March 31 – April 27, 2023; 10019 nm and 1498 days after departure from La Rochelle.

What does that even mean? Well, I think I already mentioned that El Capitano´s visa was overdue already back in February. So we needed to decide of what to do regarding El Capitano being illegal in Panamá. Due to my visit to Germany, I was fortunately still a legal visitor. Officially it was possible to extend the visa BUT. A big but. It seemed to be such a hassle that nobody bothered to apply for it. It was only possible to get the visa renewed in Panama City with many obstacles from the authorities. (Though we had no clue what these were…) Nobody we met has ever done it or knew someone who had done it. Either the people stayed within the three month or they stayed illegal and payed the fees when leaving the country. Some of them even became residents. If you stayed longer than allowed you needed to pay 50 $ Us per month and person overstay. Even the customs officers told us not to bother with an extension, “just pay the overdue fees”. For sure a different approach than in Germany 😉. That all works fine being in Guna Yala and at sea but not ashore. When you get caught ashore you would have to leave the country within 5 or so days and pay probably more fees and might even have bigger problems. Still even in Guna Yala we didn’t want to “over extend” our visa overdue. In the end we are still Germans! It is somehow in our blood to follow regulations! Even when you can’t figure out the regulations.
And nobody knew (not even the customs officers) exactly how long it would be ok to stretch the stay beyond the visa validity. Was it 3 month? Maybe 6? More or less? No answer to that. So a lot of cruisers left the country for some days when they were e.g. in Bocas del Toro as it lays handy close to the boarder of Costa Rica. Again, there was no information of how long it would be necessary to stay out of Panamá. The rumours gave different opinions. Some people said a couple of days, some 10 days and others were told at the border they had to leave for a whole month… Well, I guess that is Central/South America! It all depends on the person at the office. We also heard, that before covid, it used be ok just to get over the boarder check out and in at the same time and then check in back in Panamá. These times were unfortunately gone.  

So we had to make up our minds how we wanted to solve our visa problem. A lot of possibilities around here in Latin America. Sailing to Bocas del Toro and going to Costa Rica was not on our list for the moment. We were more thinking about flying out to Ecuador, Bolivia, Brasil or Chile. All very tempting destinations but somehow we couldn’t get our minds up. We would have to go back to a marina, leave Altimate alone and get her ready for a one or two weeks break.(Hoping that it would be enough time to re-enter to Panamá.) Somehow both of our gut feelings said we don’t really felt like travelling around even though it sounded very nice! And then, one day El Capitano remembered that Altimate´s cruising permit was still valid until mid June for Colombia. Slowly another option occupied our minds. Why not sail back to Cartagena? That would have been a win win win situation. Win #1: We love Colombia, we knew we could order easily some items we needed to Cartagena and we were ready for a big city after month of being remote. Win #2: We could re-explore the eastern Guna Yala island, which we wanted to do anyhow. Win #3: Most important! We could eventually get our credit card send to Cartagena.

I have to explain a little. Since I have been to Germany our American credit card hasn´t been working anymore. A new one was due in March and our bank had let us know that they had sent a new one to Germany. It was due to arrive in January. I thought lucky us, that I, by chance happen to be in Germany and could receive the card. Easy peasy! A hopeful thought! Our American bank seemed not to be able to send the new card to Germany. They said they did but even a second card never arrived. They only managed to send non-relevant letters to Germany but not our card 😡! The next trial was sending to the private address of the owner of Turtle Cay marina in Panamá city. Guess what? Of course it also never arrived. Each time of failure El Capitano had to call the bank. Spending ages in the waiting line (as well as money) and he needed to triple proof each time that it was him calling…(boy, he was furious). All that just to start the procedure all over again. It was so annoying and frustrating! Though, fair enough it kept us from spending money. If that was the banks approach – well in this case they did a good job!

So, when we decided to do our visa run to Cartagena, we had the fantastic idea not to try the same useless sending again. Instead we told our bank to send the card to our friends Marketa and William to Missouri, which is IN the US. Hoping that the bank would be able to manage at least that! Our friends then would send it to Cartagena. We also had already contacted Lee, the OCC port captain in Cartagena if we could use his address. No problem for him but he told us to use either UPS or Fed ex to send the card as the local post was crap. (His words not mine.) And suddenly all was easy. Within the US the card arrived in a few days, no problem at all. Marketa send it via Fedex and it arrived only 5 days later in Cartagena! What a relief! Thank you soooooo much Marketa!!! Oh, and just a last word about that story! Guess how much it had cost to send the card via Fedex or Ups to Cartagena from Missouri? Nope, muuuuch more! Another try. Nope, again. Ok, I´ll telI you, hope you sit down. It was 140 $US!!! That was just a little more than we expected. But hey, we eventually had our credit card back! Win #3!

That is what some sailors call a “visa run” and why we headed back to Cartagena. Once the decision was made it felt so good and we were excited to get to Cartagena. We slowly made our way east and stopped at many islands. The most exciting incident happened just around the corner of the Hollandes in Coco Banderas. A nurse shark appeared from underneath Altimate, while I was just cleaning a fish with my legs hanging in the water. I was freaked out when I saw the shark and I was up and my legs out of the water within milliseconds!!! Scaaaaryyyyy! (See the impressions for more pics.) Well, I obviously survived and a few minutes later more and more sharks visited us. That was fun to watch from Altimate but we didn’t dare to go into the water for hours. Especially nice was our stay at Snug Harbour. We spent over a week in that beautiful calm mangrove bay. After a few days of laid back relaxing and being alone, our American friends Jennifer and Mike from Brightnest joined us at Snug Harbour. (They made that beautiful drone feature image.) That was a welcomed interruption. We spent a couple of evenings together and they also let me try their SUP. It happened to be that day when we were dressed up to make a birthday video for Jana. Usually I would not wear a dress to get on a SUP but as it happened I managed not to fall and I was very proud. Ok, it was not really difficult in a pond like bay with no wake and waves.

On the 18th of April we checked out of Obaldia. That turned out to be our lucky day. We were of course prepared to pay the 150US $ overdue fee. Prepared in the way that we had enough cash. Not because of our missing credit card but because authorities only take cash.( Anyway we had to have a lot of $ in cash as there is no ATM in San Blas or Obaldia. Actually the first ATM we found in Panamá was in Portobelo, west of Linton Bay far away.) When we arrived in Obaldia in the morning there was a group of young travellers heading for Panamá by boat already at the immigration office. The nice young lady guide offered us to ask the immigration officer if he would take us in-between so we wouldn’t have to wait for the whole group to be finished. That was nice and the officer was happy to stamp us first . My guess was he was so distracted by the pretty young ladies of the group that he didn’t really check our and especially El Capitanos passport. All our fingers on the “fingerprintscanner”, they seemed good and then bang, passport stamped. Even El Capitanos! We looked at each other and couldn’t believe it. Out of the office we thought ok, we might have to pay everything at the port officer? Victor the friendly port officer had to write a loooot of papers. Exit-zarpe, cruising permit exit and? After – it felt like- writing for 10 minutes he was ready and we had to pay 12$ and 75 cents. That was all!!! Awesome!!! We saved 150$, weren’t we lucky! Yippppeeeeee, kind of equal with the credit card delivery costs🤣.

Happy as little birthday kids we strolled around small Obaldia and treated ourselves with a freshly made pineapple juice. But then we had to take off. Obaldia is not a pleasant anchorage and one only stops there to get checked in or out. In fact we picked that day to check out because the waves were very low. In higher waves the boat gets shaken around and the landing ashore is super difficult or even impossible for a small dinghy. Our next destination was just around the corner. Sapzurro, a small village and very pretty anchorage surrounded by green hills. And the first Colombian village coming from Panamá. To be honest, we very much enjoyed being in a little more civilised area. It was so nice to sit on a proper chair in a restaurant, even a very simple one to have a drink and food. Proper houses, some flowers, small shops nothing special but it felt good! Funny how much one can enjoy things when you hadn’t have them for a while.

We explored the area a bit, walked over the hill to Carpugana, a slightly bigger village and even got ourselves checked in to Colombia. Checking in by walking in was very easy. Nobody asked anything and we didn’t have to pay anything. Kind of cool. Yet, we knew we still had to get an agent to properly check in with the boat in Cartagena. That’s how it works in Colombia, you have to do the paperwork through an agent but you also know what you have to do! Besides we were now already legal in Colombia which also felt good. There was much more to explore in Sapzurro but we also wanted to get to Cartagena. After 4 days we lifted the anchor and sailed to Isla Fuerte. Isla Fuerte is a small coral island located to the south of the Gulf of Morrosquillo in the department of Cordoba. It forms the western-most part of the island chain known as the Rosario Islands and San Bernando Archipelago. We were lucky as the weather was very calm. Like that we could stay a couple of days not having to cope with a typically fairly rolly anchorage. Famous for the island is the so called Walking tree. It is a massive strangler fig known locally as “El arbol que camina”, for its ability to send down aerial roots from its branches and grow out horizontally. I read that this huge ficus, “a single specimen but with a multitude of sinewy trunks, covers an astonishing 1,000 square meters with a lush green canopy.” Well it was for sure huge and impressive.

Another stop we made was at Isla Tintipan which also belongs to the Rosario archipelago just further east the chain and only about 45 miles away from Cartagena. We stayed three nights and then headed off as planned to Cholon on the 27th of April. As the wind was surprisingly nice and we were unexpectedly fast we skipped Cholon and directly headed to Cartagena. It was nice for a change to come to place where we have been before. We knew how it looked like and where to anchor. Like this we could enter the anchorage easy and in confident.

Yeahhhh Cartagena, Altimate back in town!!