Ella Tienefe...She Has Faith

Happy Birthday to our new neice, Ella Tienefe Mikal! Great name. We are celebrating your arrival today in the beautiful city of Cartagena, Colombia! We've decided to bring you and your big sister here when you're old enough. So, Congratulations Danny and Chas! We're so happy for you and so proud of our growing family!
As a side note: we need the Mikal Jr's phone number (email it to us, don't post it as a comment)

Ok... so we sailed to Colombia. Hazaa! Three weeks in Panama and now we are in Cartegena -- a colorful colonial city on the Caribbean coast. But let's back up and fill in the missing three weeks with a quick update...
From David, Panama we travelled via a long and uncomfortable bus ride to Panama City -- which everyone in Panama simply calls "Panama" as opposed to Ciudad de Panama, very confusing. There are a few different kinds of indigenous indians in both Costa Rica and Panama. They are allowed to travel freely between the countries but they appear (to us) to be on the receiving end of some discrimination (for all the boasting we hear of how progressive Central America is). I (Scott) traded seats with an indian woman on the bus who was removed from her comfy seat and forced to sit on a stool, although she was on the bus much earlier than many others.
We spent four lovely days in Panama City in a nice hotel with Uber-air-conditioning, watching episodes of Law and Order, eating Lebanese food, and with considerable shame, Dominos Pizza. We also got a dose of the US elections insanity on CNN. It was a nice treat for the crazy hot temperatures on the Pacific coast... much warmer than the mountains of Costa Rica. I liked all the graphics and reporting on CNN for the elections, it reminded me of John Madden explaining with a completely straight face about the supposed detailed intentions and strategies of a bunch of helemeted pituitary freaks jumping into a giant body pile on a the 30 yard line somewhere. X's and O's being guided around on a sreen with an invisible pen. Statistics and historical material and maps of blantanly, racially driven, redrawn districts in Texas. And yet all the same old white guys with clean Blue Blood last names.
I can hear the speeches now. "We will change nothing, and stick with this President and his honest and virtuous war" ... or ... "We will call this administration into accountability and grind this government to a halt for the next two years". Yeah for America.
I'm sure it will continue to be embarrassing...
So in Panama City (nice place, big and cosmopolitan) Annie and I began to research diffrent travel options to South America. For those of you who don't know -- there is no road between Colombia and Panama, not even the semblance of one. We knew this beforehand and had written Colombia off as a place that we had no intentions of travelling. Full of kidnappings and drug smugglers just like our the State Dept. says on it's website. (The State Dept's basic advice to American travellers is: everywhere and everyone is evil and corrupt, if you travel outside of this paradise you will probably die, why don´t you just take a weeks vacation at Universal Studios?) Anyway, we discovered flights to be expensive to Quito, Ecaudor and elswhere in South America except for Bogota, Colombia. We then researched other options, went to the Panama City Yacht Club (someone said they could take us by sail in December when the winds were better) and to the Cargo Docks for a cargo boat (which looked simply too sketchy) and then found out about a German sailboat that was leaving from somewhere on the northern coast of Panama east of Colon, in about a week... it would take 15 passengers for around the same price to fly -- $250 per person -- not terrible. We set out from the city to Portobelo, Panama on the Caribbean coast with a contact number to call to find out where and when exactly, because this boat was still at sea and out of communication. So we hung out in Portobello for two days, a rowdy Caribbean town with good spicy seafood, met some great Koreans and a Japanese guy trying the same thing as us. Finally we heard from our contacts that the German boat would be some 80 miles down the coast -- 40 miles of which we bused, stayed a night in a coastal ville called Miramar, and then took a wooden launch piloted by three Kuna indians from the San Blas Islands. 40 miles through open and somewhat rough seas to Porvenir, one man at the motor, one fishing, and the other perpetually bailing water from the leaking boat. Porvenir island is the capital of the northeasten most province of Panama -- I think called Kuna Yala. Maybe 15 people lived on the island. It had a single hotel, an airstrip about a hundred yards away and an immigration office. We stayed there for three days, one on a neighboring Kuna island (due to some shady hustling by a local [failed hustling]), one night at the Porvenir Motel, and one night on this beautiful tropical island sleeping in hammocks under a cabana... The next morning out of the misty rain on the sea materialized the Stahlratte; "the Steel Rat". 120 feet long, 103 years old, rusty, sails reefed and down, in the fog, it looked every bit a ghost ship. We were met by the captain Feite (Peter) at immigrations and motored out to the ship.
The next five days were fantastic. There was a total of 19 people aboard -- 16 travellers and 3 crew, and two motorcycles. There were four Americans, us and two girls from Oregon, three Kiwi, one Australian, one Austrian, four germans, two brits, two italians, one dutch woman, a frenchman, and a partridge in a pear tree. We had four awesome days of sailing, swimming, drinking, barbecuing, jumping off the huge boat, swinging like pirates, getting mildly seasick and more than mildly sunburned. We played crazy guitar, watched movies, cooked huge meals together, battled with the single hand-pump toilet, learned how to sail a tiny bit, read a book each (not as impressive as the Australian Penny's five and a half books). Best of all was the snorkeling. I snorkeled three days, one day for three hours on the reefs surrounding the 300 plus San Blas Islands. So fun. A couple people got stung by jellyfish, and one of our friends saw some hammerhead sharks. Goodtimes. Our last day was spent steaming (no wind) to Cartagena for nearly 40 hours straight. We had more fun than should be allowed.
So we are in this historic Spanish colonial city, a favorite target for pirates since the 1500's. Last night we got together with everyone from the boat, now scattered across the city, for pizza and drinks. Colombia by the way is very safe and friendly, with well travelled places needing only the basic precautions we would use travelling anywhere. (like Chicago, or Denver...) Cartagena is the most beautiful city we have seen yet and we are still slowly considering which direction to take next. Hugs all around...We miss you!