Santa Marta Interlude

Date: 4th February, 2024

Where am I? 

Latitude: 10°24.9 N

Longitude: 075°32.7 W

Berthed stern-to a dock at the Club Pesca de Cartagena.

How is the weather?

Very hot and humid! By 2pm, we are back on board with the aircon blowing for a siesta ahead of more walking after sundown – one has to adjust one’s diurnal rhythm to the weather!

What am I feeling?

Hot and a little frazzled! While Cartagena is interesting, the heat is oppressive and saps one’s energy. It will be nice to put some wind in our sails after a few days in the city.

What has happened this week?

We spent most of the week in Santa Marta, exploring the city and its surrounds. It’s the oldest European city on the South American continent and has the feel of a small, old Spanish city. Some beautiful architecture and great (and very reasonably priced) dining options – we ate very well at every restaurant we tried.

On Wednesday, we took a tour of the area around Minca, up in the mountains above Santa Marta. The forest felt very like Borneo’s Danum Valley but without its intense humidity – it was noticeably cooler than the coast and less humid. We survived Pedro’s Mario Andretti-like driving, which was a little hair raising and our guides (actually guide and translator), Christian and Myra, were excellent. It was a great day out with a bit of hiking, swimming in the river and visiting a coffee plantation.

Friday 0900 saw us depart the Marina Santa Marta for Cartagena, with our route taking around 170 nautical miles. This is a bit longer than the shortest route as we wanted to be at least 15 nautical miles off of Barranquilla where the Marguerita River flows into the Caribbean, bringing logs and other flotsam and jetsam which we wanted to avoid. The sailing was good and we dropped anchor by the Club Nautico de Cartagena at 0500. After a rest for 4 hours, Patrick and I dinghied over to the Club Pesca to check in and see our berth slot before bringing in Fujin.

Berthing was quite tricky, with us having to reverse in between two concrete piers to which we needed to attach bow lines before securing the stern on the dock. Fortunately the piers are protected by rope wrapping – which we touched as we passed through as our 4.75m beam was clearly the maximum which the gap can take. Leaving the berth is going to be interesting…

It’s very hot and humid here and when on board during the heat of the day, we are running our generator to run the air conditioning (shore power being insufficient). Earlier in the week, we had a problem with the aircon shutting down and I had feared that I need to replace the cooling water pump impeller. However, at the suggestion of Oyster’s Eddie Scougall, I first checked for an air lock in the system – which there was and, with that bled out, we have now aircon up and running, thankfully!

The walled city of Cartagena is a Wold Heritage Site, surrounded entirely by the original military fortifications. The juxtaposition of the Centro & Getsemáni districts with the high rises of the newer, Miami-esque, city is quite stark. It is just about cool enough to walk around up until lunchtime, after which one needs to retreat to a cool place until sundown – we have adapted our explorations to this schedule very rapidly!

Rod and I have been on a quest to find a decent cigar shop, which we have signally failed to do so far. It’s interesting that one doesn’t see so many people smoking generally in Colombia. And when we have found a cigar shop, the Colombian, Honduran and Nicaraguan cigars are more expensive that the Habanos equivalents. And the prices seem very high, even after haggling them down. Of course, we suspect that the reason for this is simply that the Cuban cigars are not actually Cuban – which is almost certainly the case. 

The next couple of days will see us exploring more of the old city before preparing for our departure on Thursday for the San Blas Islands of Panama, where we will spend a few days at anchor, swimming and relaxing. I’m am hoping that our paperwork for outbound clearance goes smoothly – nothing seems simple as far as officialdom goes in Colombia, even with the use of an agent to help….

Fujin out!