Day 138 - Setting Sail on the Koala II

Cartagena

We spent our last day in Cartagena preparing for our boat trip to Panama, which meant putting everything we had in plastic bags to go inside our cases, and putting the essentials for the trip into our small backpacks. We decided to be extra cautious - so we had bags within bags within bags - just in case.

We were to meet the captain of our boat Koala II at the marina at 8pm, and fortunately had a a late checkout at 6pm, so we were able to fit in another lazy day before we had to leave. Once at the marina we enjoyed a nice dinner at the restaurant there, while we watched other groups get ready for their trips.

Just before 8pm we were met by Captain Mike and his son Juan, who we followed to our yacht that was moored nearby. Our large bags were stowed, then we were given a brief talk about the two rules we had to follow -  no drugs, and no drinking on the open sea. We were expecting some sort of safety talk as well, but that never happened.

Then on to the allocation of our cabins. The other couple were Swedish, and we were given the choice between the front cabin which had a lot more motion, or the back cabin which had the engine (noisy & hot), and since there was little wind we would be motoring all the way. The other couple jumped in first and chose the back cabin - which worked out well, since we wanted the front cabin.

Mike told us we'd be leaving around 10pm so we had time to go to the supermarket to stock up on supplies. However we ran into him on the footpath a little later and he told us we'd be leaving at 1am ... so we had three more hours to kill! It was very hot on the boat so we spent our time wandering around the marina and chatting with our travelling companions. In addition to the Swedish couple there was an Australian woman, and a younger Swiss girl who we initially thought was a fellow passenger but we later found out was Juan's "friend".

We sat around and shared our travelling war stories, strangely enough the others had also had bad experiences in Ecuador with robbery, and the subsequent poor police behaviour. We finally set sail a little after 1am and it was lovely sitting on the front of the yacht as it headed out of the bay, but once we left protected waters it quickly started getting rough so we all took sea sickness tablets and headed to bed.