This has to be one of the strangest experiences we have had. The sailing along the Aruban coast was incredible, the dreaded passage to Colombia through what we called the ‘Death Zone’ turned out to be a complete pleasure with incredible spinnaker sailing and then Santa Marta, Colombia, what a unique, vibrant place which ended up with us being locked in a marina for two and a half months and only experiencing 2 days ashore.

We have all seen and heard of the aeroplane beach, so when we found out we were anchored just around the corner we couldn’t help but go take a look. What we found was a hugely popular Sint Maarten tourist destination. If you come to Sint Maarten, you will end up at this beach, and it is something to see! The huge planes blast people on the beach with sand and debris! They send hats, towels and people into the water as they power their engines ready for take off. The fist time we experienced this we were not at all prepared, and ended up with everyone upset and shaken. The clip you see in the video is us – prepared!! We knew what was coming! So were able to watch safely from the sidelines. It was quiet something!

Our main purpose for visiting Sint Maarten was to provision. Being a French and Dutch island we knew they had great big supermarkets, which was something we had been missing on the Caribbean islands where we could only find local stores at high prices.

After filling every spare space on the boat with food we set off on our 5 day passage, across the Caribbean Sea. We had been watching the weather for a few days to make sure we had a comfortable sail with small swell. We left the morning the Heineken week races started, it was great to see all the crews out early making their way to the start.

The passage was good, we had a little cross swell which made it a bit lumpy, and very sadly we tore our Code 0 sail, which is our favourite as it gives us loads of speed. We made it to Aruba just after nightfall, but safely dropped anchor and had a good nights rest. The following day we went to check in and out of Aruba, as we knew there was a fantastic weather window to cross the notoriously windy zone located just off the Santa Marta coastline. We had to go! Aruba wasn’t really our cup of tea anyway, it was lined with massive chain hotels and designer stores. Its sadly been very affected by tourism, which means it has lost its unique charm.

We had the most amazing sail to Santa Marta, Colombia. We were dreading this sail for months, as it is known for extremely high winds and big seas! However we had chosen well, we had a perfect 2 day sail, with winds of between 10 and 17 knots. We managed to have the spinnaker up for most of the way and arrived to a greeting from a big pod of friendly dolphins. We also had some big fish take 4 of our lures on this trip, which is unfortunate, but the boys loved the excitement when the reels screamed.

Whilst we were at sea on this crossing the Corona Virus had rapidly spread around the world. We had hardly heard about it until now, but as we pulled into Colombian waters we were called up by the port control and given orders on where to go and wait for doctors to come and check us over. Luckily we were all fine and we were allowed into the marina.

Our plan was to stay in Colombia for 2 or 3 nights before heading off to Panama and the San Blas islands before crossing the canal into the Pacific ocean.

The next day we decided to take a trip into the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains to a small town called Minca. We hopped in a taxi which took us up into the mountains, where we then had to catch 4 motor bike taxi’s to take us to the coffee plantation. We were slightly nervous about putting the boys on the back of motor bikes for the first time, but they loved it! When we arrived in at La Victoria coffee plantation we were taken on a very interesting tour which taught us all about how we get our daily cup!

After the tour we walked back down to the town via some stunning waterfalls which were great to cool down in, before heading back to the marina in the bus. When we got back to the marina we decided to take a walk around town, and we were so glad we did! We had a great evening being entertained by street performers, and we got to experience how Colombians love their socialising and night life.

The next day we were informed that we could not leave the marina. Boats were allowed in or out!