The last months in Colombia passed as they do when you're working and have settled into a routine. Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula worked and worked and worked a bit more. Bogota was generally pretty cold, but pretty cool as well. There were many moments enjoyed wandering to parks, finding new graffiti, exploring graveyards and holding fiestas for various annual occasions in the form of Christmas and New Years. In a brief summation - there were Hawaiian skirts, pineapples, and spicy guacamole.
Teresita Rosita ventured off by herself for a brief foray into the steamy valley of Cali where she danced her socks off every night for a week and unfortunately participated in the not-very-pleasant-at-all tradition of going to a bull fight. Not cool. Not cool at all.
It was a whirlwind break from the drizzly capital - Cali defintiely lived up to its reputation as the salsa capital of Colombia. Teresita Rosita as usual had amazing fun and made a group of new friends she didn't want to leave behind, but suddenly it was new years eve, Bogota and Colo Rùccula called, and the beginning of 2013 was upon her. And with a new year, it was time for new adventures.... The dynamic duo packed their steadily diminishing backpacks and hit the road again.
They stopped in Medellin and caught some cable cars, ate their weight in delicious cake, saw a million gazillion Christmas lights, soaked up the delightful heat that finally defrosted the Bogota cold from their bones and definitely did not participate in the open mic night held by the hostel they were staying at!
And then it was off to even warmer climes... 14 hours or thereabouts and Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula climbed off the bus and into the suffocating heat of Cartagena and the Colombian Caribbean coast. It was the sort of climate that encouraged absolute nothingness. So it was pretty lucky for the girls that they only had one thing on their to do list - find a boat to Panama!
Unfortunately their usual method of just rocking up and everything falling into place didn't work as well as planned in high season.
All the popular boats were completely booked out and unless they wanted to wait around for about 2 weeks there was no way they'd be getting on one either. Unfortunately they weren't at liberty to be doing that much bumming around right at that moment.
It was time to take matters into their own hands. So off they trotted to the docks, to some round about communication issues and some waiting in the scorching sun, but eventually they had not only met a captain and seen a boat, they were booked in and ready to sail off into the sunset and to Panama. And with only two days wait.
So they melted in the heat some more, checked out sunsets from the old wall surrounding the city, took photos of countless balconies and ate empanadas and pizzas prepared by one of the countless Argentinians who had taken over the city. And now that I mention Argentinians, it wasn't the last time Teresita Rosita would find herself outrageously outnumbered by these southerners of the Latino world, oh no it wasn't....
Boat day came and the girls packed up their belongings once more and prepared themselves for the ocean (read sea) crossing they had before them. What they hadn't prepared themselves for was being part of a boatload of these lovely creatures known as Argentines.... Yes, Colo Rùccula did carry a passport proving her citizenship of said country, but she was quickly transforming into a semi-Australian, and these Argentinians were a breed of their own. So without going into it too much, for that would ruin the absolute awesome-amazingness of the whole experience, let's just say that luckily for Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula they had brought a couple of good books with them and they were pretty good at entertaining themselves without the help of any third party.
But the boat, the boat. It was all about the boat, and the sea, and sailing and islands and swimming and five days of utter paradise. Wait, scrap that. Three days of utter paradise. Two days were spent in a haze of giant swells, knock out sea sickness pills, groggy sea gazing and half a ham and cheese sandwich. There were some dolphins too that helped to break up the monotony a bit. But then they arrived and it was a-ma-zing!!!
Teresita Rosita and Colo Rùccula found themselves gliding into the most tranquil turquoise bay either of them had ever seen, a backdrop of white sand and coconut palms completing the perfect picture. And they swam and lazed and swam and ate fish and got sunburnt all over their Bogota-bleached-sun-deprived-lily-white-bodies.
But it was worth it, and as they were rocked to sleep by the gentle waves lapping outside their cabin that night they thought to themselves "Life can't get any better than this". But it could and it did. Sunrise over the swaying palms, and a wake up dip in the Caribbean and a day sailing past island after palm lined island until they arrived at their next personal tropical paradise, with some more swimming, more lazing, more eating, more swimming, more relaxing.
It was a hard life but someone had to do it. And then, just as our girls were getting used to the life of leisure, of gently rocking boats and brilliant aquamarine seas, it was over. They sailed into Panama feeling like proper little pirates, salt drenched hair, sun baked bodies, the irresistible urge to say "Arrrr" at the end of each sentence.
They stepped ashore, made their acquaintance with this new country, this new continent, it's food, beverages and crazy drivers and then they found themselves in Panama City - home to skyscrapers, panamanians, heat and who-knows-what adventures to follow...
