Santa Marta, Colombia for Christmas
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Sun 22 Dec 2013 00:54
Despite having a fab weather window, and seemingly the only benign 36 hour stretch for days ahead, within 30 minutes of leaving Aruba, the wind was howling at 40 knots and it was absolutely bouncing with rain - we were soaked! Aruba despite being less than two miles away had totally disappeared, in the rain closely followed by Suzie Too, who were only half a mile away by this stage - lovely, NOT!
This however quickly passed and for the next few hours, we sailed in perfect conditions, about 20 or so knots from behind us and started to eat up the miles to Santa Marta. At one stage our ETA was about 4pm, but due to lighter winds over night and the fact that we always reef the sails down at night for safety, this soon changed, and anchoring overnight seemed the favourite option. We lost the wind for a short period overnight and had to motor for a few hours, but apart from that it was largely plain sailing again until the last two hours. The winds had changed direction by now and combined with the already large and ever growing waves, we were not making much headway, or at least not much headway in the right direction. It was starting to get dark so, engine on and make for port. Just as we turned to go south down the Colombian coast, we got a call from Suzie Too, about 1.5 miles ahead to say they had 40 knots of wind again. We quickly turned, headed towards the wind and dropped our sails.
Anchoring was our last challenge of the evening. We had to get really close to the shore and drop the anchor quickly as the sea bed shelved steeply away from 5m to 30m in no time at all - on our third attempt the anchor set and despite the wind we had a great sleep, and woke to perfect conditions for mooring on the dock, sunshine and about 2 knots of wind!
Once docked and the boat washed, the customs and immigration system started. Dino, the local customs agent, came to the boat, we signed lots of forms in Spanish and he left with our passport and 180,000 Colombian pesos (only about £60). Since that first day we have been visited by him about three times, immigration once and customs once - it is a long and involved process and an agent is essential - without we would have had no idea at all what was going on and would probably have missed some vital detail. Eventually, after three days and loads of visits we eventually understood that we were all cleared in and legal!
After lunch we hit the town to try and get some wifi SIM cards for the iPads. Easier said than done when it is all in Spanish - hardly anyone here speaks English and technical things like internet access is always a challenge, but we managed after a while and left with the SIM cards and a promise they would be up and running by noon on Xmas day. It was actually Boxing Day by the time the process was complete, and we only got a 7 day card rather than a 10 for the same price, but hey, whatever!
The town centre was absolutely chaotic and there were people everywhere, it was Xmas eve after all! the streets are full of stalls selling just about anything you can imagine as well as food and drinks - a real atmosphere!
These photos might give you some idea of how crowded the streets are - they don't show the smell however which gets quite ripe at times!
A quieter part of town near one of the smaller churches.
In the evening there was a get-together organised by the marina for Xmas, all we had to do was bring our own drinks. Before that, we met up on Suzie Too for homemade tuna sushi and sashimi, they had fabulous luck fishing on the last day of the trip here and landed two good sized tunas. Neither John or I have had much sushi before, we don't have any idea what to order so it was a good chance to try it - it was delicious! I am having sushi making lessons before we all go our separate ways so I can try my hand at it as we cross the pacific.
How delicious does this look? For the uninitiated, the sushi is the stuff at the back, rice topped with wasabi and tuna, and the sashimi, just raw tuna, is at the front.
Sent from my iPad