Since the last post we have been keeping busy with the boat, sounds so repetitive to say each entry but it is the truth! The few woodwork repairs we had done turned out nicely, despite the differences in language. The topside of the boat is also looking nice after a few days of washing and waxing and polishing the stainless. It was well worth it to hire out these projects!

Other points of interest from this past week:
•We said farewell to s/v Moody Blues who took advantage of a calm weather window and are on their way to Puerto Rico. Since they are from Friday Harbor, WA we have a feeling we will see them again back in the US at some point.
•We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary with dinner at a pretty authentic Argentine restaurant, complete with chimichurri (an Argentine sauce that goes on steak). The steaks were fantastic. In fact meat in Columbia is very tasty, we rate it only second to that in Argentina.
•Our navigation computer which died in Ecuador was fixed - $160US for a new hard drive, new fan, new disk drive, and labor. Pretty good deal and we are happy to have a spare laptop again.
•We watched live on CNN the inauguration of President Obama.
•Both of us recovered from a nasty cold, a week full of head and chest congestion. Yuck!
•For the first time in over a year we went to the movie theater to watch a movie in English (with Spanish subtitles).
•We listened to a fellow cruiser do a talk about his recent experience being rescued offshore by the US Coast Guard and a Russian transport ship as his boat was sinking. His life raft glue dissolved when he deployed it and everything he had in it sank to the bottom of the ocean. The only thing that saved him and the crew was his EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon). While the news of the life raft dissolving was a bit of a shock we were relived to hear of the quick response time to the EPIRB activation and made sure ours was in working order. Having your boat sink is obviously a risk of what we are out doing, just goes to show you can not be too prepared.

So now we are waiting for decent weather to make a passage up to Isla San Andres, which is a small Columbian island 400 miles NW of Cartagena and is located about 115 miles off the Honduran coast. Unfortunately this last week would have been the perfect time to go as next week is not looking very promising. We are at the mercy of mother nature for now.

Photo above is from La Casa de la Popa, which sits on a hill overlooking the bay and city of Cartagena. The little white specs in the bay are sailboats in the anchorage area.