Another beautiful place in Colombia- a short boat ride from the Santa Clara - one of the islands of Islas del Rosario - to the Hotel San Pedro de Majagua. Cartagena seemed to shimmer in the distance.
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| View of Cartagena |
As we docked at the island, we marveled at how quiet everything was there. We were the only tourists. I should mention that at time most cruise ships were not docking at Cartagena because of the danger level. Hmm, what were we doing there? :) I only felt nervous one time in this entire visit to Colombia. (I'll share that in a later post). The island was delightful. The hotel was very basic--thatched roofs, hammocks scattered around the grounds, etc. I did have a little concern about kissing bugs because of the thatched roofs (they cause Chagas disease, you know), but quickly forgot about that.
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| Open air restaurant |
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| Relax! |
We stowed our belongings in the room, changed to our swim suits, and strolled to the beach. (Notice how I'm strolling instead of race walking?) My son and his wife took a kayak and went exploring, while I just chilled out on the beach. Wonderful views!
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| Look at those beautiful shades of blue! |
I did manage to stir myself enough to wade in and cool off a little.
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| Refreshing! |
After lunch we explored a little. While walking around the island, we came across this cute creature!
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| Big lizard! |
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| Great trees! |
As we sat down to have a drink before dinner, we noticed the waiters erecting a fence of some sort just outside the restaurant. We noted that it blocked our view. Well, we soon found out why! In about thirty minutes, the trade winds began. I had never known exactly what that meant--well, it is a continuous wall of wind--no gusts, just a continuous solid wall of wind. I can certainly understand how it propelled the sailing ships. It lasted throughout the night and into the next day. Wow! What an experience, and just think, if we hadn't gone to the island, I would never had truly understood just how they sound and feel. A boat was to pick us up at 9:00 a.m. the next morning, but the winds were too strong. So began the wait. My son was eager to get back to his massage appointment that afternoon! We braved the wind and sat on the beach for a while and, explored a little more, had lunch and waited - and waited - and waited. My son called the hotel and re-scheduled his appointment. Finally about 4:00 p.m. a local sight seeing boat arrived! Hurrah! We barely were able to board because of the rough seas. We thought--"Well, just a short boat ride"--wrong!!
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| We were definitely an attraction! |
The people on the boat kept looking at us and smiling. We all had life jackets on and I was grateful, for within minutes we were soaking wet from waves splashing in our faces! Exciting!!
It turned out that the boat was taking people island hopping to swim on the sides of the islands away from the wind. So we had a little detour. We pulled up to another island and everyone disembarked and went swimming. Except us! We did disembark. :)
As we pulled into a channel going back to Cartagena, we noticed some fisherman with nets. They seemed to be standing in the water.
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| Men with nets |
They waved and called out to us. Uh, oh! We were in such shallow water that our boat became stuck! Not to fear, though - the men walked over and after much visiting and laughing, pushed us out and we were on our way again. Those Colombianos are certainly friendly!
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| At least the water was calm enough to take a photograph |
We were indeed a sorry sight when we arrived at the hotel--they did have a complimentary cocktail and profuse apologies for us. By the way, my son did miss his massage. But what a great adventure!!
Stay tuned for the next post--a few photos of Cartagena.
1 comment:
My favorite is the lizard ;)
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