When you hear the words money and kill in one short sentence you know the situation proberbly isnt ging to get much better, and that is exactly what I heard when I was rudely awakened at around 3 am by a group of men supporting very large knives.
I was sleeping in my tent in a place called Portobelo waiting to board my boat to Colombia the next day. Lucky for me I had already paid the captain or I wouldnt have found this such an amusing experience.
So I was camping with 3 other guys I met who were also on my boat. You would assume safety in numbers would apply, but obviously not in this case. I was the first to wake up and unzip my tent as I saw shadows moving about. As I stuck my head out the first thing I saw was one guy with a bandana over his face holding a huge knife.
After I finished going oh shit, oh shit I then noticed the other two surrounding my tent. Then in his best english the first one keeps saying to me `money no kill´, `money no kill´. I mean seriously you have to wonder what direction your life is heading in when the only english you learn is money and kill. If I wasnt bricking it that I was going to be sliced and diced I may have tried to correct his gramma but maybe this wasnt the best time.
At this stage the others woke up and Mike (one of the guys I was with) stuck his head out of his tent whilst his mate stayed put inside the same tent. However Mark decided it best not to come out of his tent till they made him. This actually proved rather amusing watching one of the robbers trying figure out how to open a tent. He kept clawing at the sides unable to find the zip, and in the end started shaking the tent like crazy and shouting Ì kill you, I kill you´Finally Marks head popped out. They then proceeded to rob us, but again I was quite lucky as I was only carrying my `please rob me´wallet so they took that which had the impressive sum of $7 and 2 credit cards in. They got about the same off the others and left without even searching the tents where I had my i-pod, camera, sat phone etc etc. Very lucky indeed. To top it off, Mikes friend who stayed in their tent didnt even get noticed so got away without being robbed. Lucky sod.
The next 5 days was spent on a 44ft boat loaded with 10 people and my bike sailing to Colombia. This was a squeeze to say the least. Although it was fairly calm out to sea, my god those boats roll around a lot. About half of the people on board were being sick pretty much everyday. I managed to hold it down but 5 days feeling a bit crap really isnt that fun.The trip was an experience though and Im glad I did it. We caught some pretty cool fish like tuna and a shark which we promptly ate. The tough part about eating was I couldnt spend more than 5 mins in the gally without wanting to puke, so my food was always fried as fast as possible and shoved down my throat before I decided maybe I wasnt hungry after all.
Anyway, now I find myself in Cartegna, Colombia. Its pretty nice here but the paperwork to get the bike into the country has been a nightmare. It ended up that I actually brought the bike in illegally as I came in on a sail boat not on a cargo ship. This proved tricky, but with a few well placed lies and a lot of smiling I finally got it stamped in. So that was pretty much my whole birthday spent sitting in custom offices in Colombia. Great way to turn 27 hey! Today I finally sorted out the last of the paperwork, some insurance, which you would not believe the amount of time it took me. I was close to a nervous breakdown at one stage. These people choose to have lunch from 11am for two and a half hours!!! So after waitng that long they decided to tell me that actually their computer doesnt work. After a lot of shouting and moaning and almost 2 days of trying I finally have $10 worth of insurance. ARRRGH!
The city of Cartegna is very nice in the old town and there are police everywhere so in fact the place seems way safer than Central America. Tomorrow Im going to attempt to get to Medellin with is 400 miles. This has to be done in the daylight due to security reasons on the road, so tomorrow is going to be a long old day.
Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed the money no kill story and perhaps it will make you all feel sorry for the crappy areas I keep camping in! Ill post some photos in the next few days.
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