Received another location through the SPOT gps system and Finisterre is either right at Providencia Island, or very close by. On Google Earth, satelite view they are there! I found a few photos of the islands-- Providencia and San Andres which belong to Colombia. These will do until I get photos from Miike and his crew.

I imagine they are resting and getting ready to check in to the country -- the islands belong to Colombia. Their stay will be short, but they'll have time to go to the stores and internet and explore the island a bit. Then, it's off to the
Caymans.

Message from Mike by sailmail --email system that uses the radio on Finisterre--

We arrived at Chicime Island today,
and just getting settled in. Tomorrow we will go over to Gun Boat Island and see
our friends. Hope they appreciate the business cards. We then need to find a
needing Ula owner who needs a sail that we brought. John bought a mola, and we gave
some things to families at Chicime.

I found out that one of the safety systems that Mike has on board-- a thing called SPOT which has a gps and ways to using the satelite to connect to other's email and Google Earth works great. I have seen their location on Google Earth and there are also pictures at the site which I'll attempt to put here, too.

It's a great relief to know the parts we gathered up and sent with crew Steve and John are working and they're enjoying the San Blas!

Kay -- at home in Ukiah after last big chemo treatment and doing great!

On April 20, Mike flew to Panama City, took a taxi to Shelter Bay Marina in Colon, on the Caribbean side of the canal and re-united with Finisterre. The boat has been "on the hard" for almost a year since we weren't able to return for the Winter cruising season. As a result, she was extremely dirty outside, but surprisingly free of mildew inside. Mildew is the dredded plague for cruisers who have to leave their boats closed up during the rainy season! Mike also found out that some of the electronic equipment just refused to work after all that time. He urgently asked me to get regulators for the electrical systems and is still working on the email systems to get them up and running.

So, there will be parts ready to go to the boat with Mike's crew-- Steve and John who arrive in Panama next Tuesday. Bob, who is in Florida will also join the crew in Colon. So, with his 3 buddies, Mike will attempt to leave Panama by May 1st and his route should take him to the San Blas Islands, Panama-- Providencia, Colombia--Grand Caymans--Key West, Florida, up the East Coast of Florida to an anchorage or place "on the hard" in Georgia, S. Carolina or N. Carolina. The crew should be able to fly home around June 1 and Mike will be back in Ukiah around the 15th or so.

Watch for more news on the fast delivery of Finisterre!

There's a possibility we will get to Finisterre in late Spring this year. It all depends on how things go with my treatment for breast cancer. I've decided not to write here on the blog about it and am just looking forward to being healthy enough to be out on the bounding main again with my captain and our trusty Finisterre.

Cartagena´s old walled city is a delightful place with curving balcony lined streets, leafy parks, and history preserved in stone. The city´s buildings are painted colors of creamy yellow plaster to terra cotta to sea blue. They are fronts which hide courtyards behind huge doors with brass lions, french doors opening on upper balconies, dressed in wrought iron and bouganvilla. Painting these buildings in watercolor becomes an obsession for me. I paint until I can´t stand the heat, usually as soon as 11:00 am, and then retreat to shop, study Spanish or find an air conditioned place--internet cafe, restaurant, museum. The museum of gold, housed behind the doors of a huge vault within a bank is one of the best museums in Cartagena. Gold artifacts from ancient Colombian groups are described in detail--how they were made and used by the people. A highlight in the museum is a room where a video (three language choices) details how these ancient people changed the land by making water channels that controlled flooding in the interior flat areas where huge rivers come down from the Andes. These earthen channels which are like a woven pattern are still visible from the air, and if modern peoples were to take care of the annual soil deposited within them, moving it up to the tops of the levees, then the system would still work for flood control.

From the 1500´s until the 1700´s Cartagena was a city protected by fortifications and was sacked more than once by various pirates and foreign countries. This facinating naval history is described in the Naval museum, and, nicely in James A. Michener´s Caribbean, a historical novel that Mike is re-reading. The walls of the old city hold in the heat, but walking along the tops, once can see the wind-swept sea beyond and soak in the breezes. At night, street performers dance to drums beside the huge Botero statue in front of the Santo Domingo Church and park. Last night we enjoyed dinner looking down on the scene from the balcony restaurant over that park. We shared fish and pasta with our friends Paul and Liz, English cruisers from the boat, Aphrodite. They return to England by June or July, stopping in Grand Cayman, Cuba, Florida, Intercoastal Waterway of the U.S., the Azores and England.

Cartagena is like a celebration, day or night. You turn a corner and a vendor walks down a narrow street pushing a cart full of red peppers, each fitting tight next to the other in a brilliant gleaming blast of color. The next one may be arromatic mangoes, or huge vibrant green avocados. Colombia and Cartagena is a place where you will still see carriages pulled by horses, horses and carts-- working, vendors using carts and bicycles. That is definitely because the roads are narrow and cars are a nuisance in the streets where people prefer to walk and sidewalks are crowded with vendors. If you slow down and rest in the Parque Bolivar, you can drink lime juice, the best thirst quencher ever, or munch on dripping chunks of red-pink watermelon. A thousand pesos, a pit more than $.50, and you are quenched and ready to explore further.