are tricky!)

My favorite was the tourist lass who would be considered overweight in Barbie's America, but down here had a devoted dog pack following her around, and was clearly enjoying the situation. Of course it may have had something to do with her substantial butt cheeks hanging out the bottom of her cutoff shorts.

I have never been to Ibiza, and now I don’t have to. Excellent.

It was generally a nice night, I ended up spending the last chunk talking to a roaming mandolin player/journalist and P1, and dancing whenever they played songs in the range of decent to good. (I do enjoy me some Collie Buddz.)

Riding with the locals added a couple interesting…wrinkles. First, we spent the last hour before we left watching them do lines of cocaine. I tried to see if the driver was refraining, but lost track of him for awhile. It was one guy’s 20th birthday and he perhaps overindulged, and rode home hiding in the bottom of the boat.

The second one was the phenomenon of the white girls and the Rasta guys. Common enough scene around here. And I’ve heard objectification of women before, but every time I hear it, I startle a bit. It wasn’t “I want to find someone to f--- tonight” it was “I want to find something to f--- tonight.” (Does the objectification go both ways?)

They sat in the corner, creases of coke disappearing off their thumbs, and by the end of the night had a few little white girls in short shorts sprinkled around them.

Let me be perfectly clear, I have no problem whatsoever with the racial aspect. If anything, I encourage that part, although mostly I just couldn’t care less.

I just want to interview the girls for their motivation and comprehension. Maybe it’s just an exotic fling, maybe at some level they’re convincing themselves they’re not racist, and maybe they just want to piss off their internal father’s voice. I don’t know, but if it’s any of those: more power to ya.

But, as usual in those scenes, I just pray that everyone’s aware of the reality. I spent a fair amount of time around these dudes, and even taking into account “guy-talk” and its stupefying linguistics, these guys could not care less about the girls. They are free party favors. No emotional cost or value. No respect. No future, they are a momentary diversion to be left behind on the dock and forgotten. If everyone knows this: go for it. If not…

P1’s town in Costa Rica has the same phenomenon and he has lots of experience with it. He said that comprehension is all too often not there. “This is different.” “He cares about me.” “I’ll change him.” “We will have a future together.” And having a baby doesn’t make a lick of difference.

The next morning at breakfast with the mandolin player I noticed one of my local volleyball friends sitting at the table next to us, listening to our conversation. I stated my opinion that their town is going to get devoured by development in a brutal way, unless the people, particularly the youth, do something to stop it. Organize. Give a shit. And if all they do is snort cocaine and screw tourists, that’s never going to happen.

I looked over a minute later and she met my eyes for a moment, then looked away. I will be a little scared to go back to Bastimentos in 5 years.

Oh. David. Hello. Again.

What does the word “plan” mean to you? What sort of feeling does it give you? If you make a plan, do you expect it to happen? Are you annoyed or disappointed if it doesn’t? Do you travel?

I planned to take the night bus to Panama City tonight…
Once I decided to stay in David instead, I planned to stay at the same hostel…
Where I planned on having dog-shit smell and a lack of fan as my only…detractors…
I planned to avoid super skeezy and sketchy hotels where cockroaches are the friendliest guests.

As you may have guessed, I am not sitting on a bus right now. Nor am I heading to Panama City tonight. I just can’t seem to break up with David.

Dina, my Panamanian abuelita who shuffles around the other hostel, didn’t answer either of the bells (you know it’s a reliable place when they have two doorbell systems right next to each other) and I had seen the Pension Costa Rica just up the block from there, and it’s in my guide book (abuelita is not) so I figured I’d give it a try.

Hard to photograph a closet, but can you get the idea?

These are wide angle, 18 mm, camera against the wall
in the corner, and ISO 3200 even with the light on.

The guide book says “Though in a handsome building…many of the rooms are musty and with walls that do not reach right up to the ceiling. Even so, they’re not bad.” Not sure if this is a case of deterioration, showing the guide book rep the best rooms, or me getting picky in my old age, but I would have described it more along the lines of “don’t let the lobby that looks like something out of a cowboy telenovela set in the 1880’s fool you, it’s four stained walls that don’t reach the ceiling and the gap on top is spanned by screens that block only 90% of the space. With the rusty metal springs of the bed, the novela wouldn’t be a romance, but more likely a prison story.”

Or maybe a Romeo & Juliet where the forbidding families are the cockroaches and the bed bugs… “What light through yonder musty hole in the wall breaks? Tis the East, and Juliet is a damn cockroach.”

We’ll see how the night goes (wish me luck) and I’ll be on that bus tomorrow morning if at all possible…