Have bathers, will travel

   We arrived in Cartagena at some silly time in the morning, very thankful to be ushered into our hostel room for more sleep.  We sweltered for three hours in temperatures that would be considered cruel and inhumane for livestock before heading out to find a passage to Panama.  We met Selina, a fellow Londoner (well, Essex girl, actually), and spent the next few days wandering around Cartagena and upsetting the port authorities by playing hide and seek among the sailing boats while scouting out a berth to Panama.  Evidently you can´t just turn up and look around, which made no sense to any of us so we did all we could to misunderstand the very clear instructions from the security guard.

   We looked at a couple of unsuitable boats (and unsuitable captains).  One of the skippers assured us that his boat was a naked boat.  We laughed this off but he kept on insisting and so we left and warned the girl running the Blue Sailing charter office that he might be a bit of a sleaze.  She took note and later we ran into her at the marina and found out Mr Naked was her boyfriend, which was a little awkward for all of us.

   Luckily we also found a beautiful 50 foot vagabond ketch, built for an ´80s TV show complete with pirate flag and dreadlocked Polish captain, YouYou.  Very excited at the prospect of 5 days in luxury and paradise we rewarded ourselves with a the best curry in South America before returning to our sauna of a hostel room for an evening of regretting our meal choice.

Kizzy was somewhat surprised to find herself a millionaire all of a sudden as we put together a truly unsuitable sum of money to pay a pirate for our passage.