How to disembark a boat when you have 16 pieces of luggage and 2 of them are bicycles?

Boarding Micamale in Cartagena was easy. Well, at least not very complicated: there was a harbour with a jetty. We simply pushed our bikes until the boat, unloaded our panniers and trailer, wrapped the bikes with trash bags to protect them from salt water, carried everything on board and all done, all good. The bikes were secured under tarp on the deck, the trailer was put to an empty cabin and the panniers were put under the kitchen table in the main cabin. We brought only the things that we needed during the trip to our cabin.

Offloading everything was a completely different story. Portobelo has no proper harbour. So here we were, anchored in the bay together with many other boats. The captain prepared the dinghy so we could reach the land in the evening. The other guests started betting on how many trips will it take to offload our things with the dinghy. The answer turned out to be zero, because there are water taxis in Portobelo!

Water taxi for our stuff is arriving


Offloading the first bicycle


Offloading the second bicycle


Our 13 more bags (14th - the trailer - is not in the picture)

We usually have one trailer and 7 panniers. We repacked our things for a week on a boat, so we gained few more bags. I also found some very nice (and big) sea shells. As a result we had 6 extra bags that had no place on the bikes...

All our things in the taxi! Next time your family member will pack an extra bag for the trip - remember this and be grateful. It can get worse!


Unwrapping the bikes. Feels like Christmas!


Up next: more about islands and food!