Lee n Tan

Tuesday January 26, 2010 – spent the morning on the beach having a swim etc. Everyone started getting ready early (lots of young Aussie blokes in-house) so we went on a mission to buy some limes to go with the Canchasa we have been carrying since Antigua, Guatemala.

Mission accomplished we head to ‘Los Baguettes de Maria’ for some lunch, awesome baguettes, great liner for the stomach. Some of the Aussies have gone all out & made hand painted t-shirts for the big event & bought themselves heaps of booze as Jimmy has said the bar won’t open until later this arvo!

Everyone was nicely settled in and getting quite merry, the body paint & pens were out & people had some interesting things on their bodies!!! Then the owner decides to open up the bar early & instead of announcing to everyone that they need to finish up their drinks etc he gets his staff to put up signs saying ‘NO outside alcohol Sorry Mate’ & puts one of them on the door to stop people as they are coming in…….not very Australian of him!!!! As you can imagine a few of the guys started getting pretty vocal about it & throughout the night still had issues, but there wasn’t much they could do about it.

One of the guys had downloaded the hottest 100 so we listened to that while drinking. The owner put on a pretty good barbie for 15000, the only problem was we didn’t eat until after 9pm but all-in-all it was a pretty good Aussie Day in Colombia!!

We got to chatting to one group of 5 Aussie lads and did they get a welcome to ‘Taganga’. On their first night here they were walking home from one of the bars & the cops stopped them. They were taken back to the station on the suspicion of holding cocaine (one of the guys did have some on him). As the strip search started a bag miraculously appeared on the ground! The fine started off at 1000 Euro each but quickly dropped to 200US each which they paid (of course).

The drugs being held by one of the guys was never found. He was very careful at consealing it in his clothes while the strip search was taking place & then he was able to pop it (somehow) where the sun doesn’t shine so as to make sure it definetely wouldn’t be found! The only problem was that the bag had a small tear so the bottom half of his body got quite a hit, he found out this is known as ’shelving’. The remaining cocaine was flushed as none of the other guys wanted after that!!!

Monday January 25, 2010 – Had breakfast at the usual haunt, then hopped in a cab (11,000) to the bus terminal. Arrived around 10.30am and the bus to Barranquilla (10,000 ea) leaves at 11am with Brasilia……perfect!

We arrived at 1.20pm, definetely think we got ripped with the food on the bus. I think we were only supposed to give a tip…it was a cheap lunch anyway! With our limited Spanish we couldn’t find out times for buses later this afternoon so we ended up jumping on a bus (Berlitienda 11,000 ea) at half past and heading straight for Santa Marta instead of searching the town for accommodation for carnaval.

We arrived around 4pm & jumped straight into a taxi to Taganga (12000) only a short ride up & over the hill. The place looks amazing, beautiful & calm little bay. The surrounding scenery however was not what we expected, very dry & bare with lots of cacti dotting the landscape!

Our taxi driver didn’t know Bayview Hostel but luckily we spotted one of the Aussies from the other yacht & he was able to point us in the right direction. We ended up with the last private room, not cheap at 60,000 per night but it’s a pretty cool spot – Bayview Hostel.

We cruised around town & grabbed something to eat, one really cool bonus is the food is heaps cheaper here than any where else we have been. When we got back to the hostel we watched the last half of Die Hard & then hit the bar and met Jimmy. He’s an aussie that has been running the bar for the last month, he gets a pretty good deal – free bed & a percentage of the takings.

Jimmy is organising a big event for Australia Day tomorrow -barbie, cold beers & a cricket match. The place seems to be crawling with Aussies so it should be a great day!

We spent the rest of the evening having a few drinks & watching Kill Bill on the projector out over the pool. We didn’t get to see the end we were too shagged!

Saturday January 23, 2010 – really didn’t get up to much today, one of those lazy days just hangin out!!

Thursday January 21, 2010 – went walking & found a street vendor for breakfast selling chorizo, fried plantain & some sort of cheese, great for 4500 pesos (with a drink). Walking the streets we bumped into Daniel from the boat & teed up going to the beach this arvo at around 2.30pm

Went back to the hotel & did a bit of planning for the next few weeks, couldn’t find any accommodation for Carnaval in Feb which is a bit of a worry!!

Daniel turned up around 1, lucky we were hangin out at the hotel. He had met up with some French guys he went out with the other night & they wanted to go to the beach earlier. We rented some chairs, the guys had some beers & we hung out at the beach until dark. The only bad part of the day was we lost the aerobi in the water, which put a little dampener on the day.

Lee & Daniel stumbled across some of the guys from the other boat playin beach volleyball so they had a couple of games with them (the French guys had left earlier). Then we organised to meet at their hostel for drinks around 10pm and then go out on the town!

We were really bad for dinner (we didn’t have lunch) then we went back to the hotel & ended having a few drinks with a young Aussie couple stayin there. By the time 10 came around we were buggered & pulled the pin on going out. We didn’t go to bed till around midnight then we called mum & caught up on all the goings on with their business back home, interesting times for them!!

Wednesday January 13, 2010 – well didn’t we stuff up, we spoke to Luis this morning & he said ‘will you be out of your room by 11?’ we were a bit shocked as we leave tomorrow. Turns out we stuffed up & booked for 4 nights instead of 5! We spent an hour or more trying to find alternate accommodation but everything is booked solid. We waited for Luis to get back and asked if we could sleep in the lounge/TV room (where all of his overbookings seem to end up), no problems & the extra bonus is it’s heaps cheaper than our other room.

That all sorted I decided we should see this city & get some photos!! We hopped in a cab & headed for ‘Cerro Ancon’ the highest point of Panama City! The views were amazing!! We got to see the Miraflores Locks (where we visited Monday) from a different perspective with the ships heading out into the Pacific Ocean and of course the city with all it’s highrises!!

Our next stop was to head out to the ‘calzada’ a 2km long palm tree-lined causeway which connects 4 small islands to the mainland. From here we got awesome views over looking the bay with the city skyline behind. We had not picked up our obligatory magnet yet, so luckily there was a cheesy souvenir stand out there as well. All in all a fantastic day!!

Tomorrow it’s off to Carti to catch the yatch to Colombia!!!