Waterfront Buildings

We left Aruba and traveled throughout the night to reach Caracao. Pronounced (Cay Oh See Ah Oh).

The seas started out a bit rough but subsided to what was comfortable. No lightning so all was well. We arived at Spanish Waters. A natural harbour where we would share and anchor with about 300 other boaters. Believe it or not we had a secluded spot. The bugs were crazy however. We had to break out the mosquito netting for Ernie.

We arrived on a Friday and Friday evening there was a happy hour for cruisers at one of the local restaurants. We were fortunate enough to meet Robert a local resident that would give us his wife's car.

Caracao pronounced ( Care ah say oh) is the largest of the ABC Islands. It is 60 km from tthe Venezuelan border. It is 65 km long and is 11 km at its widest spot. The lanscape is very barren because of the low rainfall. However since the rain from Hurrican Tomas (the one that kept us in Colombia) it has had more rain than any other year to date. Everything is lush and green.

There are 150,000 people that live on the island, and like Aruba they all speak many languages. Which just totaly amazes me.

The economy is very diversified with the oil industry being their largest employer. The take Venezuelan oil and refine it.

Coral reefs surround the island which adds greatly to the tourist attraction.

The next day we headed out with geocache lats/longs. These caches would give us both history and views not normally seen by visitors to the island.

Our first stop was the hiking area that would take us to the salt ponds where we hoped to see flamingos. When we arrived a local (I forgot his name on the boat and will fill it in this blank when I next have internet) with his two dogs took us for a hike that was not known to anyone but the locals. It gave us terrific views. Unfortunately due to all the rain we could not get near the sight of the flamingos. Ken did however find the geocache and we continued on. Our new friend was a wisdom of local knowledge both political and historical.

We happened to anchor just below a historical site. The building that kept slaves whom were sick after their crossing from Africa.

We learnt that the Spaniards and the Portugese were quite aware of the value of slaves and brought boat loads to help in the production of the salt pans. At one point 24,000 slaves in 7 years were brought in to be used or sold to neighbouring islands. Due to the lack of documentation there is still not a lot know to the full extent of the slave trade.

We continued our way to downtown. The city of Willemstad is the capital with a population of 140,000. Only 10,000 live elsewhere on the island. The architecture is a joyous tropical adaption of 17th century Dutch, painted in storybook colours. It is a delight to look at.

The floating market is a picturesque string of visiting Colombian and Venezuelan boats selling their fruit and vegetables from the mainland.

We headed towards the floating bridge to our surprise we became involved in a passing parade.

A Santa Clause Parade of types. I will try to explain it to best as we were told.

2 weeks prior to Dec 06 which is Sint Niccolas Day. In the Netherlands it was said that that Sintaklaus left by steamship from Spain 2 weeks prior with his helper Black Pete. Santa goes around at night and checks his book for the good boys and girls. He will leave candy and presents for the good ones butttttttttttttttttttttttt! the bad ones get bagged up and taken back to Spain with Black Pete. We were told by the family explaining this to us that 7 yr old boys are very scared of St Pete. For the 2 weeks these traveling duos visit the schools and can be seen all around.

The children trying to show how good they have been by singing traditional songs and leaving wooden shoes filled with hay and carrots for the horse or donkey that Santa and Pete use nightly. In return Pete fills the shoes nightly with Candy or gifts.

We were told that once kids or adults get older the gifts become more of a gag gift for fun. It was a fun thing to witness and a festival continued on the street with singing and kids dressed up as Pete's.

Weather kept us longer in Caracao than expected but we have been in Bonaire for awhile and I will write about here in the following weeks. The weather has not been good with high winds and very steep waves. We hope to have a weather window by Mon/Tues and continue going East. Like all that are going the other way have said you are doing it the hard way. Oh well.

The Black Petes cover themselves with make up to make themselves as black as they are. We were told they are black because they go down the chimneys before Sint Niccolas. Also Sint Niccolas is not fat he fits down the chimney without any problems.

I have uploaded some pictures but they seem to have a mind of their own. The picture of the building is an example of the type of buildings typical of this area.

The lighthouse is the California lighthouse which is mentioned in the blog. It is still is opperational and is found on the most northern tip of Aruba.

The chapel is a Catholic church called Alta Vista (High View). It truly had a beautiful view of the East Shore of Aruba. The church uses both the interior and exterior to worship as seats are molded on the outside and would seat up to about 100 people. Not bad for such a small church.

The caves were truly amazing. With the natural light it was easy to see things. The paintings on the walls from years gone by were easily seen, unfortunately so was grafiti done in more recent decades. (Tell me if the indigenous wrote grafiti and it became history, why is todays grafiti not history for later generations?)

The next picture is another Gold Smelter Ruins. It was in opperation until the early 1920's. Think about it that is almost a 100 yrs.

The drive through the National Park took us through very unique valleys. It was a beautiful desert; because of all the rain the hurricane dropped everything is green compared to normally.

The final picture was the first gold smelter we drove to. It was more intact and was quite large. The full opperation was about an acre wide.

The blog that follows explains our trip to Aruba. I divided it into 2 because I was having problems with the internet going down and I wasn't able to upload the pictures.

We are currently in Curacao and have spent several days here. We will be leaving for Bonaire tomorrow. I will write about our great adventures here next week along with the great people that made our stay here interesting.

The ABC Islands are 3 of five Dutch islands that are similar to provinces.

Aruba is an island that is proud of its multi-culturalism. Those people that are born here speak a minimum of 4 languages and it is not uncommon for many to have as many as 10 languages. It was amazing to watch. As a part of the Kingdom of th Netherlands, Dutch is the official language for government and public institutions such as schools but Papiamento is the language spoken on the 3 islands.

It was explained to us that the language is a language brought by the slaves from an area called Verde in South Africa. Over time the influence of Spanish and Portugese also mixed to create a very unique language.

We decided to rent a car and geocache our way through the island.

Aruba is the smallest and most westerly of the ABC group. It lies 25 km north of Venezuela and 68 km west of Curacao.

It is one of the very few Caribbean islands on which the Indian population was not exterminated however there are not full blooded Indigenous now as they have mixed with the Spanish and Dutch blood. African slaves were never introduced in Aruba.

Gold was discovered in 1725 and it would be our first geocache to go looking for. The Balashi Gold Smelter Ruins . We dropped off a Travel Bug and picked one up to continue its journey.

Santa Cruz mid island was a reminder of the economic crises that is effecting the whole world. Many businesses are shut down and buildings just left for the environment to reclaim. The sight of KFC, McDonalds surprised us as we haven't seen anything like this in smaller towns. The people living around this area are larger than elsewhere on the island so I would say they frequent the restaurants.

The Arikok National Park, a natural preserve covers one fifth of the island was our next geocache stop. The park contains forty species of trees and hearty desert vegetation that survive blazing sun and constant wind. Cacti in all shapes and sizes cover this desert landscape.

The area contains many snakes which luckily we only saw in the glass containers at the interpretive station. We did get to have a glimpse at the wild donkeys, many lizards and iguanas.

This area is rugged red dirt roads with valleys, ravines, terraces leading to the North shore with its natural bridges carved out by the pounding surf.

Aruba has caves that contained Indian Rock drawings. Natural light penetrates these caves so you can see around without flashlights.

We were pre-warned not to park on the sand dune sands as it acts like quick sand and they loose a few cars a year. All in all this area was beautiful.

As our journey continued north we passed the Ayp Rock Formations that are vey large rocks also used by the Inigenous people of the past. I am not quite sure how these huge rocks appear here. If we were in Canada I would say glacier waters moved them here but I do not believe that our iceage came this far south.

Bushinbans Ruins contained another cache and it was here that gold was smelted. There are many buildings still standing. They were built from stone in the 1700's and were used until the early 1900's when the mines were abandoned. The mines themself were about 20 km away from the smelter.

Alto Vista Chapel was our next cache and tourist spot. The view was outstanding and the little chapel charming. Ken went to retrieve this cache on his own as I was covered in burs. TB successfuly retrieved and we left a Canadian Geocoin to continue on traveling the world.

The town of Noord would be our next stop. What we all realized at this stage was that there were no shacks and windows no longer contained bars. The houses were individual not all together as has been the case since Mexico. The island is very clean with no plastic garbage littering the environment. The houses are all very colourful.

Next we ventured to the California Lighthouse. This lighthouse was named after a boat that crashed into the reefs in the night. The passenges started to through their belongings overboard and entered into the water when the locals came to the rescue. As it turns out the Ship the Californian was the ship that did not come to help the Titanic on that fateful night.

Oranjestad is the capital of Aruba. The population is about 25,000. The cruise ship business is alive and well here. We watched a minimum of 4 ships a day arrive.

The buildings in the city are very colourful and clean. They have a European look. Tourism is their number one industry so the usual Casinos are found in most of the High end hotels.

Fishing tours are plenty full and we watched as the Wahoo were being brought in, in record numbers. This only excites Ken in the hope to catch another Wahoo.

We are currently sitting in Caracao and will write about it next week. As it has taken me 2 hrs fighting with the internet, I will down load the pictures when I have better service.

I am adding the pictures to the new blog it may work better.

Pictures are

Caba del Vela

Monjes del Sur from the Lighthouse

The lighthouse on Monjes del Sur
Venezuelan Fish Boat

Cinto Bahia

Monjes del Sur

Cinto Bahia

After waiting for boat repairs to be finished and the weather to turn favourable the day finally arrived. Nov 09th we awoke at 0400 and started underway. Cartagena has 2 entrances Boca Chica y Boca Grande. Boca Grande gets you out into the ocean much quicker but it has a very narrow entrance with shoals around it. As we approached we became aware that the entrance was breaking with very large waves so the extra 3 hrs would be necessary. When we were finally into the Caribbean the waves were much larger than the forcast has said they would be. We motored on in wet, wet conditions. Suddenly the Colombian Coast Guard appeared to our starboard side. They and the Port Authorities had been trying to radio us but we did not hear. Ken radioed into the Port Authority to be told that we were not authorized to leave as there was a large storm in the area. Turn around we must. CRAP. So back we went feeling that we were never going to get out of Cartagena.

The following morning we radioed the Port Authority at 0400 hrs and they said we could leave.

As it turned out that extra day made a huge difference in the sea conditions and also alowed us to check more info on the internet. Our plans are now slightly altered as we will go straight to Grenada and not attempt Trinidad this time around. There has been 4 more attacks by Venezuelans with guns being used. We do not feel that it is safe to travel this area and to get to Trinidad we would be right in the thick of things.

Anyways, our first day took us to an anchorage that was protected by a sand spit. It rained hard all night but quit by the time we had to leave in the morning. We were entertained with a Colombian Navy ship that had its cadets jumping off the bow and swimming around the boat. They appeared to be having al ot of fun with the task at hand.

Cinto Bay was our next anchorage. It's a beautiful anchorage with crystal clear water. The swimming was fabulous and it was a great anchorage to stage for our long overnighter to Caba del Vela.

We departed the next day at 1300 hr. The day was beautiful. Sunny very little wind and very small seas. But... at about 1800 hrs things began to change. There were some pretty serious low systems further north putting us in the ITCZ again. As you all know by now that means lightning. It also means squalls. Squalls contain, lightning, wind and torential downpours. It was now dark so we had our radar on which also allowed us to track the squalls. Squalls have a mind of their own and usually you can track the direction they are headed but sometimes they like to surprise you and chase you a bit. When all is said and done Ernie and Ken did a great job dodging as many as possible. We couldn't miss a total of five of them but we missed at least 12. Not bad odds. The lightning show continued for the next 3 days. We had plan on doing 1 1/2 hr shifts each but we had 2 on at all times and the shifts varied. Needless to say by the time we reached our destination we were tired.

The next leg would take us 80 nautical miles out of Colombia and into Venezuela to Monjes del Sur. We couldn't have asked for better conditions and we arrived and had 4 Venezuelan fishermen tie us up to the dock. It was a very interesting place. The Venezuelan Coast Guard take safety very seriously. We had to show them everything and they went through everything! We passed.

We took a hike around the island and were rewarded with great views. A geocache here would be awesome.

The fishing began to improve and we have been catching blackfin tuna and a small dorado. Filling the freezer with fish is now the challenge.

We are now in Aruba after a 52 nautical cruise in nice calm seas and lightning.

This portion of our travel is considered the 5th worst area for sea conditions. We transversed it at the right time of the year and watched our weather windows and found it to be pleasant with the exception of lightning. We stayed within 4 miles of shore and had plenty of depth. If a sailboat were to do this trip they too could stay this close as they would have enough depth with wind to push them along but gentle waves. It took us a total of 1 week to get here.

We will spend a week or slightly more in the ABC islands and will write about that next week.

Cholon is a very interesting busy bay. The entrance into the bay is a bit of a finger nail biting situation.
You must hug these palapa bars in order to get by the shoal.

Once inside you see beautiful seaside homes along the beaches. The water is not crystal clear but it is very clean. You get wind but you do not get the waves as no fetch can occur.
It is a very secluded bay surrounded by mangroves. The water taxi takes the locals from the very poverish village Baru and the surrounding area through the mangroves into the town of Cartagena. To me this is quite cool. Their own water system that keeps them out of the oceans big waves. I am not sure how deep the water is throught the mangroves but we surely would get lost in the maze.

We spent the whole week in this bay waiting out the storm. The hurricane left its winds in the area and put us in the ITCZ. Those that follow the blog may remember that the ITCZ is the area of weather that has major lighning and thunder storms. I am starting to adjust to the storms and can now sleep through them without thinking I am going to get fried.

I am using new technology (to us) to write this blog and it may prove to be a very handy devise. A computer internet stick. It is tied into the cell phone. Now we were given 2 free weeks of use with the purchase. That will work great for downlowing internet weather sites that I cannot get on the SSB radio. When you get to a different country you put in a new sim card. We have already opened the cell phone to allow us to do this as we travel the Caribbean. All I can say is Canada is so far behind on internet. Our costs here are minimal compared to home.

Now on to a different topic. The plans are to now leave on Monday as the weather window looks quite favourable. Which is great as I have had enough of winds for awhile.
We have been in contact with a gentleman by the name of Herb that does SSB weather for cruisers and will be our own personal weather router keeping us safe. He works his magic from his home in Missisauga. How ironic a Canadian doing the Caribbean weather but he is good. He informed us we could leave Sun but unfortunately we would have to motorsail as there would be very little wind. We informed him we like it that way as we are a trawler. He just laughed and said that we were in luck then.

It should take 4 days to get through the rest of Colombia, enter Venezuela and get to Aruba. We will spend a little time in the ABC islands exploring then will continue on to the outer Reef Islands of Venezuela.
The song we want to get out of this place is playing loud in all our heads at the moment. We find it ironic that we first met Ernie our crew member in Charleston, Oregon where we both were stranded for 2 weeks waiting for favourable weather to depart. Now here we are again waiting for the favourable weather.
We always try to stay safe and do not take chances so here we sit. Oh well the swimming pool was 89F over in Cholon, there could be worst places to wait out the storms.