Alright folks, here we are. I know it’s been a while, but hey, we didn’t just mess around. I believe this last month has been the most intense of them all. We knew the boat crossing had to come at some stage, but you’re never ready for something like this. Especially when our always incredibly small budget doesn’t really allow us to treat ourselves in any way, especially when we really need it: stressful moments.
So when you combine the worse and hottest weather we had in the whole trip together with driving many miles and shipping our beloved (and behated) Betsy on a Cargo boat, you soon realise that there wasn’t much time and mind space for creativity and pictures.
Having said that, definitely a lot happened in this last month.
We left Ecuador, crossed all Colombia, stayed two weeks in Cartagena to organise the shipment of the van, met up with Miki who traveled with us until Nicaragua, sailed to Panama, got the van back and drove to Nicaragua trough Costa Rica.
In between, all this (in no specific order):
• Stuck in the middle of nowhere in the Colombian highland, under a tropical storm, dark at night with the engine not able to cool down because of the very steep uphill mountain road, we then slept on the side of the road
• Spent two weeks in the most horrible climate ever in Cartagena, with unseen bureaucratic procedures to ship the van to Panama
• Sailed from Cartagena to Panama in the open ocean, puking my soul
• Snorkled with a shark
• Had to fix the transmission joint under a storm with just a screwdriver
• Seen 5 more mechanics
• Spent my 30th birthday in a mechanic shop
• Spent the day after my 30th birthday with an Ecuadorian family of 30 relatives dancing Macarena and what not
• Hitchhiked with a few truck drivers under the rain and in the middle of nowhere with the van down
• Had no shower for over two weeks
• Had a night shower and a pool bath on the roof of an authentic colonial palace, gently offered by Giuseppe, a 73 year old italian ex military now in Cartagena where he founded a school for disadvantaged kids, and his wife
• Got wasted on a desert island with the boat captain completely drunk, naked, with a starfish on his penis. And we almost sinked on the way back from the island to the boat, because the weight on the dinghy wasn’t properly distributed. You can imagine how funny it was to then watch the same drunk captain trying to lift the dinghy up on the boat.. Same guy who then eventually tried to “cure” a wound on the forehead of one of the passengers by pouring rum on it. He eventually brought us to Panama.
• Sailed in open ocean at night under a full thunder storm
• Had a fight with the guardian who had to release the van from the Colon Port, under pissing down rain, completely wet deep to my underwear
• Got drunk with a bunch of locals in Anton, a 200 people town in the middle of Panama, in a local bar with porn on the TV on the wall, and Elton John jukebox songs all over. But hey, 60 cents a beer? Adele and a prostitute were the only females in the bar.
• Biggest achievement of my life: finishing the Rubik cube while spending 5 days on a fantastic hostel on a beach, in front of the pacific ocean swinging in hammocks.
As usual, I’ll let you guess the rest of the story from the shots below. Stay tuned, the rest of Central America and Mexico are coming soon.
Photos by Adele Thomas
