‘Juno, this is the coast guard, come
in please’. We are stowing the
spinnaker pole on the foredeck as I hear the VHF crackle. ‘Juno, this is
the Colombian navy, come in please’ the voice slightly more insistent
this time, clearly not used to being ignored. To my relief the shoot bolt on
the end of the big spinnaker pole springs shut, securing the pole on the mast and I reach for the hand-held VHF
attached to my belt. ‘Coastguard, this isJuno’, I
reply, slightly out of breath. ‘Juno, this is the Colombian coast guard,
welcome to Santa Marta, we will escort you to the port’.
Two bright orange coast
guard vessels sweep up alongside us, crew on the bow, encouraging us to wave as
they point video cameras at us. The local port authority now calls us on the
VHF, asking for more information and adding their welcome.Then a large sports fishing boat powers
towards us through the surf and we see that the flying bridge is crammed with
people, all waving as they approach us. ‘Juno, this is rally
control’. I recognise the voice of Andrew Bishop and I can make out the
yellow shirts among the crowd. There are quite few people here waiting to welcome
you’. He wasn’t kidding.
It is now blowing 30
knots of wind and we surf downwind towards the finish line, the surf dazzling
white on the breaking waves, waving to the escort boats while tidying our lines
and preparing for our arrival. It is an exhilarating way to finish and as we
cross the line, foghorns sound accompanied by cheers and applause. We follow
our escort into the marina where the docks are lined with people cheering and
waving. After a brief moment of panic
when the bow >thruster fails, we reverse up to the
dock with volunteers all around to catch our lines. A bottle of champagne is thrust into my hand
and the cork flies out with a satisfying pop.
The owner of the marina, Manuel Julian Davila, shakes our hand and we
pose for photographs with loca artists on stilts
tottering precariously behind us, unused to the perils of a pontoon lurching
underfoot as the crowd moves along the dock.
Feeling like celebrities,
we are ushered into the air-conditioned marina office, where we are welcomed by
dignitaries from the tourist board. The World ARC coming to Colombia for the
first time is clearly a big event and World Cruising Club have done a great job
to publicise and promote the occasion. What an amazing welcome.
There is a busy itinerary
of events during our stay and the first of these is a visit to La Victoria
coffee plantation. We head into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada which boasts
the highest sea level mountain in the world, rising up from the beach to its
snow-covered peak 18,000 feet above. An air-conditioned coach takes us to the
small village at Minca, then we transfer into four
wheel drive jeeps for the climb though the jungle over unmade roads, churning
up dust as our convoy makes its way up to the plantation, 1,500 feet above sea
level. The factory is a feat of
ingenuity and resilience, relying on machinery imported from England over 100
years ago, lovingly maintained and improved by the third generation family
owners who act as our tour guides. It
brings back strong memories of my upbringing on a tea plantation in India with
a prime mover driving a shaft from which large belts control all the factory
machinery. The difference at La Victoria
is that the main engine is driven by water rather than diesel, delivered at
high pressure from pipes running down the mountain from the rivers high above.
We have lunch on the veranda looking out over the valley down to the sea,
surrounded by huge bamboos, Poinsettia, Bougainvillea and think clumps of
citronella grass. The owner enjoys his captive audience and tells us how he
regained control of the farm from armed guerrillas who occupied it when his
parents died, and he now employs some of them as taxi drivers ferrying guests
up to the plantation to subsidise his income from coffee beans.
Today we go to the beach
at Bahia Concha in the Tayrona
National Park. An hour’s drive north from Santa Marta, we enter the
southern side of the park and rattle along a rough track until blue ocean
appears through the scrub and memosa trees that
provide shade to the back packers who have set up camp on the beach. Our guide leads us away from the throng to
the northern end of the beach where our host from the marina, Manuel Davila,
owns a beach house where an army of cooks are preparing lunch. Because the park is protected from
development we are surrounded only by the wild landscape of rocky hillside that
frames the beach and the blue sparkling water beyond. The soft sandy beach quickly drops off into
deep cool water, perfect for swimming and allowing Manuel and his friends to
reverse their powerboats close the beach.
Again we see the impact of
the World ARC in this region, as Sandra Howard Taylor, the vice minister of
tourism addresses us on the beach in her bikini, not something one would be
likely to see in the UK. During our
stay the press coverage has been amazing and we have had long conversations
with the charming Toby Hodges of Yachting World, Susannah of Sail Magazine and
countless impromptu TV interviews on our pontoon in the marina. The most
comical moment was watching Andrew being interviewed by three TV crews in
Spanish. The only problem is that Andrew doesn’t speak Spanish. We
don’t know where in the local press these TV interviews and pictures will
go but somewhere in the archives is footage of Andrew, in his Musto hat and red trousers, gamefully
expressing his thanks to Columbia in a unique Spanish dialect, more Milland than Milan, but the crews went away looking happy,
if somewhat puzzled by this exotic new language.
One evening we are driven
to a restaurant somewhere on the coast where the entertainment at dinner was a
cacophony of drums and pan pipes , competing with the howling wind for our
attention. The wine was ghastly and the food was tolerable but I was reminded
of Andrews Bishops opening speech to us in St Lucia ‘everything
won’t always be perfect, and things will go wrong, but you will have some
amazing experiences’ and tonight
was another great experience.
As a treat we take a
helicopter ride to see the surrounding countryside. As we ascend it feels as if
we are zooming out on a huge lens as the panorama opens up beneath us. It is a
stunning landscape from the rugged serrated hills along the coast covered in
scrub and cactus, across the flat plain and rooftops of Santa Marta up into the
rainforest in the hills, culminating in the snow covered peaks on the summit. We
hover over the lost city ofTeyuna, built in the
eighth century by the Tayrona Indians, before
descending down to the coast again and sweeping low along dramatic white
beaches, strewn with huge boulders and almost deserted.
The final event in Santa
Marta is the farewell party and prize giving dinner attended by an array of
dignitaries including the glamorous Vice President of Tourism and the youthful
British Ambassador who presents us with our prize for come first on the first
leg of this marvellous rally. We leave
today for Santa Marta with strong winds forecasted for our two-day trip taking
us further west to the San Blas islands where we expect the welcome to be a
little more muted but no less amazing.
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