Pretirement

Two weeks ago I arrived in Panama City, the average backpacker’s southernmost stop in North America. To go further south would take you to Darién, the Panamanian province that borders Colombia. It’s an area of dense jungle with no roads for thirty miles. Infested with fer de lance snakes and Colombian guerrilla hideouts, the land crossing to South America has only been done by a handful of explorers outfitted with Land Rovers and large expeditions led by native guides. I decided to skip that adventure and booked passage on a yacht sailing to Cartagena, Colombia.

Posters are up all over Panama City and Cartagena, but a Panama City hostel, Mamallena, will do the booking for you. Incidentally, this hostel has a weight bench and free breakfast all day and is a hundred times better than where we stayed: Voyager, the aging Lonely Planet Central America’s top pick for Panama. Extremely helpful Lee at Mamallena told me that two yachts were ready to leave. I signed up to sail with Guillermo on the Tango three days later.

Panama is on the Pacific side of the great Canal, but the yachts to Colombia all sail to Cartagena on the Caribbean side. Crossing the Canal costs a 35-foot yacht about $800 each way, so captains wait for passengers in a scattering of sleepy ports on the Caribbean side. So on the morning of our passage, Roxanne and I took a series of buses to Portobelo where we found Guillermo and the three other passengers waiting for us.

Portobelo has a nice old dilapidated church whose most famous feature is a striking figure of Jesus carrying the cross. It’s one of those life size sculptures Catholic churches always keep behind glass. This Jesus is wearing a purple robe with silver accents, wears a silver crown, and is totally black. Proud street vendors outside the church doors sell little Black Jesus action figures, and one of the chicken buses passing through the town had an image of Black Jesus airbrushed across its hood. Other than Black Jesus and two little forts that were sacked by the dread pirate Henry Morgan ages before he became famous for his crummy spiced rum, Portobelo is dead. Luckily we were the last passengers to arrive so we got underway within an hour of our arrival.

After hearing bad stories about some captains, notably Carlos and John, who took away one groups stash of rum on the first day of their trip, we were immediately relieved to meet Guillermo. He’s an Argentinian who’s been running the Portobelo-Cartagena route for a year on his 34-foot Tango. Guillermo is a competent sailor and a remarkably open, friendly, and interesting guy. I recommend him to anybody taking that trip.

Sailing was unremarkable. Seas were flat and the wind was dead, so we motored all but about two of our 36 hours. We “sailed” through the first night and arrived in the San Blas islands at daybreak. San Blas is home to the Kuna people, an indigenous group that managed to fight off first the Spanish and then the Panamanians to maintain a proud culture and an autonomous direct democracy. Kuna women, with their pierced noses, banded leggings, headscarfs, and brightly colored molas, have in my opinion the best traditional dress of anyone in North America.

We spent three days and two nights in the islands. On the second day we ate smoked fish and coconut rice cooked by the lone family living on a neighboring island. Interestingly, two of the men in the family were a gay couple. Panamanian officials were driven off the islands a generation ago for trying to enforce Roman Catholic values on local people, and this family was enjoying the fruits of that victory. We bought some beautiful molas that we had to hold high above the water as we swam back to the yacht, and then set sail for Cartagena.

Thirty-six hours of sailing, two days and a night on the water. We saw lots of dolphins. Roxanne and two others suffered from seasickness the whole journey, but we arrived on time to Cartagena on the morning of our fifth day since leaving Portobelo. We’ve been here a day and I’m in love with the city. But I’ll save writing about Cartagena for another day…