San Andres is a seahorse shaped island, about 25 miles long and 6 miles wide. It is home to around 70,000 people that sustain the tourist and commercial areas on the island. San Andres is a bit hard to describe as it feels as if it is caught between two worlds - on one hand it is surrounded by beautiful clear blue tropical waters and the attitudes here are quite relaxed but then on the other hand, the central tourist area is full of fancy shops, restaurants and very nice hotels. I guess it is the perfect get away for wealthy Columbians who want to escape the hustle of the mainland but still be pampered a bit.

The central, or El Centro area comes to life in the late afternoons (after everything reopens from siesta) and in the evenings. Stores stay open late, hoping to lure vacationers into buying their overpriced items and food carts pop up on side streets to feed the locals. Motorcycles are the preferred mode of transportation for inhabitants while for tourists renting a golf cart is a leisurely way to see the island. We rented one for 4 hours today and managed to see the entire island, stop for lunch and find ourselves in the middle of some sort of road chase involving what could have been a thief and about 6 armed policemen, one with his gun out and waving it around. We decided it was better not to know what was going on and get the heck away from there. We are pretty sure that was not part of the typical island tour.

Right now we are anchored in 13 feet of water amongst a couple other sailboats in addition to quite a few work boats that look as if they may have been abandoned. It has been blowing a steady 25 knots the last 48 hours (and raining off and on), to the point in which although we have complete trust in our anchor the sound of the wind whipping through the boat keeps us from falling into a deep sleep at night. Because of the strong trade winds we will not be able to leave here until the end of the weekend. Not too much of a concern except we have friends to meet in Roatan, Honduras soon. The trade winds are also a reminder of what can go wrong at anchor and the dangers of reefs - there are a half dozen partially sunk boats surrounding the anchorage area we are in (see above photo).

On a more random note, we have discovered 2 unusually popular foods here - corn flavored gelato and raisin Dannon yogurt - both of which are just wrong. Crab filled empanadas however are pretty tasty.