We have entered Cartagena

We Left the San Blas and made it to Cartagena. Cartagena is a large Columbian city. It has many interesting forts and old buildings, next to high-rises. We are pretty happy, because there is grocery stores here that are US quality, and well stocked. The internet from our boat, is sadly not reliable enough to put many photos online, but I somehow managed to get one photo into my album. Follow the link in the bar to the right, dubbed "photos" or "photo album" or something along those lines, and you can see one photo of a man with his "ulu" and a kuna hut in the background. Sorry for the weird layout of the previous updates, but I don't know how to fix that. Expect more in the following week.

The Kuna Festival

I saw an interesting Kuna festival today, it was a girl's coming of age
festival. It involved most of the village going to the "Chicha Hut" and
drinking "chica". Chica is a alcoholic drink that the Kunas drink
container after container of in the festival. We stood outside the hut
peeking in occasionally through the holes between the walls to see what
was happening. Many of the Kunas were drunk. Later today the dancing part
of the ceremony will occur.
When we were in another area of the San Blas we met a family, and Heather
gave the daughter a stuffed animal. Well when we came here we discovered
that the family lives on this island. They were happy to see us, and
showed us their house. They gave us some beautiful shells, and a coconut
for each of us to drink. The family had quite a few pets including a dog,
two parakeets, and a baby tortoise. We have left from the place we were in
the last update, and moved on to the place where the festival has taken
place.-9/2/06

We have left the swimming pool, and checked out of the San Blas in
Porvenir, the Kuna capital. We left Porvenir the same day and came to the
Chi Chime keys, which are still in the San Blas. When we got to the Chi
Chime keys, before we even anchored we were bombarded by Kunas in their
ulus(canoes) trying to sell us molas, sell us fish, sell us lobster, and
sell us crab. After we told them "barco no liesto", which we think means
"boat no ready", we anchored then let them try to sell us things. For a
few hours we looked at what the steady stream of ulus had to sell us. The
Kunas here have better molas than in the rest of the San Blas The designs
of the molas are more intricate and traditional. We bought a bunch of
molas and crab, partially so we could keep the Kunas happy, and partially
for the food and art. One of the Kunas was very nice, and gave us a fish,
which divided among us amounted to about one bite per person.
Yesterday us and some people from another boat went to a tiny island,
with about five palm trees squeezed onto it. The island looked like the
type of island that occasionally goes underwater. The island will probably
suffer the same fate as Atlantis in about ten years if the predictions
about global warming hold true. Anyway, we built a little fire, that
occasionally would be splashed by the spray of a wave crashing. We put the
fire out by splashing it with water from the beach. I am really regretting
that we didn't buy marshmellows before we left the US. We've made tons of
fires, and yet we have no marshmellows so the fires never quite feel
complete.
We plan on heading to Cartagena next, then we have no clue what we are
doing. Some of our friends are staying in Cartagena, and we told them we
would meet up with them. I am told Cartagena has interesting old ruins,
and yet is a big city with plenty of stores. I hope we can get
marshmellows there. I am also told we can get ice cream there, which I
really really want. I never realized how much I would miss things like
that until we left the US. We should also be able to get fast internet
somewhere in Cartagena, so I can frequently update this blog with photos
and such. I have lots of neat photos of the San Blas that I want to put
online. We should be leaving for Cartagena in a day or two, but the
weather is slowing us down.
I do not like the weather. BOOOOOOMoooom rooom
OOMoooommm. As I write this thunder rumbles not-so-quietly in the
distance. Its tough surviving the heat down here, but it doesn't help that
whenever it rains we have to close the boat, limiting air flow. Every day
it rains ( owwww...... my ears… that last boom was LOUD) at least once
usually accompanied by thunder and his close friend lightning. ( I'll
resume this update later, I am getting too nervous to continue with all
the lightning, okay I'm back, ten booms and ten flashes later, or about
half an hour) Honestly, the weather down here is annoying.
Here is our GPS coordinates, for anybody trying to locate us on Google
Earth.

"09 35.220'N 078 52.969'W"

The San Blas islands may appear as a few smudges. That’s it for this
update, Adios!-9/1/06