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Published: December 4th 2012
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Kate arrived in Cartegena a few hours after i did and checked into the hostel. The whole district was without water and would be for the next 16 hours we were told, so still smelly but blending in with the other back packers, we met up with Pete and wandered around the city until it got dark. We ate street food and drank from snow cones, it was idyllic. unfortunately, the water hadn't yet been restored when we got back to the hostel so we went to bed on the relaxed promise of showers in the morning.... very Caribbean!! Eeeeeasy!!
Sunday - 4 November - Still no water this morning so, today Pete, Kate and I took a trip to the Volcan de Lodo El Totumo a mud volcano 50kms northeast of Cartegena. We, I acting as the host, entertained our spanish bus contingent with an impromtu interview during which i quizzed Pete and Kate about their travels and why they hadn't hooked up yet, hard hitting jornalisim folks!! To the relief of all, we arrived at a 15m high mound of earth and were excitedly told that this was the volcano, never one to believe that size is all
that matters, i stripped to my bikini and armed with camera began the assent. At the top there was a square pit into the mouth of the 'volcano' and inside there was a grey gooey mud. The men ushered us forward and onto the ladder down into the pit. Immediately you enter you are grabbed by the men and pushed to the other side skimming across the mud. Once there you get a lovely massage from the mud man, front and back!!! then you're pushed across the mud again into all the other mud bathers for a deep soak. The mud is so dense that you struggle to stand up straight and put your feet on the sedement at the bottom (i am told, i was way to short and perturbed to put my feet down!). The more people that entered the mud pool the more crowded and difficult it was to maintain floating position. Seeing a guy fall face first into the mud and watch him try to regain his sight with mud everywhere wasn't something i wanted to try to. After about 30 minutes of floating we headed for the side. Once we'd hauled ourselves out of the
mud (you literally weigh twice as much as you did when you got in with the added mud) a nice man touched us up and removed the excess mud from our bodies. We headed down to the lake where we were met by the washer women. I stood on the bank for a while waiting for the mud to dry a little and fully infuse into my weary skin, then went for a dip, but not before offering free hugs to the bystanders...... none took me up on the offer, i can't understand why!! So as soon as i got within 3 feet of my allocated washer women, she lurched forward and, well it can only be described as such, tackled me under the water!! whilst submerged she began scrubbing the mud off me and out of my hair which was actually quite nice in between the rapid gulps of breath i was having to take. Then she directed me to strip and washed my bikini for me, lovely lady!!! I floated for a while before redressing, savoring the clean feeling knowing that there would still be no water in cartegena when we got back. We were right, still no
water.
What do you do when you can't shower, well the answer is drink a lot of rum and dance with locals in the hope of stipulating rain for the walk home. So that is what we did, we headed out to 2 salsa clubs, both had live bands which were awesome. One of the bands even played songs tributed to us. We met up with a couple of argentinian girls we'd met in bogota who had brought down a couple of friends they'd picked up. We got chatting and half way through the night i noticed one of the guys had a cool tatoo on his feet reading "bare" on the right foot and "feet" on the left. i said "it's a funny story, i heard of someone who had the same tatoo as you" and recounted a story that Natalie (a girl from the hostel in bogota) had told me about a group in Bolivia who had got on so well after the salt flats tour, that one drunken night they had all decided to get rediculous tatoos............ so it was the one and same person!! what are the chances!! It was random, he was really freaked
out that i knew the story and it had worked it's way to Columbia!!
Pete was leaving for the White Islands in the morning so we had a few final tripod pictures and called it a night, it still hadn't rained and at this point i was ready to bathe in a puddle in the street, but luckily there was a trickle of water back at the hostel so we managed to get semi clean before putting our heads down!!
Monday - 5 November - So after the lack of water for the last few days, the gods must have finally tired of our rain dancing as it rained pretty much the whole day. regardless of this though, in between showers, Kate and i walked around the city for most of the day. We managed to organise our sailing trip to Panama with a guy who needed his boat there to take out a tour, we would leave the next day. When we got back to the hostel i heard that some of the others were getting taxis up to the monastery as it had a great view over the bay for the sun set. Afterwards we all
headed for a sushi bar and had huge boats of sushi deposited to our tables. Our tummies full we wandered up to the city walls and sat high up on them drinking a few tins chatting about anything and everything whilst watching the stars and until the stones bore so far into our behinds it was too uncomfortable to sit there any longer.
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