A Peak at Cartagena

• This is Semana Santa (Easter/Holy Week). As in all Latin American countries, this is one of the most important times of the year. There have been many celebrations as the city shifts into holiday mode. Its a tourist city so some business carries on, but the change in pace has been noticable.
• I was told by a fellow hotel guest that all museums were free on the last Sunday of the month, even the Castillo de San Felipe Barajas. This is a huge fortress built at the eastern edge of the city in the 1600s. So I headed over to check it out...but the guard at the gate said, "No, because of Semana Santa they were not allowing free entry." He was polite and friendly and my mild cajoling ("But I've come such a long way", big smile) quickly unravelled his need to enforce the rules. He asked where I was from and when I told him Los Estados Unidos he remarked to his coworker that yes, I even resembled the American Ambassador. Now, I'll bet there is not one among us who could identify the Colombian Ambassador given a line up of ambassadors. But because of my likeness, he let me in for free.

Trish and the girls from our hotel at the Castillo de San Felipe

Castillo de San Felipe

• There is a small plaza in front of the church at the end of our street. Every night people gather there to enjoy the evening. Clearly, the heat plays a role in bringing people out. The plaza fills with kids, adults and elders; tourists and locals alike. The design of the plaza encourages people to congregate and benches are set in such a way as to provide a measure of privacy if wanted or a chance to interact; your choice. Food vendors set up and dinner can be had for about $2.50. Last night there was a concert with four bands, great music and a fun atmosphere. Another night they showed a movie projected on a wall across the plaza.

On the plaza

On the plaza

Our favorite food vendor
• The Carribean influence here is unmistakable, noticed in the music and the attitude of the locals. 'Sultry' is a word that has found its way into my conversations when describing Cartagena to friends.The city is much more than the small historic area at its core and things get more real in these areas. Because of our dealings with the van and the dog we've had the opportunity to meet people who live and work here, not just those serving the tourist industry. Invariably they are friendly, warm, polite and helpful.
• There is a strong police presence in Cartagena and we've been told elsewhere as well. The current president has been in office 8 years and is very well liked. He is credited with improving safety by stepping up police presence. While it can be disquieting at first, you quickly realize they are there for the general good. They are friendly and keep a low profile, just present enough to be seen but not intimidate. Many of them joke with the locals and play with the kids.
• This week a political prisoner of 12 years was released by FARC, the guerrilla faction, and the remains of another prisoner were returned to his widow. This was covered heavily in the papers and on the news. While in a restaurant a man at a nearby table asked the waiter to switch the TV channel from sports to the news. In a show of typical politeness he first asked us if we were watching the other program and looked for assurance that he would not be offending us by having the channel changed. Then, he shared with us the importance of these events for the prisoner's families as well as for the country. There are further plans to release other prisoners.
• And about speaking Spanish....here they speak with a bit of slur and as in a few other countries we've been in (notably, El Salvador) they often drop the 's'. Now, I grew up in New England, where the R's aren't, so I know about regional accents. But as students of Spanish it makes it that much more difficult when words like 'dos' become 'doe', 'esquina' becomes 'ekeena' and 'bosque' becomes 'bokay'. Sometimes people speak so fast that it's hard to identify where one word ends and the next word starts and I find myself repeating a word or phrase and thinking, 'Now if there was an 's' in here somewhere would it sound like something I know'.

A New Continent

Happy Birthday, Mike!

A week in Panama City preparing to ship the van to Colombia and a week in Cartagena picking it up. Okay, it didn't really take quite that long on either end, but that's how much time has elapsed.

On the seawall along Avenida Balboa in Panama City with Casco Viejo in the background (new pants bought in Costa Rica--prana, no less)

Trish, Chettie and the Burly Beast (minus the rocket box) in Panama City

MacGyver plumbing fitting in public toilet in Panama City (no, that is not a turd!)

I will not go through the step-by-step process of shipping our van, as I believe most people following our blog are more interested in our travels and adventures than our days of time-consuming bureaucratic frustrations, but let me say we appreciate those before us who have posted the step-by-step details as we've used them as rough guidelines for our processes, and as a reminder that other people have done this so it is possible.

Heading into the Cristobal Port loading area in Colon after about 4 hours of to-ing and fro-ing paperwork

Stacks of containers waiting to be loaded in Cristobal Port (taken out the slider window)

Instead I'll write about gut-churning worries about dog and van. First of all, the oil buzzer had been buzzing at odd times, but we had not been leaking oil.....until we were on the loading dock in the shipyard in Colon, about to put the vehicle in the container.

According to all the guidebooks, Colon is nothing but a slum best to be avoided. We couldn't avoid it as that is where the port is. So, I had done my share of worrying before we headed to Colon. Port cities conjure up a seedy ambiance at best and Colon was true to the stereotype.

But my fears about Colon were perhaps overwrought and though hardly a UNESCO site candidate, Colon wasn't so bad. What I really should have been worrying about was the oil! That's the thing about worry, right? You spend all that energy worrying about one thing and what gets you in the end is something totally different.

So, there we were after a week of paperwork for the van, the dog and us on the shipyard loading dock finally ready to put the Burly Beast in the container when we noticed she was leaking oil. There wasn't a thing we could do: plans had been laid, fees had been paid, reservations had been made and there was no turning back. So we drove her into the container, rented a car and drove back to Panama City....with images of an oil slick forming under the engine compartment now being the focus of my worries. And, our minds began to form plan b's including shipping the van back to the states, shipping an engine to Colombia or selling the van and flying to Argentina for a few months.

Guys securing the van in the container (oil trail clearly visible)

Mike and the port authority closing up the container

Sealing the container we noticed that one of the four latches was severly bent at the bottom rendering it inoperable....they took pictures, I took pictures and that was that. More to worry about.

We flew with Missy Chettie to Cartagena on Wednesday March 24th. Further worry about her comfort on the flight, stuffed into a small luggage hold as she was. Hard thing about this is you can't just explain to a dog "Now, honey, you're going to be in a cage, in a luggage hold for an hour and a half while we fly to Cartagena but we'll be right up front and we'll be there to pick you up when we the plane lands."

No....it's more like "We're stuffing you into this cage and leaving you with some men in grubby jumpsuits who will manipulate the cage around with some other big packages and pack you into a small space (at this point you'll probably pee yourself you'll be so scared); then you'll feel the entire vessel move and there will be a sensation you've never felt before as we fly through the air for an hour and a half. After the vessel abruptly makes contact with the ground, your cage will be unloaded by different men without us in sight and brought back to a building where you'll wait till they process us though customs and then, my dear Chettie, out of nowhere we will appear and we'll be reunited once again. This time you'll pee yourself out of sheer delight." 

And so it was that we flew with Chettie to Cartagena. More worry ensued when the pilot said we were flying at 21,000 feet. Could she breathe? Was it pressurized? (This was not a big jet liner, mind you, but a small prop plane with about 25 passengers on board.....oh, yeah, we also worried about her wailing so loud that all the passengers could hear her but she never made a peep.)

All that worry for naught, we all made it to Cartagena in one piece. Safely on the ground and reunited we headed to our hotel, which was lovely but quite spendy. So while it felt like the lap of luxury to be in a swanky hotel room it was hard to sleep knowing how much coin we were dropping per night. We quickly found other digs at a 1/4 of the price and while they are not nearly so plush I'd venture to say they are in a more real neighborhood with a great vibe instead of being in a tourist quarter.

The van was to arrive on Friday March 26th. We received the confirming email letting us know the ship would indeed be in on the 26th but not till 1pm, with the container being offloaded around 3pm. Waaaaay too late in the day to handle all the paperwork and retrieve the van by the end of business Friday, so we would have to wait till Monday.

This gave us the weekend to explore Cartagena but also gave us time to continue playing out all the horrible 'what-if' oil scenarios in our heads. Another characteristic of worry: you can't easily turn it off once your mind decides there is a situation in need of resolution. So even as we explored the city, low grade concern lurked beneath the surface. I employed some meditation techniques to deal with this, but alas those pesky van-thoughts kept resurfacing.

Street performer (human statue) in Cartagena

Another human statue in Cartagena (kidding...)

Street scene Cartagena

Cartagena is a beautiful city and of the comparable colonial cities we've travelled through I'd say I like it the best. It is right on the Carribean coast so the maritime influence is present; it's not nearly as polished as San Cristobal Mexico, Antigua Guatemala or Granada Nicaragua but it is all the more attractive for it's raw beauty.

Carribean Sea from the wall surrounding the old city

Doorway-Cartagena

Clearly, many of the buildings have been preserved and/or restored but many are in rough condition. Often, however, you pass a doorway of a seeming hulk of a building to catch a glimpse of a beautiful interior replete with gardens, a pool and gleaming tiled living areas--the owners apparantly subscribing to the philosophy that it is best not to draw attention to oneself and to keep the outside humble.


And then on Monday at 8am sharp, Mike was off to the port and Seaboard Marine's offices. He had started the paperwork process on Friday afternoon, getting a jump on as much as possible without the van in hand.


I stayed at our hotel with Chettie and, yup, worried. Mike never returned till 6:45pm and without the van! As it started to get dark my worries of the van and her problems turned to worries about Mike driving in an unfamiliar city in the dark. Upon his return, he proclaimed that the van was out of the container, and there was no oil-slick under her when he drove her out. Oil levels were down slightly but not near what we had feared.

He had wanted to inspect the engine compartment before just driving her away from the port and when he saw how late it was he asked the Seaboard guys if he could leave the van in their secure lot and pick her up in the morning.

He was able to take a quick peek and determined that the oil was NOT leaking from the engine but rather from the power-steering pump. All the tight manuvering on the loading dock had been the tipping point for this problem.

Tuesday the 29th he set off to pick her up, knowing there were a couple of other logistics to finish up before springing her from the shipyard. Sadly, it took nearly the whole day to deal with them and finally around 3pm he returned with the van. She is in a parqueo just steps from our hotel and in a good place for us to evaluate the issues and deal with them in a rational way instead of in the wild-imagination way of worry.

About the Chetster: She is still losing weight and is very thin. So while we have been here in Cartagena we've taken her to another vet and had additional tests done. They tell us she still has hookworms and also has a blood disorder. They seem knowledgeable and they have been treating her for three days. So though I'm worried about her, our stay in Cartagena has been a good thing for her in terms of being in one place with good veteranian care.

We intend to stay here through Tuesday and then start to work our way south west towards Ecuador. People we've spoken to all tell us how beautiful Colombia is and all reinforce that it is safe to travel in all but a few places.

A Pesty in the Westy Revisited

Remember the Pesty in the Westy? Well, for a couple of weeks Mike had been complaining of a smell in the van. Suspects included his shoes (which indeed carry a foul odor) and the rug (which had been wet more than once and maybe hadn´t dried out completely).

He kept asking if I could smell it while we were driving but I really couldn’t. He’d take his shoes off and huck them in back while driving and on several occasions he threatened to throw the rug out. This seemed a dramatic step when I thought we could just find a sunny spot and dry it out but good.

Then one night I leaned over the front driver’s seat and my stomach turned. This was the smell of rotting flesh. We moved things and searched for that errant piece of raw chicken that might have missed the trash bag but found nothing.

A day later when we were having the oil changed, Mike went on the hunt for the smell. Down the drain? No…..but in that area….and then, “Whoa, smell this” as he put his nose towards a knock-out in the door jam that opens to an empty space in the body of the van. (No thanks, I’ll believe you).

The knock-out matches one on the passenger side that serves as a passive vent, but on the driver’s side it is a dead-end cubby hole.

The guys changing the oil found the activity of flushing out the ‘raton’ more interesting than a standard oil change and everyone got in the act.

Luckily there is a small rubber stopper at the bottom of the chamber and with much effort they were able to flush out what was left of the Pesty in the Westy. First came fur and then came well-decayed flesh. With a solid application of Sani-Pine and an oil change, they sent us on our way.

We think this may be the same rodent we picked up in Utah and he’s been slowly decaying ever since. The process was hastened when we spent several days in some really wet highlands followed by some really dry beach time. And, thus, we hope, ends the Pesty in the Westy “tail”.

Team Westy Maintenance

So we were driving up this shelf road over a high mountain pass in a nasty, driving rain. It was one of those places with wind so strong the rain falls up instead of down. There is a place like this on Monarch Pass that my skier buddies will recognize.

And then, the oil warning buzzer sounded. Not much room to pull over, but we managed to tuck in. Mike checked the levels....all good, right where they should be.

We had just recently changed the oil and we had switched from synthetic to semi-synthetic. Was it that? Was the oil pump bad? Was it the beginning of the end? Bad engine=trip over.

And then the buzzer stopped. And then it started. And stopped.

We were close to San Isidro (Perez Zeledon to the locals) a mid-sized city we’d been through on earlier trips. It is the gate-way to Parque Nacional Chirripo and just an hour to Playa Dominical; for these reasons and it’s plethora of services, it’s a popular area for gringo retirees.

We set up a home base near Chirripo and started to attend to some issues that had been pending. In addition to the oil buzzer, we’d noticed that Chettie had lost a fair amount of weight so we sought out a good vet, something not known in some of the regions we had traveled. And, my hair was in need of some serious attention.

First, Mike consulted the Bentley and then online with the Samba. Samba legend, tencentlife, says assume the warning system is working and check the oil pressure. To be safe, we had the oil changed again….but the buzzer still sounded intermittently with no seeming rhyme or reason—sometimes in heat, sometimes in cold, under a load, or on flat ground.

We found a good VW mechanic and he and Mike tested the oil pressure. Fine. Best guess is that it is an electrical problem or a bad sender and not an oil pressure problem. It buys us a measure of peace of mind but the buzzer still sounds at odd times.

The vets at Los Alamos run a great clinic that was cleaner and more professional than some of the clinics I got my rabies shots in but that’s another story. They did some blood and fecal tests and determined that Chettie had hookworms. While we noticed she had lost weight the scale indicated since the start of our trip she had lost no less than 16 pounds. She was all ribs and hip bones.

She got an injection and almost immediately started putting weight back on. We’ve also noticed Mike has lost some weight, and hook worms are contagious to humans, so we’re keeping an eye on him. He says to cut him off when he hits 175 pounds—a weight he hasn’t seen since high school. Hey, who hasn’t wanted to drop a few pounds while still being able to eat cookies, chips and ice cream? We call it the hookworm diet. Kidding aside, we’ll keep an eye on him.

And I got a great haircut and color at a hip salon.

We stayed in the Chirripo valley for 4 nights and moved to another, less visited, valley just south of San Isidro for 3 more nights. Here, in one of those interesting twists of timing we met Marcos, a gregarious Costa Rican who immediately befriended us.

He invited us to his house for coffee and then to hike with him towards the south boundary of Parque Nacional Chirripo. We met some of his family, had coffee and orange bread with his wife and father-in-law and hiked to a hidden waterfall with his brother-in-law and nephew.

Marcos is a ring-leader, most happy when keeping many balls in the air. He is full of life and made us feel so welcomed. He understood when we told him we understand more when people speak slowly and we spent a whole day speaking Spanish in a way that helped our skills tremendously.

With all team members whole again and some good R&R under our belts we continued south east, still following the mountains and sleeping as high as possible. We stayed a couple of nights in the San Vito area and then made the border crossing into Panama.

We’ve been in Panama a little over a week. We spent some great time on both sides of Volcan Baru, camping first on a farm high on the less-developed western side and then at a German-run pension/hostel in the more tourist/gringo outpost of Boquete on the eastern side; both were beautiful in their own way. You can probably guess that we liked the western side better for its lack of tourists and more ‘real’ atmosphere.

We then made our way to Panama City and spent several days making arrangements to ship the van to Colombia. We found a nice, well located B&B/hostel with friendly staff and killer air-con to use as our home base while in Panama City and also spent some time being tourists visiting the Canal. We went to a vet and got all of Chettie’s papers updated and she is hookworm-free. Put Mike on the scale at the vet and his weight is holding steady.

We ship the van on Wednesday March 24th and will then fly (with Chettie) to Cartagena and pick up the vehicle on the 25th or 26th. Or at least that’s the plan. As always on a trip like this, there are many moving parts and plans can change for any number of reasons. Send us good thoughts as we work through this phase of our trip. We are really psyched to get to South America.

I am sorry about the lack of pictures....we´ve stayed in places that specifically say they have internet but in reality they have only heard of the internet.....and if there is a connection, posting pictures is clearly beyond the capabilities of the equipment. Our hotel in Panama City that we loved, says they have internet but it wasn´t working the whole time we were there.

Shaky Jake
The Vagabond Vendor

When I was in high school, I haunted a store called Shaky Jake’s. The story was that the Jake’s father was a rag dealer and his enterprising son culled the rags for usable clothing and sold it in a hip store in a hip neighborhood. It was my first introduction to the wonderful world of used clothing. The impression was so strong that I still prefer to shop used clothes stores than in malls.

My friend Anicka had a couple of naked parties while we were living in Salida and this was good fun too. The idea here is to clean out your closet and bring those items that still had lots of sass left in them but no longer worked for you to a party at which everyone piled their garb in different places. Jeans here, dresses there, tops over here and accessories in that room. Then, after a couple of drinks, you ‘shop’ through your friends stuff, getting naked when necessary, for new additions to your wardrobe. I always scored big at these events and just loved seeing someone else psyched about something I was ready to let go of.

It only occurred to me once we were on our journey how many articles of clothing I have with me came from the naked parties. A Dvorak Expeditions t-shirt, some Union Bay shorts that fit just right whether I’m 5 pounds up or 5 pounds down, a snappy cotton dress great for over your bathing suit or for flopping back and forth to the shower, a basic black v-neck t-shirt with just the right amount of stretch in it, a Royal Robbins quick drying travelers shirt…nearly half of the clothes I brought came from the naked parties, the other half came from some of my favorite used clothing stores: Boomerang and Free the Monkey.

So imagine my delight when poking around the tiny town of Bijagua we stumbled on a great, and I mean great, used clothes store! We are traveling with limited clothing with one or two things in each category: shorts, long pants, short sleeved shirts, t-shirts, etc. On a trip that will take us from tropics to tundra we need a little of everything.

And not everything I brought has earned its place in the closet. Some things are dangerously close to being jettisoned. And now, I have two new pair of capri length pants (key in hot countries where women in shorts stand out like the gringos they are) and Mike has 2 new pair of shorts and a pair of pants. Oh the little pleasures!

How can you sum up a whole country? I´ve gotten you as far as the Honduras-Nicaragua border...and we are now in Costa Rica.

It’s not that they don’t have the internet in Nicaragua, as I´ve said, it’s more that the places we like to go don’t have the internet. Or we go to a place that has internet but access is very spotty, affected by weather and not nearly strong enough to post text and pictures. Friends in rural areas will understand this completely.

We spent 3 weeks in Nicaragua and stayed in some incredible places. We camped in canyons on (nearly) dry river beds, we camped by waterfalls that we used for our showers in the morning, we camped in a park that protects the Managua water supply (more waterfalls), and we stayed along the shores of a lagoon in an extinct volcano. Most of our accommodations were pretty secluded and in places not often visited by gringo tourists. We love interacting with the locals in places where they are not burned out on travelers.

 

Mike eying the Estanzuela Waterfall, under which we showered while camping there

Trish, Chettie and the girls at Chocoyero El Brujo Park

Then the pendulum swings and we seek out places where we can interact with fellow travelers. For us this has worked out to be at youth hostels, where the owners are open to letting us park on their property and use the showers. We meet other people and share info on great places to go. We find the change from speaking only Spanish to speaking only English at first welcomed but eventually tiresome and the pendulum swings again.

 

While Nicaragua is beautiful, I believe we suffered a bit of traveler fatigue there. Mike’s line of “After this no more volcanoes for a while”, on the boat ride to Ometepe, the largest lake island in the world, made from two volcanos, spoke volumes. Are we that jaded? 

 Ometepe from the ferry across Lago de Nicaragua (btw, on the ferry we met Patrick Murphy´s Law School roommate and his family. Small world.)

Well, we also have the looming task of vehicle shipping on our minds. There are a lot of details to work out on this and they are best done in person, on site. That may be from Puntarenas, Costa Rica, or more likely, Panama City and Colon, Panama.

So we opted to enter Costa Rica and be one step closer. We’ve been here twice before and have hit all the highlights, some more than once. We are traveling down the spine of the mountains that divide the north east from the south west of the country, staying in the highlands as much as possible to soak up the cool mountain air.

Immediately upon entering Costa Rica we noticed a higher standard of living than we have seen for some time. I didn’t realize that the poverty in some of the countries we’ve been in was affecting me until we were away from it. We are still in relatively remote areas, clearly off the tour company itinerary; but there is a strong sense of prosperity nearly everywhere we go.

Along with the sense of prosperity comes a higher cost of living. Things are much more expensive here. But, there are more things to buy.

We continue to stay in outrageously beautiful places and our activities include hiking, scouting around towns to get a sense of place and people and getting Chettie her play time which usually involves a hike, a swim or some ball retrieving. Sometimes the main activity is relaxation;others we are busy with the tasks of life: grocery shopping, van maintenance, internet, etc. When we find a place that is chill we hang out for a few days. 

 Chettie with Volcan Tenorio from Bijagua CR

 

 Burly Beast at Catarata Albergue campsite

We had decided to cross Honduras in a day because of the political unrest there and their unfavorable opinion of the United States.
 We got ourselves ready for a big day of travel and left for the border between El Salvador and Honduras at 6:30am. El Amatillo is the city on the El Salvador side. We arrived by 9am (early enough) and were suddenly thrust into border-crossing madness. We were in a line of traffic, dwarfed by huge semi-trailers. It was overwhelming.



We opted to hire a tramitadore to facilitate the crossing. We are not really sure his services helped or were worth the money we paid. Perhaps we would still be sitting there had we not hired him. Perhaps we would have paid even more to the border officials for the vehicle, the dog and us to enter Honduras. Perhaps it`s best that we’ll never know.
 But, in two and a half hours we were in. It takes three hours to drive border to border across the part of Honduras that necks down to its Pacific coastline. We were stopped no less than four times at police check points.

Each time we were asked for our license and papers for the car…and then for our triangles. We had read about this from other travelers who had done the trip: Get emergency triangles as some officials seem to really think this is important. We even held them in our hands in an auto parts store in California, but they were heavy and cumbersome and expensive for what they were and we opted out. Ha. We were wishing for those triangles.

Of the four stops, three ‘officers’ tried to extort money from us for not having triangles. We took advice from the same travelers who had recommended we get them and played dumb. `Lo siento, no entiendo` (I’m sorry, I don’t understand).

After trying for a few minutes to tell us we were in BIG trouble for not having them, the first officer said “Five dollars; Coca Cola” apparently hoping to get something for his efforts.

At the second stop after pretending not to understand, I just said “Gracias” with a big smile and the officer gave us our paperwork back apparently giving up.
The last stop was the most difficult and our charade of not understanding was proving less effective. The officer drew triangles in the dust on our mirror and (in Spanish) asked what we would do if we got a flat tire (when you would certainly need your road side triangles). Mike hit the emergency flasher (oops, we really did understand) which ironically enough is marked by a triangle. Not good enough. The officer stopped a trucker coming from the opposite direction and asked for his triangles in order to show them to us. “Ooooh, triangles. Nope, we don’t have those”. Smile.
 He tried to tell us we had to pay a fine of $35 for each triangle we were lacking and go back to the last town to pay the fine at the bank. “Oh, we’ll go to the next town and pay”; “Noooo, you have to go back”.
 I even tried to offer him a soda (we had no coke with us, sorry, Fresca would have to do) but he did not want my bribe. And then after maybe 20 minutes, he let out a big sigh, gave us our paperwork back and sent us on our way. Maybe he should have taken my offer after all.

We stopped in the next town and bought two folding triangles for 5 bucks as we were starting to wonder if we’d get across Honduras without landing in jail for not having them. With triangles in hand we set off for the next check point, but alas, there were no more check points and we arrived at the border with Nicaragua with newly purchased triangles and no one to share them with.

The border crossing between Honduras and Nicaragua was muy tranquilo compared with the one between El Salvador and Honduras that we had done earlier that day. We were the only people there and the officials actually hung out by our van, yes, making friends with Chettie and marveling at our casa rodante. With little effort we were in Nicaragua and on our way to more adventure.

One day, a week or so later we came upon a traffic stop at which we were asked for our triangles and our fire extinguisher. We were quite proud to show that we were in compliance on both counts and we were quickly on our way.