“We set off for around forty hours at sea, heading north; aiming for Providencia. We sailed faster than planned, and were going to make landfall at night; fortunately we had been told that the channel was well buoyed; we therefore dropped anchor at 1am. When we 'emerged’ at around 8am, still tired from our passage, we discovered the spectacle of Providencia. Situated off Nicaragua, this island is however Columbian. It is very pretty, and immediately made us think of Moorea, with its lush relief dominating a very beautiful lagoon. Crazy Louise is anchored in the bay which separates Old Providencia and Santa Catalina. These two islands are linked by a small floating bridge in brightly colored wood, and almost everything refers to pirates in general and Henry Morgan in particular, as he made Santa Catalina his base for a while. “There is certainly hidden treasure here! We must go looking for it!” With these words, we set off to explore Santa Catalina on foot (no motor vehicles are allowed here) and after having admired the cannons at Fort Warwick which defended the channel against the English or Spanish, we had the pleasure of jumping into the water from Henry’s head. The next day we rented a vehicle like a golf cart, to go round the other island. In fact the tour was quickly completed; leaving the town of Santa Isabel (3 roads at the most), We followed the ‘ring road’ and took all the transverse roads which presented themselves: this didn’t take any longer than two hours. A small island to be sure! But really beautiful! And everywhere, in the village and elsewhere, the faces were happy and smiling. We regretted not having the time to linger for longer, as we enjoyed it so much. In fact the weather forecast warned of the arrival of a cold front with a strong head wind in the coming days; we therefore had to arrive at our destination before it reached us."
Nicole, Laurent and Jules and Max aboard Crazy Louise
lesvoyagesdelouise.com
