Cuban Bars in Cartagena

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We bid farewell to San Andres and uneventfully flew into Cartagena....officially Cartagena de Indies. First impression was that this city was hot.....unlike the island we had just left the cooling breeze was soaked up by the urbanity of the city. We arrived at our hostel where we met up with Wendy and her friend Will. The mentioned that they had enjoyed the few days they had been in Cartagena so far but that they had some reservations about the hostel.......the oven like rooms were the first cross, and being woken up at 3am and being asked to help roll a spliff didn´t add to their rating. We agreed to stay a night and see how we went......a night was all we stayed. As nice as the Hostal Media Luna was in appearance dirty bathrooms, temperamental water, a cloudy looking pool and the ineffectual fans in the previously mentioned oven like rooms make for a pretty average experience and for less we got a double just down the road.....much cooler and a lot cheaper!

After finding a new hostel we set about enjoying Cartagena. First stop was to visit Fort of San Felipe, just down the road from where we were staying in Getsemeni. The fort was built as part of the fortification of Cartagena. The city had grown so rich, and being a major Spanish port that various pirates, like Captain Morgan and Sir Francis Drake, attacked and looted it on a number of occasions. The fortress was built to guard one of the sea entrances and to prevent Cartagena from falling to a land based attack. As a structure it’s well impressive, both imposing and clever. Standing on the walls you get the feeling of impregnability. It is possible to survey the ground enemy troops would have had to cover and the heights they would have had to scale to access the fort. The real impressiveness though is that the engineer designed the fort with a series of narrow tunnels for communication, protection & food storage purposes. These are like ants trails all through the fort structure meaning that even were the fort’s walls to be breached, securing the fort would be a tricky proposition.

That evening we met up with Alex and Maree, a couple we’d met in Manizales and then again on Isla de San Andres. We headed to this cool Cuban bar on Calle Media Luna, Havana Club (what else) where we were able view both art and dance Colombian style. The art is the wonderful job that the many Colombian plastic surgeons do in enhancing the female of the species assets. The dance is the amazing skills of the Salsa dancers, male and female. It was amazing! Sitting back, Ann with a Mojito and Gordon with a Cuba Libre the spectacular moves to the funky Cuban beats forced us both to get up and give it a bash......so bash and crash we did. We reckon we invented a new genre of Salsa that night......one born out of an adolescence of hard rock and grunge.....Salsa slam. No need to elaborate further. Exhausted we crawled into bed around three......into our well cool, multi-fanned bed.

Our next day, still buzzing from our night out we headed to wander around Cartagena´s old town. In a word it’s a beautiful city. Surrounded by imposing fortifications, with the sea on one side, with narrow streets and Colonial buildings you forget for a while you are in South America and feel as though you are in a Mediterranean city. We wandered through Cartagena's streets visiting the Cathedral and the Church of Santo Domingo as well as the Cartagenian art gallery. All very interesting. After lunching at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cartagena.....more of a need for some rock music than a need for some burgers.....we headed back to the hostel for a siesta. That evening we headed out again for another night of Salsa at our favourite Cuban Bar.....we were probably a little better than the first night but our steps still need some work!

For our last day in Cartagena we arranged to visit El Totumo, the famous mud volcano about an hours drive from the city. The volcano is about 20m high and you ascend via some wooden stairs and then descend into a pool of mud.....no there is no fire and ash, just grey mud. Once in the pool a couple of locals will gladly rub you down to ensure that you are completely covered and they even offer a photography service. The mud is thick and gets in everywhere! Moving around in the pool provides a challenge as you can't get any traction and rely on other people in the pool to help move you around. Also, the viscosity of the mud means that getting to a standing position.....which is really just a vertical floating position since you can't touch bottom is almost impossible. After about 30 or 40 minutes of soaking in the mud we got out. Gordon's shorts immediately fell down as the weight of the mud in his pockets and on the shorts was too much. After squeezing off as much mud as we possibly could its down to the lagoon where again there are some locals more than willing to help wash you off.

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