Since leaving Shelter Bay in Panama, just over two weeks ago, we have travelled some 1300 nautical miles.  We spent five days in Cartagena (Columbia) and then headed east along the Columbian coast, skirting Venezuela, and spent a 12-hour stop-over in Bonaire (Dutch Antilles).  In the whole of the journey we have seen just one other yacht and three ships, but at least we have had the company of dolphins at the bow and seen some amazing sunsets and sunrises.

Columbia has a population of about 45 million and is about the size of France, Spain and Portugal combined.  Despite concerted efforts to destroy drug crops by spraying herbicide, the drug trade still thrives.

Columbia’s past has been very troubled and violent, and only now it seems that the 40 year civil war with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is abating. Despite achieving independence from the Spanish in 1819, during the 19^th century the country experienced no less than eight civil wars.  Between 1863 and 1885 there were more than 50 antigovernment insurrections.  The full-blown civil war which started in 1899 left 100,000 dead.  La Violencia, the most destructive of Colombia’s many civil wars and which started in 1948, left of death toll of some 300,000.

Maybe it was the Spanish colonialist that set the tone for tenacity and bravery in the face of the enemy. Cartagena still has much of the heavy fortifications built against the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh and successive attacks by pirates.  Don Blas de Lezo, who stopped the British in 1741, deserves a mention as although accident prone, he certainly wasn’t a quitter.  By the time the King of Spain sent him to defend Cartagena against the threatened attack by Edward Vernon, Don Blas had already lost a leg in the battle of Gibraltar, lost his right eye in the battle of Toulon and his right arm in the Battle of Barcelona.  Not only did he have to sail across the Atlantic and Caribbean Sea just to get to Cartagena, he then had just four months to train the defending forces, which were outnumbered by about 8:1.  The opposing force included an American regiment.  A ferocious battle lasted two weeks and Don Blas was again injured, this time in his good leg.  (In the end, it was dysentery, malaria and yellow fever that rendered the British forces useless.)

However, despite the potential for violence, I was sort of reassured about Columbia when a fellow sailor said that ‘we would love Cartagena and in any case, Columbians only shoot each other, they don’t shoot tourists’.  Certainly it was very pleasant to walk around the old town of Cartagena – a well preserved colonial Spanish town, with shuttered houses, elegant balconies, cool courtyards and bustling squares.  The modern city seemed to work efficiently, catering for visitors and cruise liner guests with good restaurants, shops and hotels set facing the Atlantic coastline.

The anchorage is home to about 35 yachts, many staying for several months and so there is quite a cruising community.  I love the spontaneity and openness of the cruising life, where you have rapport with your neighbours and a willingness to help each other. 

Right now, we are tantalizing close to Grenada (50 miles as the crow flies), but we have strong easterlies (on the nose), confused seas and 1.5 knots of current against us.  We have had lumpy seas and the ‘wrong’ kind of wind on many occasion on our travels – across the Atlantic and the three and a half day passage between the Cayman Islands and the San Blas Islands to name a couple.  But Discovery Magic has ridden them well, not flinched at the conditions and looked after her crew.  (I still find it amazing that you don’t have to stow things away on a cat.) But what has been so wonderfully different on this trip is that I have had the full benefit of Scopoderm – an anti-sickness drug has transformed my ability to tackle long passages. Having just two of us going from Central America to the Caribbean has been just fine.  We have left behind the rain and thunderstorms of central America. The Spice Islands beckon!