Cartagena- mud, tourists and dodgy guts

Well that doesn´t really paint a fair picture of Cartagena which is the jewel in the colonial crown of Colombia. This steaming city on the Caribbean is a UNESCO world heritage site due to its uniquely perfectly preserved colonial architecture. It really is out of a picture book with narrow streets lined with balconied stone buildings trailing brightly coloured flowers down to the streets and wide plazas with fountains and colonnaded walkways The old city is surrounded by massive stone walls which were erected by the Spanish to protect their treasures from marauders like Sir Francis Drake who repeatedly attacked the city during the 17th century. The walls and the Castillo de San Felipe are still standing surrounding the old town and separating it from the slightly less well-preserved district of Getsemani where we stayed and the new part of the town (Bocagrande) which is pretty similar to Malaga- high rise hotel hideousness but where most monied Colombians choose to stay- no acounting for taste!!

Of course the beauty and charm of Cartagena´s old town do come with a couple of drawbacks- namely TOURISTS. With a strange inverted snobbism we backpackers tend to look own our noses at tourists. This could of course be due simply to jealousy- they have more money than us, stay in nicer hotels, eat nicer food and wear nicer clothes. Obviously I would never stoop to such a base emotion (...) and think rather that where there are lots of tourists you don´t experience the true soul of a country and its people, only the facade that they put on the attract the tourist wallets, and most backpackers like to think that they are after something a bit deeper. Also, to be very pragmatic, tourists put the prices up!!! Cartagena is not cheap with prices in the centre of the old town being almost on a level with Europe- not compatible with a backpackers wallet!

The final annoying aspect of Cartagena, which is also due more to the presence of tourists than the town itself, is the constant harrassment from people trying to sell you something. After a couple of hours I just wanted to scream or get a sign on my forehead- "no quiero comprar nada". Top of the league is jewellery- both artesanal and emeralds (did you know Colombia produces 60% of the world´s emeralds!?). We were constantly being asked into the emerald shops and in between having boards of bead bracelets thrust in our faces. Sunglasses follows with the fact that you have a perfectly good pair on your head apparently no deterent to the vendors. Then there´s the people trying to tempt you into their bar/cafe/restaurant- and there are some very expensive ones here so best check the menu before ordering. The money changers come in next (no thankyou!!) and finally the people who seem to just want to be friendly until they discreetly offer to get you 'anything' you might want- by which they are generally refering to anything illegal you might want. We met another traveller who told us that marujuana here is not sold by the gram but by the 1/4 pound, for which you pay about $2! And cocaine, which is sold by the gram is also about $2 a gram- very cheap I believe. However even if I were interested I would be far too cautious of a police set-up as the inside of a Colombian prison is no something on my list of places to visit!

So that covers the tourists. To elaborate on the rest of the title of this epistle- well I am having the first bout of bad guts of my trip so far. I don´t know what the Cartagenian version of delhi bellie is called but I have it wiith a vengeance- still its a good place to have it as the food here is pretty expensive and I´m not eating any as I don´t want to have to stay within dashing distance of a loo 24/7! I won´t go into any more detail as I´m sure most of you have been there at one time or another!
As for the mud, well one of the more unusual features of the local landscape is a 15m high mound about 1 hour outside Cartagena, which looks like a miniature volcanioo, and in fact that´s what it is. Not a lava and smoke belching monster though; this volcano spews (or more accurately slowly trickles out) a pale brown, viscous mud which fills its crater. Naturally this has been exploited by the locals who have built a (very rickety) staircase up, a small platform around the crater and now run tours for vistors to bathe in the therapeutic mineral-rich mud! Well it was an opportunity not to be missed and a rather surreal experice. The crater was smaller than I expeted- 5m x 5m at a push but at one point there must have been 20 of us in there, plus 4 or 5 local men offering a massage service. Well I use offering in the loosest sense as they were more inflicting it uipon you unles you strenuously refused, which I did, already feeling I was broadening my horizons enough by rubbing limbs in thick mud with a load of strangers without having a strange man running his hands all over me!!! Maybe I´m just too inhibited? In the mud everyone was incredibly buoyant- it was very hard to keep your legs from floating up to the surface and once I achieved a vertical position, suspended in the mud (there was no bottom as far as I could feel) the slightest knock was enough to upset the balance and send me rolling over limbs akimbo! We covered our faces and hair (the mud was a great sunscreen if nothing else) and the guys in there found out what a face mask feels like as it dries. Once a few people got out and there was room to spread out it was actualy very relaxing and we wallowed for about an hour. I now completely empathise with the expression ´happy as a pig in muck´:-) Afterwards we washed off in the nearby freshwater lagoon, where local women were waiting with buckets to help you de-mud- very efficently according to one girl who didn´t say ´no´vigourously enough and whose washer whipped off her bikini pants and top to get her thoroughly clean! I´m not saying it wasn´t necessary as it was but I prefer to have control of my own bikini when I´m in a small area of water with a lot of stange people- I really need to get these inhibitions sorted!!

So that was Cartagena- we walked a lot, it was baking hot and I gazed longingly in the windows of some lovely boutiques selling clothes and handbags I could neither afford, nor transport unscathed in my backpack.

Oh and one other thing- we had our first attempted robbery!! We were trying to get a bus on the very busy main bus street just outside the old town. I tuned to speak to Uli and noticed a guy right behind him fiddling with Uli´s backpack- warning lights flashed so I shouted and grabbed him and Uli turned and we saw he actually had opened the top pocket of Uli´s rucksack and had his wallet already in hand. Well Uli got the wallet back and checked nothing else was missing and then we let the guy go although the local bystanders gave him a load of grief and some even chased after him. Anyway we wrote it off as a lesson learned and got the last laugh when we later realised what the guy had got away with- a small bag containing toilet paper we always carry in case of emergency- I would love to have been there to see the guy´s face when he opened up that drawstring back and found nothing but loo roll- and not even quiilted loo roll at that!! Shame about the bag but all in all we can´t complain!
So tomorrow its back on a bus- goodbye Caribbean and 13 hours to Medellin, Colombia´s 2nd city of about 2.2million inhabitants. We´re getting up fo the 6.15am bus as despite feeling pretty safe so far here, we are getting a day bus as no point taking unneccesary risks.

In case I have painted too harsh a picture of Cartagena I will add that in general the people are very friendly and very proud of their beautiful city (and rightly so) and pleased that people want to come and visit it, and it is possible to stay and eat here cheaply- its just less fun than usual when you have the nice stuff in your face all the time ;-)

Ax

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