Legendary Cartagena flourished into the main Spanish port on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Because the Spanish stored here the treasures plundered from the Indians, the city became a target for pirates and suffered several sieges. In response to pirate attacks, the Spanish decided to make Cartagena an impregnable port and constructed elaborate walls and a chain of forts. Today Cartagena is a living museum of 16th and 17th century Spanish architecture, with narrow streets, churches, plazas and colonial houses with beautiful overhanging balconies.
Cartagena is really beautiful and we are really pleased we have made the effort to come here. In complete contrast to Colombia’s bad reputation, the place feels quite safe – both while travelling through the country by bus and while wandering about town, and especially considering that we are practically living in the slums of the city!! We are staying in Getsemani, which is a poor residential colonial quarter next to the posh Old City – the place where backpackers tend to stay. It is actually a nice place to be, very authentic and with a vibrant street life. You walk through the streets and the houses are open and the people sit on their rocking chairs in the street, watching their own TVs from the outside, where obviously is either fresher or more sociable. We have found ourselves a good room in Hostal Viena, which is listed in the books as the first backpacker hostel and which we had ignored thinking it would be one of those really basic and cheap youngsters places – but in fact it is really OK and offers good facilities, like Internet and kitchen and tourist info and even a family of cats with a litter of four 2-weeks-old kittens. The cats like our room and they enter it every time we forget the window open – the tomcat likes to sleep in our wardrobe and the female jumped in our bed one night, scaring the hell out of Greogory...ah ah ah - that was funny. We have had another cat jumping in our bed in the middle of the night back in S Pedro de Atacama, which was another fantastic place we really liked – maybe these cats symbolise good karma?
Since we have decided to go to Panama by boat instead of by plane, it looks like we are going to hit a 10-day-stay record in Cartagena, which would be one of the longest stays we have had in our journey, excluding Cuenca. The reason is that there are not so many boats going and we have had to work pretty hard to get hold of one. We have finally signed up with El Joshua, a French vessel which is leaving on Saturday. Cutting the story short, we have seen some tiny terrible boats and a really posh one which we have let go for ethical reasons too long to detail here, so now we either took El Joshua a bit late for our liking or we would have had to fly. Since everybody says that the San Blas islands which you pass on the way are fantastic, we have decided to opt for adventure and sign up for this boat, which will carry 7 passengers and has no cabins...only beds in a common shared area. The captain is Colombian and seems very laid back and quite pleasant...so we are taking a chance and we’ll see. We have to take our own food and we will sail for 3 days till we reach the Blas islands, which belong to Panama and are governed by the local indigenas, who have their own laws etc and where the place is quite pristine. Coral reefs and lobsters for dinner etc hopefully will pay off for the long 3 days at sea sharing our personal life with 6 other strangers...
Given the long stay, we have both taken advantage to sort out our teeth. Today Gregory had 6 fillings re-done (so that now he looks like he has perfect totally white teeth back to front) while I have had a deep clean and a whitening treatment to my front tooth, which had turned very dark over the past few months. So far, so good. The next big professional help we are going to need is for my camera, which broke while in Barbados. Barbados was a camera breaker – the underwater one opened while swimming, while the shooting button of my super Sony DSC-H2 fell off, leaving me to take shots with a paper clip, which is really NOT very elegant nor practical. The paper clip solution should not be knocked though, since it continues to provide the pictures we are all currently viewing...
There are a few beaches near Cartagena, many of which are in the Bocagrande area in the city, where the rich and possibly famous live. The best beach we have tried so far is Playa Blanca, 2.5 hours away (by cheap slow day-trip ferry loaded with Colombian tourists - once again, we were the only gringos onboard), which is nice except if you go by ferry you spend less time at the beach and more time queueing for your all-inclusive lunch, then back to town. The many speed boats that passed us seemed the better option, but for some reason the hostel does not recommend them.
If Cartagena is anything to go by, Colombia is a beautiful country well worth a visit. It does appear that the bad old days are behind Colombian life and the good nature of the people here is striking.
We will try to update the blog again before we take the boat on Saturday.
The slow boat that we took to the Islas del Rosario and Playa Blanca - ALCATRAZ!!!
The acquarium on Isla del Rosario
Playa Blanca once all the tourist were loaded back onto ALCATRAZ
35 °C
