Cartagena: Coffee, Beaches and Humidity

---

Ola,

After almost 24 hours worth of travelling, we arrived in Colombia. The flights were ok, long but ok but neither of us got much sleep on them except for passing out due to shear exhaustion.

We arrived in Cartagena, which is in northern Colombia on the shore of the Carribean Sea, to a beautiful pink sunset. We went past the city walls, past some psychedelic neon party busses and were dropped off at Casa Viena, the hostel that we would be staying at for the duration of our time in the city. The hostel is nice enough, but we have a lot of street noise and the a/c, which is a fan, isn´t cutting it! It´s 28 degrees with 8 million percent humidity here!!!

We wandered around the old town, which is very brightly coloured with blues, yellows, reds and other pretty colours. We saw the old Inquisition building, and all the lovely torture implements that people used to extract confessions from potential heretics. For example, Peter was quite entertained by the one that was a metal ring worn around a persons neck that was filled with spikes. We saw a gullotine, the old chopping block and then there was a three toed climbing one of the banana trees. They epitomize life here as it tends to move quite slowly here, probably because of the heat. We were then asked to be in some pictures with locals, because we are that awesome, and then wandered around the old town a bit more in order to lose some more weight through sweating. Seriously, this humidity is not fun.

At our hostel, we met Claire and Jimmy, Aussies from Melbourne, and went with them to meet a nice Colombian who went by the name, we´re not making this up, honestly, Johnny Walker Blue. We think that it may have been an alias.

After giving us some beers and showing us his friends emerald store, we went on a crazy cab ride to¨the "real" Cartagena. There, we went to a cock fight. You read correctly. We´re not advocating for it, it´s a cultural experience and apparently it´s comething very few tourist get to experience. We went to the ring, there are seats all around it and rising five tiers or so, and watched the first couple of fights. They were gruesome, but not as gruesome as expected as neither bird was killed. The third fight was another matter. There was blood everywhere. It became quite hard to watch and we didn´t watch anymore afterwards. We crammed into a crzy techno cab and car-danced back into town. It was an interesting cultural experience, but not something we´re likely to try again.

The wandered through the town a bit more and then went on a tour to a mud volcano. It´s basically a mud springs that bubbles up and has formed a large cone. There´s a steep staircase up to the top, reminiscent of the line-up at a water park. We made it to the summit, and it was basically a large mud-filled bath tub that was full of Colombians. We got into it, and it seemed very much like quicksand as it was next to imposible to move around. Peter almost tipped a couple of times as he couldn´t even touch the bottom! After getting thoroughly covered, we went and washed off in the inlet and then headed to the beach for lunch where we had an amazing desert, almost like a cookie, made out of caramel and coconut. It was fantastic!!! We´re still on a high from the sugar rush. After we arrived in Cartagena, we lounged for a bit and then met up with Marloos (Dutch), Brian (American) and Ayelet (Israeli), who we had met on the tour, and we all went out for dinner and drinks. We didn´t stay out too late because we had to be up early the next day for our flight from Cartagena to Bogota and then from Bogota to Leticia.

We arrived at the airport early the next morning and boarded our flight to Bogota without issue. When we arrived in Bogota, the problems started...

Bye for now,
Peter and Valerie

Things we learned in Cartagena:
-Cock fighting is not as bloody as one would think.
-One needs to have a shower immediately after the previous shower in order to wash off the sweat that had built up due to drying off oneself after the first shower.
-Aguila beer is veeeeeery easy to drink in a hot climate!

---

Comments

[Katrina]

Very excited to hear you made it to the mud bath!! Love the description, sounds like an interesting experience!