SETTING SAIL!! Cartagena de Indias, COLOMBIA

Our new home for the next 4 days

The next morning we woke up and realized that we had slept right on the side of a major highway. I think we got a good three hours sleep. We headed into town where we were pleased to find that it was an old pirate town, full of castles, fortresses, and old rusty cannons.


Upon arriving in Cartagena we discovered that we only have a couple options to get to Panama.1. ride 200 kms through death jungle where only 1 man has succesfuly past with a two wheel drive rocon motorcycle. 2. try and get on smugglers boats and ferrys from near Gurilla Colombia, or..... Take a sailboat to the San Blas Islands and get dumped off right in the middle if Panama! hhhhmmm?? We got an amazing american style breakfast and started looking for a sailboat that would let us hitch a ride to Panama.  After sifting through all the harbors and ports some fisherman sent us over to find Pedro. We found em and after hours of haggling we had ourselfs a boat. Even if it did cost us Over a Million Pesos.

 Dave counting MILLIONS

haha not really that much for, a four day sailboat ride to The San Blas Islands and Panama, All the food you can eat, fishing, sailing lessons, getting the bikes across, a nice bed to sleep in, Basically everything I´ve ever dreamed of!

Part of the old Castle built to keep the Pirates out

Captain Pedro showed us the ropes around the ship and we headed into town. Only after we dropped off our sacks of all our filthy clothes of course! Cartagena is super awesome! Lots of the streets in the main old town are only wide enough for one car. I would assume that it looks alot like spain or france would. We just rode around for a few hours and saw the town for most of the night. After hours of good exploring we took er back to the ship and called it a night!ª

Downtown Cartagena

We spent the next day and a half getting ready to set sail. Turns out our boat was abandondened so we did quite a bit of repairs as well.  Night one we Loaded the bikes on the ship! Turns out its not exactly legal so we had to load em in the middle of the night. We pushed em out the dock, tied ropes aroud the front and back, Hooked the ropes to the mast, and then linched them out over the water and up into the boat! It was so Awesome! We tied em and tarped em to ensure their saftey during the 4 day boat ride. After all our hard work we all fell asleep on the deck. haha

The next morning we went out with captain Pedro and bought food for the 8 of us going over. Captain Pedro thinks alot like we do and we ended up spending over a Million Pesos on Food!! We were just throwing everything we wanted in the cart! It was a great time. We also bought a 50 gallon burlap sack full of Pineapples, another full of Mangos, and others full of other delicious fruits! I´m so Pumped for this! Our outting to buy food got me all excited for powell again. We finished up a few final repairs and right now we´re about to set sail! 50 hours from now we´re going to be in San Blas Islands. Monday morning we´ll be in Panama ready to get back on the road!

Wish us Luck!

The Pirates