From Cartagena, we headed back to Santa Marta to show Jazz’s parents our boat. We survived the bus trip, unlike the guy in the statue. MarSol is much more direct than the last bus we took, but these shuttle buses are also noticeably more cramped. Captain’s carrier fit, but only because we snagged the front row. We did have to re-book one of our next hotels during the ride, though; that’s what Andrew’s doing on his laptop.
And we made it back to the boat, and got to show our house off! Captain was super excited to be clipped in outside, so he could have his daily stare at all the other boats and passers-by. Tauni caught a rare candid of Jazz and Andrew both on our phones, looking up restaurants for dinner.
We also took a tour of the marina, and lucked out on a pretty decent sunset.
While we were sitting in the marina cafe, a horse-drawn “sleigh” drew up bearing a pretty respectable Santa Claus. So we waited for the rush of kids to die down, and then got some pictures with the Big Guy.
For dinner we walked through the Parque Novios to Lulo, where we had some delicious arepas and a surprisingly good jazz combo outside on the street. (Of course, after a few songs they were drowned out by a guy playing covers of pop songs, badly, on an electric guitar. The Santa Marta buskers are aggressive, and not all of them are talented.) Then we walked around a little, soaking in the Christmastime vacation-party scene. A little walking around was about all Jazz was up for, as she was still just recovering from her booster shot.
The next day we went up to Minca, which we’ll write about separately. When we came back, our boat was immediately swarmed with kids, who had missed Captain and wanted to give him treats. Once we extricated ourselves, we went back to the center of town, for dinner at a taco bar accompanied by exactly the correct number of margaritas. Andrew made the mistake of ordering one of his with mezcal, which turned out to be an utterly vile and undrinkable house mezcal.
The next morning we breakfasted at the marina, and cranked out a load of laundry while the “grownups” slept in. And we got a chance to introduce Jazz’s parents to our friends from NautiLife.
Once everyone was up, we got packed up for our jaunt across Colombia. This would be the longest we’ve left the boat since we moved aboard, so packing took a little longer than usual. It would also be Captain’s first airplane ride! Check out the terrible carrier we had to use: we have two much better ones, but this was all we could find that came close to the airlines’ ridiculous size limits. It turned out that nobody ever checked and we totally could have gotten away with the bigger one. But you never know the first time you use an airline. They also told us we had to be there quite early when traveling with a pet, which resulted in us having a long wait time in the terminal. I think we handled it pretty well.
And Captain handled the flight like a champion, staying pretty relaxed in his carrier the whole way to Medellin.
Awww Captain and the leetle carrier!! 😍