Cartagena wedding (1)

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Our arrival into Colombia commenced the wedding part of the trip. We flew into Bogota and spent the weekend with Patty’s dad running errands and picking up wedding clothes, including Patty’s wedding dress that she had bought in Brisbane but left at her dad’s place while we travelled through South America. A couple of Patty’s friends also organised a party in her honour to celebrate the upcoming wedding. Many of her old school friends were there, and she had a great time catching up with them. The highlight of the night was the serenade they had organised for us, which was a group of 10 mariachis (Mexican musicians playing trumpets and other instruments) who sung and played for us for about half an hour; something Patty had always wanted! (Colombians still have the tradition of serenades, so on special occasions you hire these groups of musicians to sing to your loved one.)

Anecdote: A major concern for us 5 days out from the wedding was the weather! Colombia had been experiencing the wettest 3 months in its history, with more than a third of the country flooded. Only two days earlier, there had been such a deluge of rain in Cartagena that the hotel where we were having our wedding had been flooded with over 30cm of water through the foyer area. This foyer area, which has a beautiful Spanish, open air courtyard in the middle of it, was also where we were planning to have the ceremony. The whole lead up to the wedding we spent watching the weather forecast praying for a dry evening for our wedding day. Thankfully the gods were on our side and we had a beautiful afternoon with a light breeze blowing, perfect for our ceremony! It was three days later when the weather closed in again, and the torrential rains began once more.

We flew to Cartagena five days before the wedding, which was also a couple of days before the arrival of the first of our wedding guests. Again, it was all about wedding organisation, getting my new wedding suit tailored, hair and nail appointments for Patty, and meeting with the hotel to run through the last of the wedding details. The meeting with the hotel staff managing our wedding went really well, as they seemed to have everything organised, including alternative arrangements should there be rain on the wedding day, so we walked away from this meeting very relaxed.

Anecdote: Our arrival into Cartagena was definitely not as smooth as we had hoped. We came out of the arrivals gate to find that there was a taxi strike, and there were only motorcycle taxis available to take us the 8km from the airport to our hotel in the old city. As we were loaded down with four suitcases, Patty’s wedding dress and a large box, containing the bulk of the surprises we gave out to the guests at the wedding, there was no chance we were going to fit on the back of a motorcycle! While we were debating our next course of action, a guy on a push bike with a two person carriage on the back came riding past to drop off a passenger. We immediately flagged him down and negotiated a price to transport us to our hotel. We thought we would still need to split up and transport everything in two trips, however the guy seemed confident he could fit everything, and so we jumped on while he loaded the 70kg of luggage under, around and on top of us and off we went. Just outside the airport, we encountered our first taxi blockade, with the taxis nose to tail across the entire road and foot path preventing anything but a motorcycle squeezing between the gaps. As there were no gaps big enough for the bike and carriage, we had to unload the baggage and then the bike rider and I had to man handle the bike and carriage over the taxi blockade before we loaded up again. Between the airport and our hotel, we encountered two more blockades, each time having to go through the same exercise. Finally arriving at the old city, we found a further blockade at the entrance, which was impossible to get the bike and carriage past, and so from here we had to unload the bags and walk the last 500m to the hotel. The worst part was that we had flown into hot, humid Cartagena from cold Bogota, which meant that we were still wearing our jeans and boots when we arrived, and so by the time we got to the hotel two hours later, we were both drenched with sweat! At this stage we were praying that this experience would not be a sign of things to come for our wedding!

The majority of the international guests arrived on the Wednesday before the wedding. We made a point of welcoming almost everyone at the airport gates as they arrived, as this was the first time any of these guests had visited Colombia, and it can be a little overwhelming when first arriving in Cartagena with the heat and the swarms of taxi drivers and other people that can harass you as you exit the airport, so we thought a couple of familiar faces was important. As people were arriving at different times, this meant that we spent the whole day taxiing back and forth between the old city and the airport welcoming guests. Many of our guests had been travelling from the other side of the world to get to Cartagena, and so there were plenty of interesting travel stories from our guests including delayed flights, lost luggage, confiscated duty free alcohol, missed connections and sick children. Probably the strangest story was from one of Patty’s friends and her husband who ended up missing the wedding because their child got really sick the day they were meant to fly into Cartagena. Their little boy was running a really high fever on the day and they had to take him to the hospital rather than catch their flight. A number of doctors looked at him to try and work out what was wrong with him, and after much deliberation, the prognosis was the poor kid had swallowed a bee, and the poison from the bee was causing his high fever! My mum also gave me a scare, coming through the arrival gate in a wheel chair. She had got a bad stomach bug the day before in Lima, and had to be brought through from the plane in a wheel chair she was that weak, but thankfully she was on the recovery by this stage and only improved over the days leading up to the wedding!

We spent the two days before the wedding doing a number of activities with the international wedding guests. The first of these was a half day city tour so that everyone could familiarise themselves with the old city and gain a bit of an understanding of the rich history of the area. Cartagena was the most important shipping port in South America for the Spanish conquistadors, and so the city was heavily fortified during this time to repel frequent attacks from the English and French armies, who also wanted the city.

That evening was also our bucks / hens night, where we hired a Chiva bus (open air bus with live musicians) to take us on a tour around the city. On the bus everyone got introduced to aguardiente, or Colombian firewater! It was an awesome party atmosphere, with regular dancing / drinking / toilet stops before finishing up at a typical Colombian nightclub where the younger guests kicked on until the early hours. A few guests got a little carried away with the firewater however, with a number spending the following day hugging the porcelain throne and missing our excursion out to the mud volcano.

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Photos

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Main entrance to old city of Cartagena

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Cartagena streets

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Botero sculpture

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Cartagena streets

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Eli with a sloth

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The international contingent of wedding guests