Yay! We’re back in Colombia after taking a few months off the boat to visit friends and family in the States. We also took an eight week trip to New Zealand and a one week vacation (or at least it was a vacation for mom and me even though dad had to work) in the Dominican Republic. 

Anyway, right now we are in Santa Marta visiting more friends. Our boat is actually in Cartagena, a 4-5 hour bus ride away. When we got back to the boat last week, it was in the boat yard. It was covered with dust and we had a lot of cleaning to do. Now the boat is in the water and at the marina, Club Nautico. It is definitely hotter here in Colombia than even Florida, let alone North Carolina or Kentucky where we visited my brother, sister and grandparents. ​

We will probably sail over to Panama next, and then father north. By the time we get back to Florida we will have sailed about three years and I will be ten, so will have ended my single digit years. We are all excited to get back to the States with the boat.

As always, sorry for the long lapse in posts. I always say I'm going to be better and post more often, but life and lack of consistent connectivity always seem to get in the way. 

After a wonderful three weeks in Cartagena and sailing to the Rosario Islands with different groups of family and friends, we commenced the most unpleasant part of cruising . . . prepping the boat to be left for a season.

The water in the bay in Cartagena is pretty gross and the bottom of the boat will grow a whole ecosystem very quickly (like a week). Since we did not have enough time to sail back to Santa Marta before our flight out, we decided to pull the boat out of the water again and leave her in a boatyard in Cartagena.

We departed Colombia August 10 which coincided with our 179th or 180th day in the country in 2017 depending on how you counted our multiple arrival and departure days. There were a few scary minutes at the airport while immigration counted and recounted our days from our passports. In the end they agreed we had not over-stayed our allowed 180 days in a calendar year. We are not sure what the penalty would have been, but have a feeling it would have been an expensive fine.

Back in the States we have traveled to Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee to visit family and friends. Kaylee and I are now back in Florida trying to maintain as normal a life as possible with homeschool, swimming, running, soccer and lots of playtime with friends. Ken is currently in the Dominican Republic for a few weeks after being asked by a former client to come do a little work on a resort development that has come back to life after years of dormancy due to the economic crash in 2008. 

None of us will sit still long though! Ken is leaving for Fiji October 10 to join a fellow sailing buddy (Captain Dan) for the crossing from Fiji to New Zealand - that should take between 10 and 15 days. If you notice our SPOT locator active again in Oct/Nov in the South Pacific, that is why. It will not be aboard AquaVida though, but Vagabond instead. Kaylee and I will then fly to New Zealand in early November to join them. We plan to explore New Zealand aboard Vagabond and on land for most of November and December.

We expect to back aboard AquaVida sometime in January . . . when we are allowed back in Colombia :-)

A few pictures since being back in the States. I have not been good about taking many, so not a lot of the family and friends we visited, sorry . . . 

Finding computer and (decent) internet time has been a challenge between long days in the car, hiking and Kaylee's school work. She prefers to use the computer for math and I am happy to let her do math any way she wants! Also, she uses the computer for Rosetta Stone to keep her Spanish moving along.

Here is a first batch of photos from the next few stops in Colombia. More to come from later stops. Captions are included if you scroll over or start a slide-show. Also, as a reminder, we are using Instagram as well and that is much easier to use with just cell signal, in the car and by phone alone. Our handle on Instagram is @aquavidasail.

As I post this we are in in Cuenca, Ecuador - a lovely city popular with US ex-pats and we can see why. Our SPOT tracker has run out of batteries and so far we have been unable to locate any lithium batteries for replacement. We are hopeful that when we are back in Quito or Bogotá we may find some. The Google map is currently up to date but sometimes falls behind depending on our web-access and time to update - that one I have to manually draw on the computer.

We are having a wonderful time, seeing amazing places and making great new friends, but miss everyone back home. We are looking forward to our return to Santa Marta and trip back to the States in August.

Sorry, we know it's been a long time since a post. I'd like to say it's because we've been so busy, but it is more that our lives settled into an almost normal routine that didn't seem worthy of posting. Kaylee was in school, Ken was helping a few friends with some engineering tasks and I joined the gym. Not too exciting.

Unfortunately the last couple weeks were dominated (at least they seemed to be my me!) by me falling ill and the trials and tribulations to get it diagnosed and treated. About a month ago I noticed my balance being just a touch off. My vision would bounce around a little. Over a couple weeks the vision imbalance worsened until one day my world was spinning and I could not make it stop causing me to throw up over and over. Of course this happened the day Ken left for Bogotá with a friend in search of a vehicle for our next adventure in South America (more later). Kaylee and some good friends here in Santa Marta took great care of me while we worked to find the right doctor for vertigo. I've never experienced anything like that, it was terrible and knocked me down for almost the whole week. We found a wonderful ENT who promptly diagnosed a middle ear infection and some impacted wax. With a prescription in hand, I steadily improved over the next three to four days.

Just as I was starting to be functional again, the same ear - where the wax removal had caused a small sore - started an outer ear infection that became very painful. Once it was bad enough I decided I needed the doctor again, I emailed the doctor hoping to sneak in a quick consultation. When we didn't hear back, we went to the office anyway only to find it was closed in the lead up to Semana Santa, the big holiday week leading up to Easter. That evening as we considered other options, Ken was chatting with a group of men gathered for the weekend fishing tournament. As introductions were made and stories exchanged, one man asked Ken if he was Danielle's husband. Ken said yes, wondering who I could possibly know that he did not since Ken is the more outgoing one of us when it comes to meeting new people and chatting in Spanish. The man said, "I'm doctor Romero, her ear doctor, I've been trying to get a hold of her all day. Is she here?" I was in the boat whimpering in pain. When Kaylee ran to tell me the doctor was here, I could hardly believe it, and so relieved. He looked in my ear with a cell phone flashlight, said 'yep, pretty infected' and wrote me a prescription on a scratch sheet of paper. We couldn't believe our luck running into my doctor right where we literally live, on the dock! Small big-towns everywhere, everyone is connected. Four days later, I am finally a fully functional person again. It's been a long few weeks.

In the meantime;
- We attended a birthday party for one of Kaylee's classmates at a beautiful banana plantation in existence since the 1700's and got a tour of the newly refurbished plantation house, now used as a weekend getaway.
​ - We spent a lot of time repairing our dinghy - some seams needed gluing
- Kaylee started taking guitar lessons from our favorite local musician, Rolando
- We delivered food from the police food bank to a local community
- Kaylee participated in a tennis tournament
- We bought a truck!
- Ken and Kaylee took a wedding videographer and a couple out sailing to get some drone sailing shots. He has promised us some footage!
- We rescued a puppy and found it a new home. Kaylee named her Luna and she was just about the sweetest thing ever. We hated to give her up, but there was no way we could keep her.
- We took some new and old friends out for a daysail and some nice swimming
- We started planning our next trip

So you may have noticed we bought a truck in the middle of that dissertation on my ear. We decided not long after we arrived in Santa Marta that we would try to get inland to do some exploring of Colombia, hopefully Ecuador and possibly Peru. Putting Kaylee in school delayed that plan a bit, but gave us an opportunity to meet lots of people, make good friends and really plot how we wanted to do the trip. We began the discussion thinking we would do it all by bus and backpack, but started thinking about what it would take to rent or buy our own vehicle and give us a little more flexibility. Renting quickly went away as an option because you cannot cross country lines when renting. One friend, who deals in vehicles, and Ken came up with a plan to buy a 4x4 truck and then our friend would either buy it himself or sell it for us. Sounded great to us! So Ken and Sander headed off to Bogotá to find the truck they were looking for. Three days later and fair amount of bureaucratic hoops jumped, we have our new chariot.

Kaylee's last day of school was Friday. We are using this holiday week to play with friends and let the dust settle from all the holiday traffic. We will secure our boat in the marina and take off inland sometime next week. I promise to be better about posting some pics on Instagram and will try to keep the blog in a little better shape too. Also, the SPOT tracker will be live again, but probably not on the 10-min tracking mode in order to save some battery life.

We should be back in the States (by plane) late summer or early fall and look forward to catching up with everyone!