Cartagena - Caribbean Columbia

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We flew in over Cartagena and from the air it was beautiful, the sun had been up a couple of hours and the day was just starting. We rushed from the airport and head to Getsemani, where most of the hostels are. We had no problem finding somewhere and made sure we dumped our stuff and went straight out. We only had the full day there and wanted to make the most of it. Originally we were due to spend a couple of days here but Tony had now committed to do his Open Water in Taganga so we needed to cut Cartagena short, a decision we were starting to regret as soon as we started exploring.

The streets, buildings & houses were beautiful, they had so much charm and it was a very romantic place. Every building was covered with flower balconies and the colours were beautiful. History oozed out of every building you walked past, old slave markets, plazas, clock towers, churches and dungeons. We could only try to sum Cartagena up as enchanting.

We walked around old town, then districts El Centro and San Diego which is surrounded by Las Murallas, a large wall to protect the city. This was built in the 16th century to protect the city from Pirates, in particular Englishman, Sir Francis Drake. The wall took two centuries to complete due to repeated storm damage and pirate attacks. It was very impressive and still had the canons arched over the walls. The best view of the city was from Café del Mar at the top of the wall.

Now don’t be fooled, we are only referring to old town when describing it like this. If you head around to the beach you walk upon Benidorm meets Bahamas. Stylish package deals, all-inclusive resorts accompanied by harassment every 30 seconds. We didn’t spend long on the beach before getting completely irritated by ‘beer’, ‘massage’, sarong, ‘white or green’? Over and over. Most wouldn’t take no for an answer and squirt lotion all down your back and start rubbing your shoulders when your back was turned, asking for payment in return.

We got a bit sick of this so head to the nearest hotel bar with beach view for 241 pina coladas and a skype call to Kate, Nic, Jen & Sarah. Obviously parading the pina colada and beach behind me in full view of the webcam!

We made a mad dash back down the beach just in time for sunset from Cafe Del Mar. Very Ibiza influenced but the perfect place to watch a beautiful Caribbean sunset.

Without a doubt, Cartagena is one of our favourite places we have visited in South America, the people are friendly, the streets feel safe and the character and charisma of the buildings and suburbs are amazing.

Unfortunately we spent such a short amount of time here and we were devastated to be leaving, especially as we found our winner of the Number 1 Worst Taxi Ride in South America.

This turned into being a day of Number 1’s for us, although not for the best reasons. Following our Worst Taxi Ride (the more we screamed the more he laughed and went faster) and where we really don’t know how we could have possibly survived it, was our worst bus ride ever. We arrived at Cartagena bus station and got the next bus heading to Santa Marta. They operated every hour so we didn’t have to wait long. We were however, sat cramped at the back of a bus with a smashed window, which makes you wonder how it got smashed in the first place.

All was going ok until a tropical Caribbean storm engulfed the road, wind and rain so fierce that the whole window pane fell through and so the rain was lashing through. This was then followed by 2 hours of a single lane highway with constantly slow moving vehicles on both sides, therefore encouraging both lanes of traffic to overtake, all of the time in very poor visibility. Grateful, as always in South America to arrive in one piece, we were now in Santa Marta.
Here we got into the No.1 Worst Taxi ever, not the driving but the state of it. It was just a shell.

Anyway after our eventful and heartstopping day we had arrived in Santa Marta. This would be our gateway to Tayrona National Park. We had been told this was absolutely not to be missed if in Columbia and we were grateful for the advice.

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