Our first night back in our home was a total success and a wonderful relief after almost three weeks of renting apartments.
We spent Sunday getting ready to drive but really our interior survived the container voyage with no problems so it was just a matter of filling the water tank, putting new filters in our Berkey water filter and packing our freshly laundered clothes in their expandable cubes in our overhead lockers. Oh and I had to deal with Starlink.
We’ve switched continents so it was time to turn off my Mexican residential roaming account and fire up Layne’s Colombian residential roaming account. By Starlink rules you cannot switch continents with your Starlink account and you must transfer your satellite dish to a new owner with a new email account and a new credit card. So I did and our monthly fee has dropped from $78 to $66 so there was no reason to delay the switch.
The switch went without a hitch despite my worries of not being able to fire it up again and now have a Starlink dish good from here to Argentina. And I got it done without one single swear word according to Layne. Sometimes I astonish myself.
It was only an hour’s drive from our apartment in Central Cartagena to the farm in the hills above the city where we planned to camp and we had to get some food for the fridge along the way. I liked our middle class digs in the Manga neighborhood, fully air conditioned with a delightful host Feyzal:
And he let us park our van in his courtyard.
It was 95 degrees while Layne shopped so Rusty and I stayed aboard GANNET2 and enjoyed the a/c while Herself went into the oddly named “Exito” supermarket. In Spanish “exito” means success and I was quite successful parking in the Colombia-style, right along the street like everybody else. It seemed iffy but traffic swirled around us which was just as well as the supermarket lot was underground with a low roof.
Driving out of Cartagena we saw the usual weirdness, passengers riding in the bed of the trash truck, multi lane streets with no lane markings but I’ve found my large van has a certain intimidation factor of which I take full advantage. It’s much better than driving a tiny rental car like the Picanto.
We met Hugh and Sue, our Canadian friends at the farm campground and they were quite indignant. They had been pulled over four times on their trip on Sunday and one cop tried to get a $75 bribe when he accused them of doing 21mph in a 20 zone. They refused and he gave up. We by contrast had a no hassle drive.
Moto-taxis and tuk tuks weaving in and out of traffic make for exciting driving but the road was pothole free which made me happy. Notice the 30kph speed limit which we and our neighbors happily ignored and saw no signs of cops unlike Sue and Hugh who obey speed limits. 
But all good things must come to an end and all too soon we found the Vida Campestre campground and settled in for one night at $12:50, which weirdly managed to turn into two nights for $25 when Layne suggested we stay on a little bit…I was not averse! 
