April 20 - 26, Isla Providence, Colombia
We sailed off Holandas Cays to Providence island together with Miss Molly2 catamaran. The trip was about 48 hours, and not very pleasant (more than 2 meters swells). On the Monday morning we were greeted by hundreds of the dolphins who accompanied us all the way to the entry channel of Providence. What a beautiful and true Caribbean island is Providence!
The best treasure of this place are the local people - very friendly, laid back and happy. The island is bilingual - everybody speaks both Spanish and English, and the locals are the descendants of the eastern Caribbean slaves and old English religious missioners. As much as I did not like much Colombian food on the mainland, I just loved the food on this little Colombian island - fresh fish, lobsters, conch, octopus, etc. accompanied by fresh plantains and rice cooked in the coconut milk, plus locally made very spicy pickled peppers. Yamm! There were not many restaurants around, and most of them on the beaches. The beaches all around the island - white sand, turquoise water, coconut palms, reggae music, rastafarian man cooking food, "coco loko" drink in the fresh coconut, and there are no any other people around... isn't that a description of the internal paradise? We even found a place for Kevin to practice kiteboarding - on the Manchenella beach the winds were much stronger than on other beaches. Our training was not very successful, because the wind was "not good" (citing Loud), but for sure we were entertainment for all the beach - everybody wanted to help us to bring the kite up in the sky, and one local guy actually turned out to be a kiteboarder. There was a nice fun trip around the island with the rented motobike. Especially we liked the Almond Bay beach - very "rasta" style.
On the anchorage we met with almost everybody and for a week had a very extensive social life. With the guidance of our new friends we hiked to the one of the vacation houses of Pablo Escobar. Now, his once beautiful house is almost demolished by the locals - the tiles, wood, roof, toilets, faucets, etc. now found the new home in the houses of the locals.
On Saturday we went to the Southwest Beach to see the horse races - one of the main local attractions. Laura and Jim (who is staying here every year for 7 years) organized a track-taxi for 16 people (all us cruisers) to transport us to the beach and back. The races itself took only 30 seconds, but it was very emotional seconds among locals, especially for those who lost. For some reason it's only two horses participating in this race, and each time it provokes a lot of heated conversations before and after races. The jockeys are young boys and are admired by the local girls a lot. The horses are raced right along the beach and spectators have to be very alert and careful not to get run over by horses, since there are no any markings of the racing track or any security around. But we survived this event and actually, it went so fast that we did not have time to take good pictures. Together with all the friends we got a lunch at the local bar-restaurant - this time we tried iguana stew, and that was very tasty.
We really loved this little paradise and would stay longer, if the weather would not speed us up to continue. This time we had the whole fleet to sail together, two catamarans (Miss Molly2 and Walking on Water) and two monohulls ("C'est si bon" and us). Our course to Honduras laid through some questionable areas in relation to security - recently there were some reports on the pirates activity around Honduras and Nicaragua shores and islands near Gorda Bank. So, sailing as a group would be more beneficial while crossing those areas.
On Sunday afternoon we got our Zarpe from Mr.Bush (the only immigration agent on the island) and were ready to continue towards Guatemala.
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