Cartagena

Hmmm. We are behind on the blog again. We are so behind that we have actually seen most of you in London and told you about the news of our past month. However, the temptation to call the blog quits is outweighed (just) by the time and effort put into it already, so here we go again with another series of catch up blogs ...

From Manizales, we decided to fly to Cartagena. After the vomit inducing bus journey from Bucaramanga to Medellin, we decided that 17 hours on a bus was fairly far down our list of things to do and booked flights with one of the budget (kind of) carriers in Colombia.

Other than meeting a mildly annoying Australian, a stereotypical computer programmer, and being stuck in conversation with him for far longer than desirable, the trip to Cartagena was pretty uneventful and before we knew it we were wandering the beautiful colonial streets of the old town. We stayed in the heart of the old town near Plazuela San Diego and the location was perfect. White washed buildings with wooden balconies and bourganvillea overgrowing were a beautiful backdrop for our introduction to the north Colombian coast line.

The people and the vibe were completely different to the rest of Colombia with a significant Afro-Caribbean influence notable in the cuisine, styles, music and nightlife. Cuban salsa bars, "Havana" in particular, provided a place to practice our extremely basic salsa moves (more like a random shuffle than anything the locals were breaking out) and Cafe del Mar served up top notch cocktails with a view to match as it perched on the old town walls overlooking the sea.

We deliberately avoided doing too many of the tourist sites during our first few days as we were waiting for our friends Lesley, Nicola and Claire to arrive from the UK and we didn't want to have done everything before they arrived. The heat was also pretty oppressive at first so a few lazy days were very welcome. We discovered granizados (iced-coffee) at Juan Valdez, deliciously combined with Arequipa (a type of caramel) and chocolate to pass the mornings, La Mulata, a spectacular and cheap sea food restaurant to pass late morning and early afternoon and took up a few more Spanish classes in the afternoon to round off our days.

We were lucky enough to have a brilliant Spanish teacher - despite the fact that the school was called "Crazy Salsa" which did not particularly promise any level of language expertise - and finished the course comfortable that we could now claim to have basic Spanish.

We couldn't quite wait for the girls though when it came to visiting the beach and although the beaches closest to Cartagena are disgusting (so we were told, mention of needles on one made us disinclined to check them out), we read about a beach called Playa Blanca which was supposed to be worth a visit so off we went. About 45 minutes by boat, a pretty bumpy trip but not too bad, took us through the mouth of the harbour past a couple of colonial era forts, designed to keep the pesky English away from the gold the Spanish were so effectively plundering from South America, and on to Playa Blanca. Playa Blanca (White Beach) certainly lived up to its name. The sand was pure white and the water was turquoise blue. The beach was lined with palm trees and other than a line of small shacks serving as restaurants there were no buildings in sight. Whilst there was a decent number of people due to it being a weekend and Cartagena also being a popular American tourist destination, we managed to find a spot on the beach where we had a clear view to the sea and noone within about 20m. We were also far enough from the landing point to avoid most of the salesmen and women hawking their wares. It was not quite paradise but probably the closest we had got to at that stage. We got a tad burnt but presumably not quite so much as the sun worshipper that we spotted applying negative eight 'sunscreen' to her bottom. The return trip to Cartagena was an experience which I would liken as being closest to a roller coaster and Crystal would liken as being closest to hell as the swell had picked up considerably and the boat taking us did not see any need to slow down but we made it back in one piece (although my sunglasses did get bounced clean off my face). A pit stop at one of the local villages on the way back however provided us with one of the sadder sights of the trip to date as young children dived off the end of the wharf to swim around the sides of the boat begging for money which was accordingly thrown at them by laughing, well to do Colombians and Americans.

After a quiet day nursing our sun burn, the girls finally arrived and we got to see our first familiar faces since New Zealand. It was brilliant to be able to talk to people without having to start with the standard backpacker questions for a change - where are you from? what to you do? how long are you travelling for? all went out the window.

After a night time tour of the old town, sunset drinks at Cafe del Mar, dinner and a couple too many mojitos, we had caught up and were ready to experience the mud volcano. We had been pre-warned not to expect too much and certainly not to expect the mud volcano to look too much like a volcano, but still wanted to check it out. I was certainly glad we did. The 'volcano' is basically a warm mud pool that over time, due to boiling over, has formed a large mound - about 20m high. The mound is mounted via a rickety wooden staircase and on top of the mound, tourist after tourist immerses themselves in thick gooey mud. The mud is so thick that you not only float but actually cannot push yourself under (I tried). The mud goes everywhere. It was brilliant - although the local ladies assisting with the cleansing process were a tad invasive (one of them ripped off Crystal's bikini top and then went for her bikini bottoms).

A hard night out at Havana and another delicious seafood meal wrapped up our time in Cartagena and we were ready to continue up the coast to Santa Marta.