July 15, 2013-Cartagena: Another New Place (Revision)

Cartagena in the Morning

Sunday we left Santa Marta. Monday we arrived in Cartagena. We travelled overnight and arrived in a new place. Another new place. We've seen a few new places. Everything is different yet somehow the same. Another city, another stop. It's 30 hours in Cartagena now, but we've been in this space for close on 30 years. We're used to it.

We've been getting established here.

The routine: Secure a marina berth, get power, get the air conditioner going (because this place swelters and we need air conditioning), get the Internet working, go to the office and fill out papers, talk to the shipping agent (a requirement in Columbia) and get him working on our behalf with the Port Capitan, then walk to town and find the supermarket, bank machine, laundry, etc.

We did all that yesterday. We do it everywhere we go, usually on the first day, like we did here.

There are a few differences sometimes. In Cartagena there was a complication since the marina was full but we squeezed our way into a spot and it looks like they will let us stay in it. So that solved that.

Then we found out that this marina is subject to violent squalls; another problem. They say that about once a month you get hit by a big one, they call it Culo de Pollo (ass of the chicken) and you need to be tied up really good. So today we got the diver to go down and tie us to the big moorings and now that's done too.

Now we can get into life as normal.

By "normal" I mean life in which we go shopping, run errands, have doctor's visits, use mobile telephones, work on the Internet, get our laundry done, etcetera, etcetera.

Boy, this gets real crazy. We're living on our boat, travelling around the world, but we're also trying to live a normal life.

That's the way we think of it. This is not a trip or a travel adventure, or a long holiday, or camping out. It's just living in some different places.

On a sailboat.

And we like it. We even like the first day, when we're really lost. We've sort of gotten addicted to that. To the thrill of seeing the new place, of being lost, then getting to know the place. Making it home.

And now, a View From an Alternate Universe

I'm sitting here on my settee.

It's the same settee in the same boat that I sat on in Seattle in 1986. It looks the same, feels the same. I can't see outside. I could still be in Seattle.

Feels like it.

Am I still in Seattle?

What if we haven't moving at all? What if the world is moving around us instead?

What if we are sitting here, in a single spot in the universe, and we've never moved from that spot, and on certain nights, while we are sleeping, the world around this spot gets totally re-arranged. We wake up and the town looks different, the stores are in different places, the bathrooms and laundry are all new, the language is different, the money is different. The world we knew the day before is all mixed up. Like some big joke played by the gods.

What can we do? We have no choice but to go through the steps of sorting out all of our surroundings again. We have to figure out the new world which has sprung up around us and we do it. In a day or two we've adjusted and we resume our normal life.

When we go shopping every few days the only difference is that periodically we have to learn the new route to the store because the crazy world got changed since the last time we went shopping.

However, we're getting good at that.

In fact like I said, we've gotten addicted to it. Just about as soon as we get comfortable in a place we start wondering what the next one will look like.

We have to move on.

Or the world has to move on for us.

It's a cycle which repeats endlessly.

It's cruising.

Wings in Club Nautico

Click here for more arrival photos.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Cartagena