“You know me, dear. I’m usually modest. I won’t speak for Judy, though,” she teased.
Judy grinned but said nothing.
“While you were gone Mike and I watched a fashion show down by the water. A gorgeous model set up two suitcases, about a hundred feet apart, with a little rug in front of each. She would put on one outfit and parade across the beach. When she reached the other suitcase she would change her clothes or her swim suit, and then parade back to the first suitcase. Quite a show. Had to sit down to watch.”
“This place is so different!” exclaimed Judy.
“One word of warning”, explained Michael. “In this country, which is a colony of France, if you are arrested, you are automatically Guilty until proven Innocent. Beware the gendarmes! The other thing is … Avoid the post office! The French can take more time to put a stamp on a letter than any other civilization known to man, including the Pygmies who haven’t even invented stamps yet!”
“It’s those ball hugging Speedos that really gross me out!” mocked Phil. “Why would real men wear those things?”
“Becausssse they are verrry Francois”, mocked Judy.
“Enough chit-chat,” said Michael. Then doing his own imitation of the French he placed a towel over his arm and in a heavy accent said, “May I take your drink order, Mademoiselle.”
Two days later, Phil and Farris were under full sail, headed for Cartagena, Colombia, one of the most formidable and successful strongholds during the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, while the Caribbean was being settled.
“Think we’ll have to stop before we get there?” asked Farris.
“Not if these winds keep up! But if the weather turns nasty we can always stop in Aruba. If it gets really bad we can pull into Maracaibo, but that is in Venezuela. Still, it’s about the same driving distance to Bogotá.”
“Let’s shoot for Cartagena, but if the weather turns, this is too big a boat for two people to handle.”
“You’re right but the boat is fully automated. Besides, if the weather stays like this … it’s damn near heavenly.”
A hundred miles from their destination, well past the Gulf of Venezuela, the weather did change dramatically. Twenty-foot swells rose up and the wind came from exactly the direction they wanted to go, forcing Phil to decide whether to sail much further north-west or attempt to motor into the wind. For an hour they furled in the sails and tried to motor but the experience was miserable with the boat pitching and yawing and sleep would be impossible in these conditions.
“Next plan,” decided Phil. “We’ll set a storm sail on each mast and head east”. Half an hour later, with the sails set, Iron Pyrate carved through the water, making good time … but in the wrong direction.
“Better get some sleep while you can,” he cautioned Farris. “It might be a long night”.
“OK. Call me in two hours and I’ll take over.”
Thirty-six hours later they were safely tied up in Cartagena, both men exhausted but both feeling a sense of pride, having proven their competence and seamanship in adverse conditions. In many ways this harbor was similar to those in the Bahamas. It was reasonably clean and there was a good selection of larger boats. The real difference, however, was the old security guard who wandered up and down the dock. Phil was not used to having their boat watched by a guard, even an old one, with a sub-machine gun. But this was Colombia, and things were different here.
Phil and Farris ate supper and drank a few beer at a local restaurant where only Spanish was spoken. At eight-thirty in the evening, exhausted and with stomachs full, they headed back to the boat and each to their stateroom, Farris’ in the forward cabin and Phil’s in the stern. Before sacking out, they agreed to meet for breakfast, in about twelve hours.
The following morning over breakfast Farris said, “We have two choices. We can either drive to Bogotá ourselves, or hire a driver.”
“What about flying?”
“It would probably be OK, but this is a war zone. I’d feel safer on the ground.”
“Fine by me. Let’s hire a driver. You could pass as a Colombian. My blue eyes are a dead give-away. I’ll wear sun glasses but let’s get some new clothes so that we can blend in as much as possible. Should we carry guns?”
“Everyone else does, here. Might as well,” answered Farris.
“We are well ahead of schedule. We don’t need to be in Bogotá for three days. Let’s buy what we need and acclimatize ourselves. I speak about ten words in Spanish which I learned in boot camp. Maybe I can learn a few extras.”
“Let’s make sure our driver speaks English. We’ll also need Colombian currency.”
“I think I should talk to the guard. He probably knows a driver. I’ll give him a few dollars to keep a special eye on our boat and a promise to give him more if everything is OK when we return.”
“Sounds good. We can also check out a few taxi drivers. See if we can find one we like.”
Two days later, at five o’clock in the morning, Phil and Michael Farris piled into a private car with a bad muffler and two spare tires. Fully dressed in Colombian clothes they attracted no attention whatsoever, as they drove through downtown Cartagena. Farris blended in perfectly. Phil’s dark hair and deep tan fit in as long as he kept his sunglasses on. Although the scenery in the mountains was magnificent, by noon they were already exhausted, having suffered the constant turns and pot holes. Phil carried a hand held GPS and both men carried snub nosed thirty-eight caliber pistols. The GPS gave the estimated time-of-arrival as five o’clock in the evening.
The mountain dropped off over a thousand feet at the shoulder of the road. A flimsy guardrail made out of two inch piping and cement posts might have provided some protection, had large portions of it not been previously ripped out by unfortunate travelers. Every few miles some good Catholic had erected a sepulcher where a loved one had exited the highway and this world. At one point they came to a traffic jam where a single axel truck had lost its entire rear end, axel, differential and wheels. They passed four military checkpoints where the driver paid a twenty-five dollar fine and they were back on the road. SOP! Standard Operating Procedure.
“What exactly was it you had against flying?” asked Phil, about three o’clock.
“Whatever it was, I’ve forgotten about it. How much longer?”
“The GPS now says six hours to go, but my bet is seven hours before we actually arrive.”
Farris slouched in the back seat, pulled his hat over his eyes and tried to go to sleep. Their driver was very competent. He drove quickly but not recklessly. He seemed to have complete trust in the vehicle which, considering the shape the tires alone were in, was a stretch. He had proved he could speak English but said little. Every few hours he would pull over to buy a drink, or fruit, or one time, some excellent fried chicken. To anyone observing it seemed certain that he knew everyone he encountered, as if he only bought food from relatives and close friends. When he encountered road blocks he said only the minimum and handed over his traveling papers with the tip money neatly folded up inside. Why waste words in a land where money talks?
The driver was solidly built, about forty years old, with all of his hair, bushy and black and a full moustache with a tiny triangle of hair below his lower lip. He wore sunglasses and looked for all the world like a Time Magazine revolutionary. He didn’t carry a gun, though Phil had seen one in the glove box. At times, he seemed to have infinite patience with traffic and at other times he seemed to take extreme