Columbia here we come baby!!!!

We were not really sure about what to do next when our friends Lauri and Annina called us to tell us to come to Columbia. There was work there with boats taking backpackers on trips to and from Panama and Cartagena. It sounded awesome and so being where we were we did not take a lot of persuasion to move!! Columbia here we come. We only stayed 2 days in Trinidad before checking out and sailing 800 miles to Cartagena, with a plan to stop off for a break half way in Bonaire – one of the ABC Dutch Antilles.

Checking out of Trinidad was a bit of a pain. It is the only countries where when you check out you only have 4 hours before having to leave. Every other place we have visited the day before is quite alright. The guy was customs was so rude and said that we would have to come in the morning we were leaving (which just happened to be a Saturday) where we would be payable for overtime charges. It worked out quite expensive (around 30 US Dollars for immigration and about the same for customs so we decided to leave that afternoon. The guy asked why we did not want to pay the overtime charges as it was chicken feed to us. What a cheeky git!! Then he had the nerve to ask how much our boat was worth!! What really frustrates us about the Caribbean Islands is all the locals think we are millionaires just because we live on a boat and if we don’t want to by something off them, we are of course being tight and the attitudes can sometimes stink. For all this guy knew we could have just sailed here on a 10 ft boat worth a couple of hundred dollars!! They don’t seem to grasp the idea that we are on a budget and do not have a endless pit of money…we were actually going there to find work because we were skint. Anyway sorry: enough of my ranting.

We headed off from Trinidad to sail a 465nm trip to Bonaire. I was a bit worried about this trip as its so close to the Venuzalen coast and there is a lot of trouble with pirate attacks on vessels. Just only a few months ago a 34 foot boat was shot at a few times and not so long ago some people were killed. We decided to head north of our rhumb line and sat well off the coast. Anyway what a brilliant trip we had. The weather was completely mixed ranging from no wind to gusts of 42 knots…boiling hot sun and then torrential rain. We made our top speed of 12.2 knots surfing down the waves, it was a really quick passage. We also saw some dolphins in the first time in a while and we caught a tuna fish ( black fin ) the evening before we arrived.