We’ve been relatively lucky throughout this trip. No serious health issues (aside from stomach bugs in India, Andrew’s leg infection in Mozambique, and my reaction(s) to malaria meds in Uganda). No crazy transportation malfunctions (not counting our bus accident in Tanzania and losing our luggage for a week in Turkey). No wild robbery stories (except someone lifting my Polaroid camera in Nepal and someone taking Andrew’s camera that was forgotten in a hotel room in Prague). You may be wondering what’s wrong with me, for thinking we were lucky. But all of our hiccoughs along the way seemed trivial compared to stories we heard from friends, or friends of friends, or even what I envisioned happening when I was feeling particularly nervous.
And then, we get on a speedboat this afternoon to go back to Cartagena, and I find myself thinking This is it… This is when our boat falls apart and we’re stranded in the water, bleeding and sharks come to get us while our passports sink to the bottom and even if we are rescued, we miss our plane and then can’t apply for passports because all of our identification is at the bottom of the Caribbean… Because I’m pretty sure it was our “captain’s” first time driving a boat, and I’m pretty sure we were going entirely too fast. Either that, or he didn’t know how to drive a boat, because it was scary. I even asked Andrew where our passports were and then contemplated securing a life-jacket around the one backpack just in case… When we magically arrived back at the dock in Cartagena, we could hear passengers on other boats clapping and thanking their captain for their safe arrival. Everyone on our boat gave a meek “gracias” and scrambled off the boat as fast as they could. Or maybe that was just me… Either way, I was grateful for our arrival.
