Finally, we had a weather window to sail north to Providencia on route to the Bay Islands in Honduras. We stayed in San Andres for 10 days, more than what we had expected but, fortunately, we liked San Andres and enjoyed our time in this beautiful Colombian island.
Our sail to Providencia was fantastic. We were close-hauled for most of the trip and Kikuyu with its ability to point to the wind, that means sail very close to the wind, made it without the help of the engine. After 11 hours we arrived at Providencia at 5:30 PM and anchored in the wide anchorage off the main island's town. From the moment we saw the town we were struck by the beautiful colors of the buildings and by how well maintained they were. After we set our anchor (by backing up Kikuyu to make sure the anchor would hold in winds of at least 25 knots) and washing the heavy salt crystals off Kikuyu's portholes and hatches, we sat in our cockpit to admire a beautiful moon rising over the main peak of the island. A picture of this is displayed in this blog.

The next morning we promptly came ashore to meet Mr. Bernardo Bush, a black & white descendent with a great posture and striking green/blue eyes, a feature we found in many islanders. Mr. Bush was very welcoming and took our papers to clear our port of entry to Providence. Even though we had been in San Andres and Providencia is a municipality of San Andres, we still needed to clear and pay the agent (Mr. Bush) for his services. Having finished that, we set out to see the town, meet the friendly and informative tourist information people, and eat lunch at a local restaurant. After waiting for "La Chiva" ( an open bus) to take us around the island for 2 hours we and other sailors with whom we had made the passage from San Andres (s/v Bodacious) decided to ride in a pick-up truck driven by a very attractive and friendly woman, also black with striking green eyes. Trinidad, a bit flamboyant, drove as fast as the road allowed her. We were sort of like cattle in the back of the truck, holding to a railing and hoping that Trinidad would not get into an accident. It was fun riding the entire island like this, seeing great views of this small but beautiful island.

Maria had heard for years about Providencia and how much less developed it is as compared to San Andres - her image of the island was of being nearly deserted with little of modern living. Contrary to this image, though sparsely populated, we found Providencia to have good infrastructure - a small airport, a new looking power plant, pretty homes painted in brilliant colors, and a recently built walkway around Island of Catalina, a small island joined to Providencia via a bridge which is said to have been Pirate Morgan's hide out to attack ships and hide treasures. We did not see poor looking homes or poor people. When we prompted Mr. Bush about where the poor lived he responded that there were not poor in Providencia. He added that those who have at one time or another been poor had been shipped to where they came from -that is, the locals are not poor! We guessed that tourism is sufficient to provide a fairly high standard of living to the approximately 5,000 islanders who live in Providencia. We also learned that Colombia may be funding some of the projects in both San Andres and Providencia and wondered if the Colombian government is doing more than its share to keep people happy and wanting to remain a part of Colombia.

After spending only 3 days in Providencia we decided to leave as good weather continued to be forecasted. Given that we have gotten stuck many times for longer-than-desired periods of time, we wanted to take advantage of this good weather and continue our sail toward Honduras.