Christmas Lights

Monday was the day of the much anticipated Christmas Lights tour of Cartagena. That had to wait until the evening so we had the day to get a few things done.

In the morning I dropped off our passports with our agent so we can clear out. Later, I picked up the filled dive tanks and refueled the dinghy. I also ran the hookah to see if it was ok – it was. Given that it seized up last time it’s probably running it if left for a month or two. I was also called over to Panda to reverse their laptop setup as they had a connection problem with one of them. It should have been straightforward but it took a bit of o/s wrestling to make work.

We decided to eat out and have a pizza for before the tour of the lights. We had an ok pizza and a couple of beers each before heading back to Club Nautico to meet up with everyone.

Stuffed onto a bus we were given our free rum (I managed to get two) and then set off. After what seemed ages we were ejected to see a little park where they had a large, lit tissue paper doll nativity scene. The ‘baby Jesus’ looked lit a glow worm / maggot. Still, the trees were lovely and lit up nicely.

We were then packed back onto the bus for our next treat. Along the way we got stuck in the wrong street and had to back up which took forever. The next ‘treat’ turned out to be a residential street with a few lit up houses. To be quite honest, the lit apartments right next to Club Nautico were better. I imagined locals asking us how far we’d travelled to see this street. I was embarrassed.

Right round the corner we saw a clone of the first park with the holy glow worm but we were spared the ordeal of getting off the bus. Then it was off to the old town which raised spirits. Having seen some impressive lights go up recently we were hopeful for more. Sadly, we’d already seen the best of it on our previous night’s excursions. Although I enjoyed the company of friends (Pandas, 3/4 Times were there among others) I was personally quite bored with the trip and would rather have done something else. You can’t win ’em all.

As we approach Thursday, our planned departure date, I’m paying more and more attention to the weather. Typically the good winds are north of 11N which means a big arc up north to catch them for a while. The current predictions have better weather north of 10N which may mean we get an easier ride but need to be careful of stronger weather a little north of our track. We’ll see but it’s looking promising.