Simon the only backpacker left on the boat, got on a fast boat at 7am.  Our pre-arranged fast (3 hours on a 2x200hp outboard motors) boat didn’t arrive at 8am at our boat but picked up the other bikers on the MetaComet boat and left. We eventually got our bikes off Fritz-The-Cat and onto the dock, between swings to-and-fro as the boat wasn’t tied down properly.   From the dock there were easily loaded and tied down on a cargo boat about 120 feet in length with a crew of 7 plus cook.   $110 and 9 hours would get us to Turbo sometime around 8pm.   We stopped at another port and a barrel full on gasoline fell on Mark’s leg grazing it. The same barrels were then dumped into the sea followed by a deckhand who swam corralling each barrel pushing them towards the jetty.   Then three hours passed frustratingly while three small boats were loaded with the cargo stored in the hull of our boat.  Enough rum and clear alcohol was unloaded into that tiny village to seemingly supply it for a year.  As we pulled out of the harbour the deckhands began dumping the garbage just picked up from the village into the water – we watched as the carefully collected bottles and cans floated by in the froth from the boat. A few whole bags of garbage were dumped as well as a plastic hose and anything else that wasn’t wanted.   One piece of cargo that seemed to get lost in shipment was 1/2 container of Nokia phones that the captain and senior crew inspected carefully.

Five days on the ocean and the sun and sea’s stripping away effect has become quite clear.  Everyone has approached a slight stir-craziness punctuated with periods of quiet resignation and boredom.  The ocean bleaches the colour from one’s hair, strips away at the skin leaving it smooth and tight, dries and cracks the wood on the ship, cuts at the metal anchor chain links until rusty pieces flake away, bores constantly against the rocks turning them to sand.  I climbed the ladder to the roof of the boat and watched the sun set well over the coastline hills, indicating some much larger as yet unseen mountains behind the hills.  The sun is much more powerful here and when it was setting everything seems to fall quiet and then as if a drain-plug had been pulled somewhere all the light in the world was sucked down the drain somewhere beyond those mountains leaving only the thin clouds softly lit.

Motorcycles No Toll, near Turbo, Columbia

Torban at Peaje, Columbia

Torban, Tom, Banana Boat to Turbo, Columbia