Colombia - Carribean Coast

more photos of this part of the trip are here

May 12th

Nearly ten days in Colombia have passed by, and we are about to finally leave the Caribbean coast behind us and start into the first stretches of the Andes towards the capital of the country, Bogotá.
Columbia has offered us a very good and welcoming start into South America. We arrived to the city of Turbo on the Colombian mainland after all the weeks on boats in between the two parts of the American continent. The last days on the boats had gotten a bit long as we were getting more and more restless to get moving at our own pace again instead of waiting around for even more coconuts (see last blog), so we got of “our” boat and jumped onto some faster moving carriers and finally some little “pangas” (local longboats) to get to the Panamanian border town of Puerto Obaldia. On the way there we were joined for the last several days by two brothers from Colorado and a mother with her 5-year old kid from Medellin, Colombia to share the costs of the rather expensive transport by private boat. We were a funny travel group: our visas for Panama were expiring the day we arrived at the border town, one of the brothers had had his backpack including passport stolen the day we met and thus wasn't sure if he would be able to cross, and our Colombian friend had overstayed her visa in Panama for about a year and was thinking of having to cross illegally too... we felt like a family of illegal immigrants heading into hostile territory, only that we were swimming against the current of refugees and immigrants, migrating south... But in the end we all got across without troubles, as the surprisingly efficient local police “found” the stolen luggage with all its contents, and the visa issues were solved by friendly migration officials.

Getting the final stretch to the Colombian mainland was another story, as boats were rare and expensive, and their greedy owners were monopolizing the market and extremely unfriendly, so it took us another 2 days to resign to the exaggerated transport fees and get into their panga to reach Turbo where we said goodbye to our new friends (until we visit them in Medellin). Once there this bad first impression of Colombia dissolved quickly when overly friendly gas station staff offered sandblaster, soap, high pressure water sprayers and air to help us get the weeks worth of salt off the bikes, new chains on, and in general get everything nice and shiny again.
The wonderful friendliness continued that way as we cycled along the Caribbean coast towards Cartagena: we were greeted in many places by very curious, inquiring and friendly Colombians who asked lots of questions to find out who we are and how we had gotten to where we were on our bikes. Some cars and motorcyclists would ride along side us and chat about where we go, where from, if we ever get tired; some even pulled over when they saw us stopping for a water or (to our frustration) pee break and would talk for a while, telling us where there is good accommodation, inviting us to stay with them if we ever came back, and getting our blog address to look at our photos. This is helping us get used to the new Colombian Spanish accent and dialects!

Another extremely surprising and refreshing experience is biking with no trash anywhere! We immediately noticed the lack of trash thrown around and the cleanliness of not only the highways and roadsides, but also the towns and cities. Phew! It is good to know that not all of Latin Americans are litter-bugs and there are many who respect the earth. However less refreshing was the intense heat, making much of the riding which should have been very easy, as it was flat, quiet a struggle: it remained around 98 degrees F (37 C) with high humidity from nearly 9am to 4pm. Furthermore, drinkable water was sometimes difficult to get and so we struggled at times thirsty in the oppressive weight of the air – luckily camping on the ocean's shore rewarded for an evening cool-off. A few very rushed mornings trying to flee the hordes of sand flies and mosquitoes after sweaty, sleepless nights in the tent didn't help us get through the days, nonetheless, we managed to enjoy the countryside: wide rolling hills and flatlands of grassy cow pastures mixed in with palms and villages scattered around the many lakes and wetlands. So far (and we keep our fingers crossed) this rainy season has been mild and we haven't had more than a few nights and one day of rain.

One of the highlights of this week was a mud volcano on the side of the road. We are not so sure if it really is a volcano, but everybody called it “El Volcan”: a small crater of bubbling mud, in perfect density for free floating laziness like out in space. Getting anywhere in the mud is nearly impossible, too thick to swim, too thin to walk, but you don't sink at all, you just lay there like a walrus. Getting out the mud made us feel like very fat lethargic people, so heavy on our bodies was the sticky stuff. But after a shower we felt all refreshed, with our skin soft, clean and dry like little baby bottoms.

May 17th

This first week of cycling went really well, considering we had had a 1 month break from the bikes – we even had two days of nearly 100km each! This achievement brought us in time to the old colonial city of Cartagena to celebrate our 6 months anniversary of this trip and Swen's birthday there. A nice location for these events, as Cartagena was one of the major ports of the Spanish empire in the 16th and 17th century, and the old town has barely changed since then. Big restoration works in the last years make many streets really look like “back then”, nearly all of the buildings are in perfect colonial style with their little balconies, huge wooden doors, and colorful walls and window frames. The horse carts that chauffeur tourists through the narrow lanes give the place an even more ancient feeling, so that the illusion is close to perfect, except for that there are many expensive restaurants, fancy hotels and very chic art and fashion stores all over...

So we spent a few days strolling the streets, sipping little coffees sold by street vendors everywhere, sitting on plazas and the outer walls, visiting the gold museum and one of the many old fortresses built all around to protect the city. It is a bit touristy but deservedly so, and the local vegetarian restaurant served us a delicious anniversary/birthday lunch.

The city gave us as well the occasion to do some of the organizational stuff that accumulates from time to time: exchanging reading books in some of the hostels, doing our laundry, organizing our photos taken in the last weeks, cleaning out all our gear.... We even met 4 other bike travelers, all going north who gave us good tips about roads and conditions ahead of us (i.e. beware of biting dogs in northern Peru! One guy got bit by one of the million ferocious street dogs and had to get rabies shots!)

As we saw posters announcing Sargento Garcia in town a few days later we got tickets and instead of staying a few more days in the city we took the opportunity to escape the city for a lonesome paradise beach 40km down the coast on a little peninsula. It was really beautiful: white sand, palms, turquoise waters, some coral reefs for snorkeling, and not many people on our end of the beach, where we camped at a little restaurant and relaxed in its beach chairs and hammocks... nothing more to say about this – you can imagine it was – see the photos!

As we cycled out to the beach, through over 20km of city suburbs, industrial areas, oil refineries and then 20km of dirt road with ongoing construction works to get in paved (we got VERY dusty!), we decided we want to get back more relaxed and less dirty so we took a tourist boat into town in the afternoon. Even though we were sick of boats after San Blas, getting into Cartagena by boat was really worth it as it gave a new view onto the stark contrast of old town with its walls and fortresses, the nearby industrial and harbor areas, and the tourist hotels and skyscrapers right next to it all.

We spent one last day in the city, exploring the huge stone fortress built just beyond the city walls to protect it against the pirates, who had plundered the richnesses destined for shipping to the Spanish court a few times before in the 16th and 17th centuries. It has an amazing system of supply tunnels underneath and through it, that were great fun to get lost in!

Now we finally have left the Caribbean behind us for good and are on our way to the northern outposts of the Andes, which will be our companion for the months to come. The snorkeling gear got sold, the ocean will be rarely in view, a new landscape is waiting for us...

San Blas Islands

more photos of the San Blas Islands are here

28 April 2009
The days on the islands have gone by quickly. We stayed 4 days on Isla Tigre doing nothing but lazing in the hammocks, reading, swimming a little, and sleeping a lot. A coconut boat docked on the 2nd day and we arranged to travel with them to Puerto Obaldia – the border with Colombia. It would be about 18 days to get there, the captain informed us; they would stop at many of the small islands to pick up coconuts and sell merchandize, stopping in some places for up to 4 days. Great, we thought! So on the agreed upon morning we went to the Isla Tigre docks to board. How exciting!

The boat, named El Arfi, is a 22 meter wooden ship with capacity to carry up to 150,000 coconuts and still have room for the 8 man crew as well as any passengers. There are 4 very small rooms: 2 upstairs on the deck and 2 inside downstairs. Each has 2 small bunk beds for the men and we sleep on the open deck upstairs. The rest of the boat includes a small bathroom with the toilet flushing out to the water, a small kitchen for the cook, a generator for the freezer and water pump that cools the engine (in it's own room), the captain's cabin, the “living room” (= the lower deck) where the crew have hammocks strung up and watch dvd's or play board games in the evenings – or as it has turned out much of the days, too. So it is very comfortable, we strapped our bikes to the railing downstairs so as not to be in the way and we set off.

How great! Blue skies, we were on a boat with a nice crew, it couldn't be better. The seas were calm as we headed out to the first island to stop at about 30 minutes away. There a few canoes full of coconuts began to appear and the coconuts were counted and tossed into the boat, and then into the hatch for storage. We stayed until after lunch and then headed to the next stop, a trip of about 2 hours. We saw a big manta ray jumping out of the water, it reminded us of our kayak trip in Baja Mexico. Then things got rough. The boat started tipping and tilting and moving and rocking at incredible angles so we had to run down from the top deck to the downstairs and sit down or risk being thrown overboard. Run down is maybe the wrong choice of words – we had to stumble down the steep stairs carefully. The rocking was getting ever worse while the crew kept saying how the seas were calm, this is nothing compared to January and February! Then we thought laying in the hammock would be good, maybe it would hang down straight as the boat rocked and rolled. Uh, no, this was not a good idea. Ugh. I (Kat) continued to get more and more pale and sweaty – as the crew seemed to enjoy telling me – until finally I had to throw up. I ended up laying flat on my back on the ground and after what seemed to be a very long 2 hours the boat finally docked. Phew! Swen was surprised at having gotten a bit of a weird stomach as well on this stretch, as he hasn't ever gotten sick on boats so far.

So we were now at Isla Playon Chico, another small island crammed full of people, we walked through in about 10 minutes. It did have a bakery, however, and also a “theater” that showed movies every Friday and Saturday nights. It was connected to mainland by a long bridge and several smaller, unpopulated islands were all around. We stayed here about 3 days, lazing around, reading a lot as the coconuts kept on coming in. Several other smaller boats docked to pick up coconuts as well or sell merchandize such as clothing, gasoline, bulk packages of cookies, tins of sardines, bags of rice, sugar or lentils, even bags of concrete and construction materials. These smaller boats were so crammed full of crew, coconuts, sometimes some passengers, and other stuff, that it seemed impossible they were afloat. One was headed towards the border and would arrive in 6 days, according to the captain, but we decided not to jump on with them and suffer those 6 days in cramped heaps. Compared to them, we were on a cruise ship!

The captain let us take out the life boat one day and row to a near-by island. We rowed for about half an hour and arrived at the closest-by beautiful, palm covered, deserted islet. Boat anchored, we jumped into the turquoise sea. The snorkeling around it was great, we saw some small fish, lots of coral, and enormous star fish – about 15 inches across! – bright yellow, orange and red, they were the biggest we had ever seen. When we decided to move to another side of the island Swen paddled the boat and I swam ahead to look for a rock to anchor it to. A few minutes into the search I swam back frantically to the boat – I saw a shark!! Climbing into the boat with Swen's help and getting fiberglass burns on my belly because of it, I described to Swen what I saw: a dark gray shark about 5 feet long swimming about 10 feet away from me, then it must have seen me and swam away quickly. Swen assured me that it was most likely some harmless reef shark that wouldn't attack, but we both still had a little bit of a creepy, scary feeling as we snorkeled around for another half hour or so before we decided to head back. It would have been really great to have the underwater camera we borrowed in Honduras!

The 2 days we were told we would stay at Playon Chico turned into nearly 4, then finally we rode about 30 minutes to our next stop – Isla San Ignacio de Tupile, another crowded island with even more coconuts. We have finished reading a few books and have taken a lot of long naps – it hasn't been very comfortable sleeping at night on the deck with the strong breeze, so we moved into the cramped captain's cabin in the night, then back to the deck around 6 and up by 7 for breakfast. We are still searching for the best sleeping spot on board, a spot with some wind shelter...
The cooking at first was new and interesting, and you could call it good, but after a few days we are starting to get sick of the greasy, oily food and lack of fruits and veggies. Walking on the island in the afternoon – this one about 4 house-widths wide and about 60 houses long, population 1,100 according to their posted 2009 census – we unfortunately couldn't find any fruits or veggies to buy, not even a single tomato or onion. We eat fried plantains with boiled potatoes or fried corn meal cakes and drink hot “panela” which is basically cane-sugar water for breakfast; we have rice with potato soup with a chunk of meat in it (or chicken feet that Kat scoots over to Swen's plate) and drink cold panela water for lunch; then dinner is rice with potato broth and another chunk of meat. A few times the cook made coconut rice, which was really good. The Kuna have restricted the harvesting of king crabs, octopus, conch, and some other seafoods during the breeding season between April and June, but twice now we have had some of these very tasty but illegal dishes. Apparently not all Kuna respect their own council's rules – maybe because the income through these pricey seafoods is too good to give hunting up – and so some of the crew were offered and bought in secret some huge king crabs and an even bigger octopus. The cook – to our relief – didn't cook them, it was the sailor who bought them who cooked them up as he liked and shared some with us. Hard to deny, as king crab is sold back home at 50 dollars a piece, something we might never afford, and octopus is really just very yummy. So we tried a little of these special treats, knowing that the animal wouldn't come back to life. We still feel uncomfortable about it, but they were already dead and in the pot when we discovered what was going on....

1 May 2009
We need to get off the boat. The food is getting harder to swallow and it is getting harder to do nothing all day long! We are anxious to get back on the bikes! Hopefully we will be on the border in about 2 days – we will have to switch to a faster boat because this one keeps delaying and delaying it's return to Colombia! By now after living and sleeping on the water for a week now we have gotten our “sea-legs” so we have no more sea-sickness or problems with waves and feel more or less comfortable with the movement, but now when we stop somewhere we walk around like drunks running into eachother and wobbling around! I wonder how it will be to ride the bikes again! Swen has been studying lots of Spanish and Kat has finally gotten into a routine of studying German. We read lots but are running out of books! But it is never tiring to look at the islands and sea or take a swim – we saw our first Carribean dolphin jumping high into the air and the crew bought a small shark from a passing fisherman so we have fresh shark meat to eat for the next few days. Luckily we have somehow found the source of mangos and limes that we couldn't find for so long and have bought enough for a few days.

Getting to the San Blas Islands

more photos of the San Blas Islands can be found here

20th April
After 2 weeks in the house of Alex, Beate & Louisa we finally re-packed our stuff and went on our way with the bikes, cycling back the 30km into Panama city along the Panama Canal and through the nice rain forests of the surrounding national parks. But to get to the south end of the city, where the road towards the islands of San Blas starts, was clearly going to be a nightmare as we would have to cross the whole city and its suburbs - about 30-40km of heavy traffic and smog. So we jumped on a bus through town and out of it, reaching the little town of Chepo on the road towards the infamous Darien region. The Darien is the border area in between Panama and Colombia where there are literally no roads at all; only rain forest, rivers, some mountains, Columbian FARC rebels, lots of drug smugglers, and no way through except if you are a crazy madman with a big machete who wants to hack his way through the jungle for a few weeks. That's why we planned to get to the caribbean coast and boat or sail through the many islands towards South America.

In Chepo the sky was dark gray and the first rains of the coming rainy season started moments after we had left the bus and packed our many bags on the bikes. As it was still tropically warm though, we decided to start cycling anyway. Indeed the rains were light and dried quickly on our skin while riding. We rode another nice 20km along the Darien highway, before we reached the turnoff for the coast in El Llano. A few hundred meters beyond we already saw the dirt road climbing an incredibly steep hill. We had been warned of this dirt road, of the steepest climbs ever, the mud and dirt, but also the nice forests to cycle through. We stopped for a lunch break before attacking this nightmare of a road. Fortunately things turned out differently than we expected... a road construction truck stopped next to us while we prepared our sandwiches and offered us a ride to kilometer 21. Once on the truck, we couldn't thank the driver enough for the hellish road he had spared us. Nonetheless, once we got out at km21, we knew that we still had another 20km to go to reach the coast. And it continued with climbs of 15 to 20 to 25%, some mud, often too steep for one of us alone to PUSH the bike up – especially because we were overloaded with extra food and supplies for the islands! So almost every big hill we had to leave one bike at the bottom, push the other one up together, and then walk back down to get the second one. We wondered how single bike travelers had gotten over these climbs! After only 10km and a couple of slides and falls, we were both totally exhausted and ready for bed. We set up camp in a little clearing of the rain forest on the side of the road, and listened to the birds and monkeys. After dinner – which we had to partly cook and eat in the little evening rains – we fell to “bed” at 9pm. We (Kat) didn't want to get our newly washed bedding and clothes dirty so we just slept on our air mats; it being so warm and humid we didn't need any covers.


21st April
During the night a lot of rain kept falling. We really must have been exhausted, as we slept till past 8am, more than 11 hours of sleep! While it was still drizzling when we woke, the rain finally stopped and some sun showed during breakfast. Back on the bikes, the same ordeal as yesterday evening continued: too steep hills, too much slippery mud to be able to push bikes up the too steep hills alone. Average speed stayed at yesterdays 4-5km/hour. But again, we got lucky. After only(!) 3km a nearly empty pick-up truck – a rarity here as all the others we had seen were loaded to the roof – stopped for us when passing. It was two of the engineers that are currently supervising the very needed road improvements. And best of all, they went all the way to its end on the coast! After riding with them the last 7 km through a river, over some more horrible hills and steep muddy descents, we got off at the Carti airstrip with blue caribbean water slapping onto the beach next to it. We had made it, we had arrived at the San Blas islands, they were in view all over the horizon!

Minutes later we were sitting in a little boat with 15 other people, being shipped to Carti ….. It seems the effects of the sun are stronger here: we realized a little too late that we hadn't used sunscreen and were burned even though it was cloudy and overcast and had even rained. So we put some on our tender arms and faces and enjoyed the ride. The San Blas Islands consist of about 400 islets (the locals like to say there is an island for every day of the year, but there are actually a few more than that) that stretch all along the coast from a bit south of the Caribbean exit of the Panama Canal to nearly the border with Colombia. They are inhabited by the Kuna, an indigenous group who run the islands and a strip of coast along them as an autonomous region with minimal interference from the national government. We learned from our guide book that “after a violent uprising in 1925 they were granted permission to implement their own system of governance and economy while still maintaining their language, representation in the Panamanian legislature and full voting rights. They have today one of the greatest degrees of autonomy of any indigenous group in Latin America, and preserve their traditional way of life with great efforts,” as we were going to witness in the days to come.

Carti consists of 4 little islands set closely together. We got off at the biggest of them, Carti Suitupo, where the school, the main shop and the main pier are. Homes of the Kuna, made of bamboo walls and banana leaf thatched roofs, crowd Carti up to over the very edge of the island. The alleys between houses are so narrow that two people can barely pass each other. It is probably one of the most densly populated islands in the world; the Kuna chose to only inhabit 37 of the ~400 islands, which reflects their strong sense of community living (but also some of the islands leave no choice as they are too small for more than one house to be on them!). Of course this overcrowding brings some problems as well: there is no room to put the trash and so most of it – at least in Carti - just ends up in the water; the littered sea floor helped us resist the temptation of a dip into the water to escape the humid heat and wash off the dirt and sweat from the last two days in the jungle. Latrines all around over the water's edge were an even stronger reason to stay dirty a bit longer.

Luckily some of the passengers of the boat we came in on planned to travel onwards towards Corazon de Jesus (Heart of Jesus), a group of islands a 2 hour boat ride east, towards Colombia, so we joined them in the little “panga”, as the small long boats are called here, for the nice ride through the Caribbean. We passed many little islets, some just big enough for a house, others about the size of a football field. The islands were mostly only populated by a few coconut palms, coconuts being the main export of the Kuna. As Panama, ironically, doesn't have a coconut processing plant but Colombia has several, Colombian boats travel along the islands to buy coconuts from the Kuna, delivering all sorts of necessities and food in exchange. Corazon de Jesus turned out to be nearly as crowded as Carti, but we read in our guidebook many positive remarks about Isla Tigre, a few kilometers further east, so we arranged to get on another boat to get there.

And indeed Isla Tigre is the little paradise that we are all dreaming of when seeing postcards of carribean beaches: a non-crowded very pleasant village, that has preserved their traditions even more than most other islands of the archipelago, which are slowly succumbing to western habits and influences. Isla Tigre is home of extra friendly inhabitants who invited us over the days we spent there to witness a few of their ceremonies, dances and traditions, and were extremely willing to explain to us their culture, their communal way of living, their organizational structures, as well as their struggles and problems to survive in a modernizing world – including the problems of rubbish disposal, income, and preserving their traditions in the age of mobile phones and satellite TV. Kat was even invited to attend an upcoming birth by the local nurse - he informed us there are sadly no midwives here; unfortunately we left before the woman went into labor.