Pirate of the Islands
Sunday, August 27th - one big unanswered question in coming to the Rosario Islands was would there be inter/intra island transport. Ie the expensive excursions to the islands from the mainland, could you also do them all from a base in the islands as well? Amd we were thinking of maybe changing hotels after a few days to another island, would that be doable without returning to the mainland? I bet my money on yes though it wasn't certain. Amd having arrived here it seems that yes it's fairly easy to get from place to place here, various boats either making regular calls around or willing to go wherever for a fee ranging from reasonable to unreasonable.
One excursion i wanted to do was to go kayaking among the mangroves. Cristina doesn't want to because "i used to do it all the time it's boring to me." I was about to make a joke that that's how they go shopping in Caracas when she added "that's how i used to go to the store." It seems her mom has a place on the coast and when she lived there she didn't have a car so it was easier to kayak to the store than walk.
Every morning a man comes by the a bucket of lobsters and large crabs looking to sell them to people for lunch. We've declined because i don't really like either, Cristina is possibly allergic to lobster, she likes crab but "i don't want to eat it if i saw it alive." I appreciate this sentimentality.
As we were doing our morning after-breakfast swimming a guy in a boat came along amd offered to take us both snorkeling for 70,000 pesos (about $20). That sounded like a good deal amd the island dog seemed to like him. Then he offered to give us a tour all along the island for 350,000 pesos ($82), which sounded acceptable if it was a really good tour but you don't know until you've had it right? Though due to a communication error (this going from him through Cristina to me) i didn't realize until some time later that it was 350,000 EACH, which i would not have agreed to as that's all out of proportion to what anything costs around here.
Joining us to the snorkeling was a Latino couple consisting of an attractive young woman and an older (50ish) man. They didn't seem at all affectionate though they were clearly traveling together. Usually she was to be seen snorkeling around our hotel by herself.
Anyway the snorkeling was really nice, there was lots of different kinds of fish among the coral in the area he took us.
Then he took us to a nice public beach on the island while he ran the other two back to our hotel. When he came back amd picked us up he took us along the coast of the island pointing out the various resorts, famous people's houses, amd other interesting things. There was a floating bar that seemed to be doing a booming business with boats that came by. There was a house belonging to Shakira, another to a famous baseball player amd another famous Colombian singer Carlos Vives, whom I'd never heard of but apparently it's a thing. But most interesting to me was two ruined palatial estates that had belonged to Pablo Escobar. One all white plaster and arches like the palace of some Barbary sultan, palm trees already growing from the arches amd out the vacant windows, amd the other with falling in thatched roofs. Nearby was the additional ruin of drug lord El Chapo's place, but he appears to have had no style, his place blandly modern. Across from these drug palaces was a smaller island on which Escobar had a small airfield, which is now maintained by the Colombian navy. In the water nearby there was a sunken airplane, our guide said was a crashed drug plane. It was 6 meters down. Our guide gave us snorkels amd masks again to dive around it. I was able to dive down and touch its slightly raised wing but going just a little bit further down to try to look into the cockpit i felt afraid the pressure would do something to me.
Then we were going to stop at a nearby restaurant our guide said was really good, and at first i believe he said he could spot us the payment but then after we ordered he said he'd need to take me back to our hotel to get my credit card and come back, which would add an additional 200,000 ($50) to what he'd have to charge us, amd i didn't fancy paying over $50 for lunch so we asked if it wasn't too late to abort the order amd fortunately it was not. It should be noted when he'd fist picked us up from the beach I'd been about to run amd get my card amd he'd told me there was no need. I kinda suspect he'd intentionally baited us into ordering before telling us we'd have to make the costly card retrieval.
So we returned to our hotel. From somewhere he conjured a friend with a credit card scanning machine amd ran my card for 908,000 pesos ($227!!), which made me feel faint. But if that's the only time I'm scammed here i suppose it could be worse.
Spoiler alert but the next day we went on an excursion of a similar scale for 100,000 ($25).
We decided to extend our stay in this hotel until the 30th.
As usual for lunch we i had a chicken dish amd Cristina had a fish dish. We've both come to love a kind of berry juice they have here called corozo.
Once again watched the sunset, the weather was clearer this evening.
One excursion i wanted to do was to go kayaking among the mangroves. Cristina doesn't want to because "i used to do it all the time it's boring to me." I was about to make a joke that that's how they go shopping in Caracas when she added "that's how i used to go to the store." It seems her mom has a place on the coast and when she lived there she didn't have a car so it was easier to kayak to the store than walk.
Every morning a man comes by the a bucket of lobsters and large crabs looking to sell them to people for lunch. We've declined because i don't really like either, Cristina is possibly allergic to lobster, she likes crab but "i don't want to eat it if i saw it alive." I appreciate this sentimentality.
As we were doing our morning after-breakfast swimming a guy in a boat came along amd offered to take us both snorkeling for 70,000 pesos (about $20). That sounded like a good deal amd the island dog seemed to like him. Then he offered to give us a tour all along the island for 350,000 pesos ($82), which sounded acceptable if it was a really good tour but you don't know until you've had it right? Though due to a communication error (this going from him through Cristina to me) i didn't realize until some time later that it was 350,000 EACH, which i would not have agreed to as that's all out of proportion to what anything costs around here.
Joining us to the snorkeling was a Latino couple consisting of an attractive young woman and an older (50ish) man. They didn't seem at all affectionate though they were clearly traveling together. Usually she was to be seen snorkeling around our hotel by herself.
Anyway the snorkeling was really nice, there was lots of different kinds of fish among the coral in the area he took us.
Then he took us to a nice public beach on the island while he ran the other two back to our hotel. When he came back amd picked us up he took us along the coast of the island pointing out the various resorts, famous people's houses, amd other interesting things. There was a floating bar that seemed to be doing a booming business with boats that came by. There was a house belonging to Shakira, another to a famous baseball player amd another famous Colombian singer Carlos Vives, whom I'd never heard of but apparently it's a thing. But most interesting to me was two ruined palatial estates that had belonged to Pablo Escobar. One all white plaster and arches like the palace of some Barbary sultan, palm trees already growing from the arches amd out the vacant windows, amd the other with falling in thatched roofs. Nearby was the additional ruin of drug lord El Chapo's place, but he appears to have had no style, his place blandly modern. Across from these drug palaces was a smaller island on which Escobar had a small airfield, which is now maintained by the Colombian navy. In the water nearby there was a sunken airplane, our guide said was a crashed drug plane. It was 6 meters down. Our guide gave us snorkels amd masks again to dive around it. I was able to dive down and touch its slightly raised wing but going just a little bit further down to try to look into the cockpit i felt afraid the pressure would do something to me.
Then we were going to stop at a nearby restaurant our guide said was really good, and at first i believe he said he could spot us the payment but then after we ordered he said he'd need to take me back to our hotel to get my credit card and come back, which would add an additional 200,000 ($50) to what he'd have to charge us, amd i didn't fancy paying over $50 for lunch so we asked if it wasn't too late to abort the order amd fortunately it was not. It should be noted when he'd fist picked us up from the beach I'd been about to run amd get my card amd he'd told me there was no need. I kinda suspect he'd intentionally baited us into ordering before telling us we'd have to make the costly card retrieval.
So we returned to our hotel. From somewhere he conjured a friend with a credit card scanning machine amd ran my card for 908,000 pesos ($227!!), which made me feel faint. But if that's the only time I'm scammed here i suppose it could be worse.
Spoiler alert but the next day we went on an excursion of a similar scale for 100,000 ($25).
We decided to extend our stay in this hotel until the 30th.
As usual for lunch we i had a chicken dish amd Cristina had a fish dish. We've both come to love a kind of berry juice they have here called corozo.
Once again watched the sunset, the weather was clearer this evening.