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Published: April 30th 2018
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One of Cartagena's beautiful streets
The old city is filled with charming, colorful buildings Cartagena 16/04/18-23/04/18 Due to terrible Colombian WiFi and painfully slow hostel computers, most of this blog has been written 4 times.. please bare this in mind 😊 According to my trusty Lonely Planet, Cartagena is "the undisputed queen of the Caribbean coast, a fairy-tale city of romance, legends and superbly preserved beauty lying within an impressive 13km of centuries-old colonial stone walls. The Old Town is a Unesco World Heritage site – a maze of cobbled alleys, balconies covered in bougainvillea, and massive churches that cast their shadows across leafy plazas". Some of you may know the prize-winning Novellist, Gabriel García Márquez. Márquez arrived in Cartagena in 1948 as a penniless student from Bogotá and was inspired and influenced by this charming city in much of his work. We spent one week (that is a long time in travel terms) here in this colourful city; wandering around the charming streets and getting involved with the activities on offer.
The Food Tour Those of you who know me well, know that I am massive foody; so a trip to Colombia would not have been complete without a food tour. I hoped there would be no nasty surprises on this
The Gate and Clock Tower
It can be seen at the main entrance of the walled city one though.. Vietnam, I am looking at you! And luckily there wasn't. Willy, our lovely food tour guide, introduced us to exciting tropical juices from fruits we had never heard of it (zapote juice, anyone?), a DELICIOUS coffee shop (which we went back to again and again), this weird combination of soft cheese and guava jelly, fried plantain, pandebono (a delicious hot ball of warm cheesy bread traditionally eaten minutes after baking, alongside a hot chocolate), king prawn cerviche (Lucy, you would love this), and some sweet treats. We also did a free walking tour during our week, but he was no Willy, and I also found it really difficult to understand him.. although Sal seemed to get what he was saying.
El Choco Museo We also visited the most delicious museum in Cartagena: El Choco Museo. There is a great reputation for chocolate in Colombia as the finest cocoa types in the world can be found here. Free entrance, free samples, and air con.. it was a no brainer. We took some pals along with us for the tour. We sampled everything chocolate.. liquors, tea, coffee, and my personal favourite.. hot chocolate. Interesting fact: Colombian's drink gallons of
the latter, especially for breakfast (yay for me), and sometimes with a chunk of cheese dunked in until it melts (that, I have not tried yet!). We also visited the popular Museo de Oro (Gold Museum), but the clear winner for me was El Choco.
Playa Blanca Apparently the city beaches here were not that great, so one of our days was spent with some friends at Cartagena’s most beautiful beach, Playa Blanca. We squished into a taxi...1 in the front, 4 in the back, and hilariously, 1 friend went in the boot. The taxi man said his record was 8 persons.. how on earth?! Hot and sweaty, we literally stuck to each other for the long, 45 minute journey. Pulling into Playa Blanca was an experience in itself. The moving taxi infront of us had 3 large Colombian men standing and holding onto the outside of the car - and they were all banging on the cars windows.. I immediately assumed they were trying to mug them. Oh no, our Brazilian friend said.. they are just trying to sell them drinks. Sell them drinks!? That is by far the most aggressive selling tactics I had ever witnessed. Luckily
we only had 1 man attached to our taxi, our driver rolled down the window, shouted something loudly in Spanish, and the man let go. Once arriving at the beach, crowds of men formed around us as we got out the taxi and immediately I felt unsafe and my bag was put on my front, and the zips were held. Lots of words were exchanged in Spanish between one of our friends and the men, and we walked down to the beach with only 1 of the men with us. I assumed she had "chosen" his patch on the beach for us to eat food. Luckily for us, Mirella knew what a tourist trap this area was, having been once already, and she agreed with our chap that we would pay for lunch only and not anything else. 2 hours later, after a delicious fish lunch was consumed and we had all taken it in turns to swim (leaving bags unattended here was an absolute no no) and sure enough, when the bill came, there was a charge for the "shade" (a small blue plastic covering we were under) at 80,000 pesos = roughly £20.66, and an equally crazy charge
Gertrudis
This Rubenesque reclining nude is made of bronze by Fernando Botero, Colombia’s most well known visual artist. It is said that if you rub her breasts, she will bring you good luck in love. for service. Mirella was fuming; and for 15 minutes, she argued with the men. We then paid the bill (only the food) and stormed off. We found another patch to chill and again took it in turns to swim in the crystal clear, warm sea whilst our friend Patrick randomly taught 3 Venezuelan men some essential English.. "get your ice cold beers here". These men had just arrived in Colombia yesterday to escape the violence in Venezuela and we were selling drinks on this beautiful beach.. there are huge government issues in Venezuela right now. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset and more swimming before returning to our taxi man (he had been waiting all day for us). Playa Blanca, insanely beautiful, but the biggest tourist trap.
Other Shenanigans During our stay here we met a dear friend, Patrick. Patrick is from U.S. but speaks Spanish fluentently and in exchange for caramel pastries and coffee, he provided us with Spanish lessons. These were mostly spent in the coffee shop we had discovered on the food tour (as well as incredible coffee, they also had incredible air con, which was so desperately needed as the sun here is so uncomfortably strong
San Alberto Cafe
Shotting delicious, ice cold coffee in San Alberto - yes I am a little burnt to say the least).
We also visited the castle (Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas) with Mirella, and watched the sunset from the top. Another sunset was spent with some other pals at Cafe Del Mar.
At nights the weather is still so hot and the vibe is absolutely buzzing.. people fill in the streets. There are a lot of police too, poor Sal was stopped and searched on our way home from a night out once. The plazas are full of both locals and gringos chilling and drinking in harmony all evening and night, and there are little pop up bands on every street corner playing awesome salsa. Cartagena is colourful, lively, energetic and a lot of fun! I loved the adorable little steet cocktail "bars" which make the most delicious cocktails for 10,000 pesos (about £2.50). Anything with maracuya (passion fruit) was a firm favourite of mine.
I had read that Cartagena is the safest city in Colombia, although one of our new pals did get into trouble and was mugged at knife point. Although all he took was the 20,000 peso note (£5.17) in his pocket and
Cerviche Camarón
Fresh ingredients make this delicious pot of king prawns covered in a spiced tomato sauce. Eaten on crackers, this cerviche is incredible! pegged it. Our friend said it was his own fault as he had been alone and was walking down a dark, quiet street. Some of the plazas are filled with prostitutes and there is a definite seedy vibe at night about this city. So we were very cautious here and luckily we were unscathed.
The one thing I did not like about Cartagena was the fact it was very touristic here, but being the most popular tourist destination it came as no surprise.. and being approached to buy anything from cocaine, to cigars, to jewelry was a very common occurrence.
Regardless, Cartagena was incredible.. we had met so many wonderful people, had so much fun and made some awesome memories, but it was finaly time to leave for the eagerly anticipated, Casa En El Agua... I had booked this tropical island hostel months ago.. and I was super excited for this once in a life time experience.
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