This is the Agata M, the vessel that we used to ship our vehicles. This is a picture from the web; we never actually saw it.
$166 per mile. That’s what it cost us to ship around the 30 miles of road that hasn’t been built between Panama and Columbia. Oh, and not to mention two weeks of time. That includes our airfare, hotels we stayed in along the way, and the loads of restaurant food we’ve been eating. So it could be done for less, but any way you cut it, it’s a significant portion of our trip expenses.
But it’s over. We got our van back yesterday and all is well. The only thing we lost is the two $5 convex mirrors that I had glued onto our regular mirrors to help with the van’s giant blind spots. I’m perfectly happy replacing those. Heck, maybe I’ll see a guy on the street selling them, and I can buy back my own mirrors!
But that’s skipping a whole two weeks, so on to the pictures! We flew from Panama City to Medellin and spent a day sightseeing there before flying to Cartagena, where our car was due to arrive.
A cathedral visible from the roof of our hotel in Medellin
Downtown Medellin had a sculpture garden featuring some very interesting pieces.
Every town in Panama and Columbia seems have a Plaza Bolivar.
Well, when in Columbia…
This giant gut bomb is called a Bandeja Paisa. Guaranteed to fill you up, and it was actually pretty tasty.
Our flight from Medellin to Cartagena left at 6am. It being a budget airline, we got to walk about a kilometer across the tarmac in cold fog to reach our plane.
Once above the clouds we were treated to fantastic views of the countryside.
Our first night in Cartagena was spent in the colorful Getsemani neighborhood.
Limes and eggplant anyone?
The old town part of Cartagena is beautiful with narrow cobblestone streets and colonial architecture, all overlaid by oppressive heat and humidity.
The town’s cathedrals and other buildings are lit beautifully by night.
We’ve had a few good thunderstorms since we’ve been here.
Our first hotel featured rock-hard beds and not-so-great internet, so we found an apartment on VRBO, and moved on up to this dee-luxe apartment in the sky. It’s a lot more comfortable than the hotel and only a block from the beach.
We shared a couple of nice meals with folks who were also shipping their campers on the same boat as us.
I spent a lot of time with Andre, Jean-Yves, and Luis over the course of the three full days it took us to jump through all of the hoops required to get our vehicles back. They all shared French as their mother tongue, but graciously spoke English most of the time to include me. Luis, from Andorra, spoke fluent Spanish which was a great help in navigating the shipping and customs bureaucracies.
We got to look at our cars at 8am on Friday, but it would be another 12 hours before were finally about leave the port with them.
The extended delay gave us a chance to see the port by night. Just what we wanted to do!
The day after it was all over, we went to the beach to celebrate.
