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Published: July 17th 2011
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04/03
Another day, another continent. Well, in fact, we had left North America a while back – geologically Central America isn't part of either, being largely created by volcanic activity and joining the two separate land masses, but that's neither here nor there. Thought they may be joined by land it's still difficult to get to South America.
There's a number of ways to get from Panamá to Colombia. You can go overland, but that involves trekking through the jungle and dodging guerrillas and such – most people never come back, so I'm told. Another way is to catch a boat. You can catch a returning drug boat if you're in a hurry – speedboats make drug runs north from Colombia, so on the return leg south they're empty. It makes basic business sense to pick up some cargo for the return trip south, even if the cargo is a bunch lf wild eyed backpackers. It's a quick, if nervous, way to travel, if you can find the right bloke to talk to. Or there are heaps of yachties hanging about in Panamá, and a lot of them run tours of the islands – floating about on a yacht, island
hopping the Caribbean before being dropped off in the colonial port town of Cartagena was more than a little appealing.
And expensive, very expensive.
We flew.
Not much more than an hour on the plane and we were in
Cartagena, the fabled Colombian Caribbean port city. We had an apartment booked for a week – a week of home cooking and not sharing bathrooms with other messy backpackers while we figured our plan of attack for the continent.
Checking in the apartment was weird. The building was huge – basically full of holiday apartments, and the renting of them was organised at the front desk. Typically, our booking was no where to be found. Nothing unusual there, so it caused not great distress. For some odd reason the people behind the desk were unable to call the apartment owner to confirm our stay. The loud ringing sound told me the phone was working, so that wasn't the issue. Instead I had to go into the shop next door and give some money to some guy to use his mobile to ring the owners.
This sorted, we were fingerprinted and our details recorded in a giant
register. Helpfully, the counter staff provided a small square of paper with which to wipe the ink off.
The room itself was excellent. Recently renovated and rather small, it was well appointed. A decent kitchen, a bathroom, and cable telly. The view from the 7th storey window was, well, okay. It overlooked a well used, or little used tennis court, a muddy inlet of the Caribbean, and some other apartment blocks. From outside, though, the building looked a lot like the projects (not that I'm real sure what those are - I've seen 'em on telly and they looked a lot like this).
The Old Town of Cartagena is talked up as a good thing to see, so we went and had a look. It was pretty much as expected. To be honest, fairly touristy, but definitely worth a visit. The Colombians had been working very hard over the last few years to improve their image – gone were the days of Pablo Escobar and the ultra corrupt government – and Cartagena old town was one of their showpieces.
Quite a bit like Havana in some respects, it did lack the soul of the former. The cobbled
streets; it had. The colonial architecture; that too. But it was perhaps a bit too neat, not lived in. Still, very nice, very well preserved.
Upon entry into the precinct I was immediately confronted by a group of young folk in military uniform. Initially somewhat taken aback, it soon became clear that they were merely interested in practising their English. These young folk were in officer school, and, as part of their training, they had to accost random tourists and discuss various things in English.
The standard stuff, really. We began with a brief discussion of how we liked Colombia so far, what else we wanted to see. At that stage the boys in the group seemed to run out of things to say, so, being young men, the conversation turned to one about girls. In particular, what country I though had the most beautiful women – was it Colombia? They asked, looking pointedly at their female colleague. And she was, of course, as most Colombian women were, very attractive.
After that, we sort of ran out of things to do in Cartagena. At one stage we read about a mud volcano in the Lonely Planet. As
usual, they talked it up quite a lot. We excitedly found our way to a local tour agency that could take us there for about what it would cost to do it ourselves, and we were just about to hand over the money when we saw a photo of the place.
It was, in fact, simply a large pile of rotting vegetation, turned to mud. The gases from the rotting vegetation bubbled up through the large pile of mud, attracting hordes of tourists who should have known better to line up for hours to flop about in the mud.
Crisis averted, the decision was made to discontinue our abortive attempts to play tourist around Cartagena and return to our default position of sitting about on our bums, relaxing, reading, and, yes, even drinking. We alternated between the apartment, and other places within easy wandering distance.
With plenty of supermarkets nearby we weren't starving, either, and on one of these excursions I spotted a very attractive coconut (that's coconut, singular – not a euphemism). It may have been the beer breakfast talking, but I was sure I could make an excellent cocktail out of it. Indeed, half an
hour later, sweating and grinning, I had actually managed to get the sucker open with a pocket knife, and whipped up a bunch of excellent piña coladas.
Settling back on the couch to what Barca give Arsenal a flogging, piña colada in hand, I reflected on another successful day.
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