Why do I even make plans?

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OK, here´s the secret: in real life I am in Granda, Nicaragua. I´m here volunteering with the great organization ¨Ritmo en los Barrios¨ teaching piano classes to local kids and having a great time being a bit more settled. So that means that I am not in Cartagena, it is not July 8th, and really this blog is falsifying a lot of things. But I´m of the ¨better late than never¨ mindset, backtracking so that everything can be complete even in my neglect to post consistently.

So, after the Salkantay trek I had a bit of a runaround wherein I found the cheapest route to Cartagena, Colombia to be bussing to Lima and then flying through Panama City on a round-trip ticket the second half of which I was sure I would never use. Funny how these travel things work sometimes. If you want to fly in Central America most of the cheaper options go through Miami. The only thing worth mentioning about the two day trip is that the Peruvian bus company offered one of my favourite lost in translation moments of my journey:

¨Each passenger may store up to 20 kg. of luggage in the winery.¨

Clearly the super useful word ¨bodega,¨which means storage cupboard or closet room or perhaps luggage hold but also winery is easy to get mixed up on.

Anyway, I made it to Cartagena and was met by oppressive heat and my parents, wearing Panama hats, which are allegedly made in Ecuador and which they bought in Colombia. We spent a few days exploring the city, which was so talked up by backpackers all over South America but I just wasn´t so enchanted. I had hoped to do some volunteer work there and I thought I had everything set up with an organization but in the end that fell through. I don´t know exactly why I was so dissapointed by Cartagena and if you are planning to go there based on all of the positive comments you´ve heard then you probably should go but then tell me exactly why you loved it so much.

I will be back to Colombia some day but for this trip I made a very ¨eleventh hour¨decision to use the portion of my return to Lima flight that went to Panama and head up to Central America to spend the last seven weeks of my trip on a different continent alltogether. I keep having my plans and routes change and I realize each time anew that I just shouldn´t make plans at all. Oh well, I see and do amazing things regardless of where specifically I am and I´m moving closer to Canada all the time!

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Comments

[Madre]

Cartagena heat
One good thing about the oppresive heat of Columbia is that we are now acclimated to the searing heat the west coast is having now! However, the west coast is dry now and much more bearable.