January 27, 2024
Cartagena was pretty interesting in the first week, but the second week has been absolutely crazy. In a good way.
It started when we went to dinner with the Panama Posse. Now the Panama Posse gathering was also an awards celebration for a bunch of local sailors (still not sure how that came together), and we ended up sitting at a table with some officers in the Colombian Armada.
These are really just kids. They weren’t wearing uniforms and they were a blast. Luckily they spoke enough English that the conversation moved along well. In the end we got an invitation to tour their ships on Sunday. What a treat that was. There are no pictures from the battleship (ARC Almirante Tono), but we did get a few exterior shots from the supply ship (ARC Caribe).
For their kindness we invited a few of them back to our boat for dinner and that was a fun affair.
Then they insisted on taking us out to one of the better restaurants in the area 7 Cielos. Here is a shot from the rooftop after dinner. (The group keeps changing but Marcela is the glue and Julio is the senior officer.)
We had to stop hanging out with them because we are old and they are wearing us down. No, seriously, Megan had come for a visit too, and so we wanted some alone time with her before she departed on Thursday. Similarly Jinhee departed on Friday. Some time alone was required.
So it seems like a busy week from all that, but on top of that I finally signed up for Spanish language training and so my mornings (8-12) were completely filled as well as time in the evening to do homework and class events.
One downside is that I haven’t been able to get out on the bike, not to mention boat chores. Today was a good day to start catching up on all of that and I got a 65km ride in which was nice, and I am working on little projects to keep the boat habitable.
To say the least, it has been a bit busy. We have new friends and Megan has increased her country count by one and my Spanish is improving rapidly.
On the Spanish language front, don’t get too excited. When I arrived I knew about 20 words of Spanish. Now I know about 200 words of Spanish, but other than “Mi llama Don”, I can’t make a meaningful sentence. I have signed up for a second week in hopes that I will have a breakthrough.
Friday night was probably exciting as usual but I was tired and stayed in to watch some Spanish language television. Then the fireworks started.
This is from the back of the boat. The last bit of the fireworks.
