..pass the Darian into Colombia.. :)

dear friends and family! :)

this morning I set my foot onto South American ground and started so the third part of my trip.. I`m still a bit organizing stuff here and getting ideas where to go in Colombia, but I´m happy that I made it and tomorrow morning I`ll get the bike off the boat, showing it to customs and then I`ll be on the road again! :)

well.. for my skydive project in Venezuela it seems that I have to take a flight to Caracas and back, leaving the bike in Colombia. As I heard, Venezuela is not really safe and I don´t want to get into troubles with corrupt policemen on the road and even going there by bus seems to be a hassle (even if bus is safe, it still would be 30hrs of Busride.. if this is true, I rather pay some dollars to get there and back smoothly :) but because it´s a national holiday today, I have to wait until tomorrow to set this up.

so I got my bike early in the morning and made it without problems to the caribbean coast. There were some mountains, but the fan started and seemed to work well.. so no overheating so far. It will still take some more hundreds of kilometers to regain my full confidance into it.. I was then a bit early and went over to a small Kuna island, having lunch and a beer and spent the rest of the time waiting on the peer, playing guitar and singing :D
at around 5 o`clock Fritz and his crew arrived and some local Kuna helped to load the bike and I had dinner with the people on board, waiting for the rest to arrive the next morning. We expected another 10 people but instead there were 15 and we were pretty packed on that boat (well, it was OK in the end, but the mix of passengers could have been different.. there were all guys exept for one girl from Switzerland (the most reserved girl I`ve ever met :P and so the level of testosteron was on the upper limit ;) hehe :)
Fritz himself is also quite a special guy.. there is not a single day where he wouldn`t curse his employee Luis (a really awesome Colombian guy!!) yelling at him for not much of a reason :-/ I don`t share his ideas about life.. he got bitter over time, is getting divorced from his wife and has another life partner on boat (where he probably has many girls in his life for convenience that he buys for little money down here in South America :-/ yeah.. not really my world.. but hey, he also let us guests have our way and you can party and do whatever you want on that boat, as long you don´t set it on fire ;)

the trip was really nice! ..OK, there was no wind to sail down to Cartagena, so the engines were running for 36 hours, while driving down, but we had a good time (and lots of rum ;) hehe :) we stopped at some of the San Blas islands (see pictures) and went snorkeling there.. I´ve seen a shark, two rays, walking sea stars and did some apnoe-diving.. it´s always fun!! :D especially being 10m below surface and looking up through all the water masses! :D
we also caught a shark over night.. not really sure if this is allowed and I had my remorses eating it, but the shark curry on the second day was really tasty! so I take this as a once-in-my-lifetime-experience and yes, it was pretty exciting to get it out (just for them being in extinction I can´t really stand for it). Furthermore really pretty animals, gliding through the sea.. so they should be admired instead of hunted!
I met cool people along the way.. was tough a bit upset the second morning, when I figured out that some half-baked moron threw my mask over board (well, wasn´t around any more and I bet somebody knows more about it).. too bad, I made my Open Water with it and it was 80 USD.. money I´d like to save, especially because it was not my fault and the duchebag who did it didn´t have the balls to tell me! :P and then I´ve also seen that somebody just took of my tabacco and supplies.. this really pissed me off for ruining all the thrust I had into this bunch of people! but then I had to sort it out in my head, speak it out loudly (let them know about my frustration! :) and then letting it go, because there is nothing else you can do about and you don´t want to let it ruin your day.. so another experience that let´s me grow in life! :)
I first suspected a guy who was really, really drunk, making a lot of noise and trouble at night and then the next morning firing an emergency flare gun out of a window (stupid-stupid-stupid) and I avoided the guy for the rest of the trip.. but then the last night we talked together about all this stuff and I´m not sure if he has something to do with the things happened.. at least he gave me a lot of credits for who I am and for what I do :) so I felt I was kinda putting him back and judging more than I should on this very first day.. but yes, at least we had some deep talk in the end ;) hehe :) on certain discussions I just didn´t want to participate for being too much "macho" but I had a great time on the boat.. lying around in the "trampolin" (a net inbetween the two bodies of the ship) and listening to some sweet psy trance tunes, doing some contact juggling and talking to people :) poeple enjoyed me playing didgeridoo and we had some nice jams on that boat. (no reading books.. it´s not really my thing. I don´t have to be traveling for doing this..)

what more.. that`s about it.. was walking around in the old town today, making some pictures and just uploaded them in Picasa. So I will add some comments to them and log out.. eventually completing the boat trip the next day, if write-worthy things come to my mind ;) hehe :)

be well out there and my best blessings from South America!!!