Holiday in Colombia
Avalon
Sat 7 Jun 2003 04:03
Even before we had launched the dinghy yesterday, to start our little
Colombian holiday, we had been visited and interrogated many times. Nobody
official seemed to care that two Australians were about to land illegally in
there county but the locals and tourists were all abuzz. One of them was
Alferedo, Speedo clad freestyler, eager to find out our life story in the
middle of his swim! His English was excellent, for a man bobbing in the
water, and we would of liked to talk for longer but what we needed was to
get some fuel before someone official told us to leave.
Ashore everything was going well, we had found both necessities and had
accessed money to pay for it all. Now if someone could only tell us what a
Paso was worth? Looking puzzled attracted the attention of Alfonso, an
official tourista guide according to his faded looking t-shirt and badge.
His English was also excellent and he quickly answered all our remaining
questions. He then told us that "we were from the sail boat" and that he has
helped many visitors from yachts in the past. His next question started to
raise our anxiety levels. "Who did you recommend to your Zodiac?" As it
turned out nobody, we just pulled it up the beach with the local water
taxies and locked it to a post. "This is bad, you need to have some
recommended for your Zodiac, I will find you someone." Recommending was
Alfonsos word for watching and soon we were off down the beach to employ an
official watcher. Whilst walking Alfonso 'recommended' us that we should
have our boat anchored closer to the swim area so the policia could see it
better, just the opposite of what we wanted, some privacy.
With a watcher in place we were now free to roam the town at leisure.
The problem was that we now had our own official guide and a slow one at
that! Alfonso limped along with us offering to help with the shopping. A
polite but forceful no and a promise to meet later gained our freedom.
(Although his translation services could have saved a later problem.
Colombian petrol smells very much like diesel !)
With 60 litres of gas and 5 bags of groceries we taxied back to the
dingy. (Still not having spent $50!!) Our watcher was not to be seen, so we
figured he would come for his fee at the sight of us leaving. This didn't
happen so we paddled past the mooring lines and tried to start the outboard.
After five pulls and I noticed that the 'kill cord' had been removed, so
much for being 'recommended.'
On returning to the beach, mainly to escape the boat, we were greeted by
a young guy who appeared to be waiting for us. His name, he told us, was
Eddie and he wanted to let us know that he had a restaurant down the other
end of the beach and it was much safer to leave your "little boat" down
there. His was the restaurant where all the sailors go and he can help us
with any thing we needed. This sounded good as what we really needed was a
cold beer.
Pulling the dingy up the beach in front of Eddies we were again met by
Alfonso.(We obviously had our own watches.) He looked very upset and said
that this was a bad place for our dingy and that he new that the man 'just
over there' was a thief! We told him that his watcher, had either stolen our
kill cord or not done much watching, and that all we were doing was trying
to have swim and a beer to cool down! At this point one of the many vendors
walking the beach came past with a cooler full of cerveza Aguilas. Buying
every one in the vicinity a cold drink I figured that I had my self plenty
of dingy watches for the next 10 minutes while we finally got our swim!
Luckily our second day in Rodadero (today) was much easier. We have just
ended it with an amazing seafood casserole at Eddies, with the setting sun
over the still flat calm water. We plan to leave at 3am to make the most of
the night breeze and land us in the San Blas in daylight.