YARRRRRRRR

Ahoy!

We are in Cartagena, Colmbia which is by far my favorite place this trip. It feels like it should be in Cuba! The amazing old Spanish architecture here makes the city feel like it`s back in the 1700s. There is even an old city wall with cannons to keep out the pirates! Particullarly Francis Drake who seized this city 3 times in the 1500s.

The weather here is soooooo hot and humid. I constantly feel sticky from the humidity. I feel Ryan`s pain in Ghana since we are around the same lattitude. The ocean is like swimming in bath water so that`s no relief. You can take a cold shower but you come out of the shower swetting. We`ve found there are three solutions.
1) Ice cold beer (80 cents)
2) Ice cold fresh maracuya (passion fruit) smoothies (1 dollar)
3) Ice cold fresh maracuya smoothies made with Rum. (2 dollars)
As you can see poor us are forced to drink deliciously cold cheap beer under palm trees all day to save money and stay cool! Oh what a life it is here in the carribbean.

Yesterday we went to the Volcàn del Totumo which is a 60 ft tall mud volcano. It`s litterally a volcano made out of mud. Inside it has thereputic mud baths. It`s this thick thick thick grey mud and you jump in and a local starts massaging you. They say this service is optional but it`s hard to tell them no. So allegedly this pit is about 200 meters deep but it`s nearly impossible to sink to below your shoulders. The mud is always pushing you up. After a nice massage we played around in the mud for a while trying to dunk eachother completely under. You can push someone to about their neck when they start coming back up. It`s a strange feeling to be suspended in mud.

Today is a very big day because we are off on our 5 day trip to Panama. We are taking a sail boat from Cartagena to the San Blas islands off the coast of Panama. We will have 2 days on the open ocean and then monday morning we arrive at the islands. We spend the next three days hopping from remote island to remote island swimming, snorkeling, fishing, hanging out by a fire, and meeting the indigenous tribes. We arrive on the final island which is actually quite large and close to Panama on Thursday morning. We apparently can rent a hammoc and have 3 meals with a local family on the beach so we will stay there Thursday night. Friday we fly to Panama city and meet Bree`s friend Sarah who is flying in to spend a week with us.

So until next time I`ll be out on the open sea unleashing my inner pirate.