Pirate of the Islands

Sunday, August 27th - one big unanswered question in coming to the Rosario Islands was would there be inter/intra island transport. Ie the expensive excursions to the islands from the mainland, could you also do them all from a base in the islands as well? Amd we were thinking of maybe changing hotels after a few days to another island, would that be doable without returning to the mainland? I bet my money on yes though it wasn't certain. Amd having arrived here it seems that yes it's fairly easy to get from place to place here, various boats either making regular calls around or willing to go wherever for a fee ranging from reasonable to unreasonable.

One excursion i wanted to do was to go kayaking among the mangroves. Cristina doesn't want to because "i used to do it all the time it's boring to me." I was about to make a joke that that's how they go shopping in Caracas when she added "that's how i used to go to the store." It seems her mom has a place on the coast and when she lived there she didn't have a car so it was easier to kayak to the store than walk.

Every morning a man comes by the a bucket of lobsters and large crabs looking to sell them to people for lunch. We've declined because i don't really like either, Cristina is possibly allergic to lobster, she likes crab but "i don't want to eat it if i saw it alive." I appreciate this sentimentality.

As we were doing our morning after-breakfast swimming a guy in a boat came along amd offered to take us both snorkeling for 70,000 pesos (about $20). That sounded like a good deal amd the island dog seemed to like him. Then he offered to give us a tour all along the island for 350,000 pesos ($82), which sounded acceptable if it was a really good tour but you don't know until you've had it right? Though due to a communication error (this going from him through Cristina to me) i didn't realize until some time later that it was 350,000 EACH, which i would not have agreed to as that's all out of proportion to what anything costs around here.

Joining us to the snorkeling was a Latino couple consisting of an attractive young woman and an older (50ish) man. They didn't seem at all affectionate though they were clearly traveling together. Usually she was to be seen snorkeling around our hotel by herself.

Anyway the snorkeling was really nice, there was lots of different kinds of fish among the coral in the area he took us.

Then he took us to a nice public beach on the island while he ran the other two back to our hotel. When he came back amd picked us up he took us along the coast of the island pointing out the various resorts, famous people's houses, amd other interesting things. There was a floating bar that seemed to be doing a booming business with boats that came by. There was a house belonging to Shakira, another to a famous baseball player amd another famous Colombian singer Carlos Vives, whom I'd never heard of but apparently it's a thing. But most interesting to me was two ruined palatial estates that had belonged to Pablo Escobar. One all white plaster and arches like the palace of some Barbary sultan, palm trees already growing from the arches amd out the vacant windows, amd the other with falling in thatched roofs. Nearby was the additional ruin of drug lord El Chapo's place, but he appears to have had no style, his place blandly modern. Across from these drug palaces was a smaller island on which Escobar had a small airfield, which is now maintained by the Colombian navy. In the water nearby there was a sunken airplane, our guide said was a crashed drug plane. It was 6 meters down. Our guide gave us snorkels amd masks again to dive around it. I was able to dive down and touch its slightly raised wing but going just a little bit further down to try to look into the cockpit i felt afraid the pressure would do something to me.




Then we were going to stop at a nearby restaurant our guide said was really good, and at first i believe he said he could spot us the payment but then after we ordered he said he'd need to take me back to our hotel to get my credit card and come back, which would add an additional 200,000 ($50) to what he'd have to charge us, amd i didn't fancy paying over $50 for lunch so we asked if it wasn't too late to abort the order amd fortunately it was not. It should be noted when he'd fist picked us up from the beach I'd been about to run amd get my card amd he'd told me there was no need. I kinda suspect he'd intentionally baited us into ordering before telling us we'd have to make the costly card retrieval.

So we returned to our hotel. From somewhere he conjured a friend with a credit card scanning machine amd ran my card for 908,000 pesos ($227!!), which made me feel faint. But if that's the only time I'm scammed here i suppose it could be worse.

Spoiler alert but the next day we went on an excursion of a similar scale for 100,000 ($25).

We decided to extend our stay in this hotel until the 30th.

As usual for lunch we i had a chicken dish amd Cristina had a fish dish. We've both come to love a kind of berry juice they have here called corozo.

Once again watched the sunset, the weather was clearer this evening.

The Aquarium

Monday August 28th - again we were doing our after breakfast swimming when a man in a boat came along to offer adventure. In this case since we'd already been to the snorkeling reef he offered to take us to the aquarium for 100,000 total. As we didn't have anything better to do amd 100,000 is an imminently reasonable price, literally the price everything seems to be, we agreed. He noted aquarium admission would be another 80,000. As i was by now running low on pesos i brought my pesos, dollars amd credit card.

A Brazilian couple joined us on the journey. They appeared maybe late twenties or early thirties, the guy Redondo, was a journalist, and i enjoyed their conversation, a clearly intellectual examination of Latin American politics. He said that when the current Brazilian president, Lula, came into power, because he's a liberal ("thank God") all the conservatives were saying Brazil was going to "become like Venezuela." They were interested in Cristina's take on how things are in Venezuela, Cristina later said she felt like she was being interviewed.

The aquarium turned out to be on a little island at the opposite end of the main island. The boat driver dropped us off saying he'd be back in an hour, amd took the Brazilians to snorkeling.

A man on the dock sold us two tickets to the aquarium for 80,000 as expected. I handed him $20 US. The peso right now is 4096 to the dollar so technically 80,000 would be $19.53. He said no if it's USD it's $24, which is a notably bad exchange rate of 3,500:1 but whatcha gonna do. At least he was able to make change in USD.

The aquarium mainly consisted of raised platforms around enclosed areas with various interesting local aquafauna in them. Sea turtles, sharks, various large fish. There were some dolphins performing tricks. We were encouraged to pat a small pelican, though i felt bad because it was shaking. But altogether we enjoyed the aquarium.



Then our driver retrieved us, with the Brazilians still along. We stopped by to see the famous resort Bora Bora and a boat came up to us there trying to sell us little plates of lobster already prepared. Amd then we went around the back side of the island to return to our own hotel, thus completing a circumnavigation of Grand Rosario Island.



Then we returned to our hotel. Our boat driver accepted my US $25 for the 100,000 peso trip.



While swimming in the afternoon we met a young woman from Italy here by herself. If i understand correctly she had come to Miami on vacation amd then just decided to come to Cartagena. There must be some killer airfare deal from Miami to here (recall the two vapid American women on the dinner cruise were also from Miami).



Watched the sunset as usual.

Tunel de Manglar

Rolling thunder all night last night. Cristina finds it disturbing but i love to hear it. We never got much thunder in California so i find it exciting. Was a bit worried we'd have a stormy day but woke up to perfectly fine weather, as usual.

Things have gotten into a bit of a routine by now, get up for breakfast around 7-7:30. They make a good omelet though they seem to think it's fine to serve cold toast. But seriously it's amazing how many places don't know how to make an omelet so that more than outweighs cold toast. Then we encounter the crab amd lobster man on our way to swim, who hasn't ceased to be optimistic that we'll buy his wares. I like to imagine it's the same lobsters amd crabs he's been trying to sell all week, amd in the evenings they crawl around his house.

Anyway then while we're swimming, thus far it has always happened that someone has come to offer us an excursion somewhere amd we've never gotten around to talking to the hotels excursion-man who is on duty 10-11, apparently. Well this time no excursions came to us before then so we went to find him ... amd it turns out he's the guy we went with yesterday! (The one who didn't scam us). It turns out we've done most of everything. There just remains an excursion to the nearest mainland (Baru), but Cristina had read there's lots of scammers there, or the mangroves. Which as mentioned Cristina thought sounded boring but I've always wanted to see mangroves (well I've seen them once or twice before, a boardwalk through them in Zanzibar comes to mind, but i still find them interesting). Anyway so we chose to go to the mangroves for 100,000 (for which he accepted us$25). So off we went. First just along the edge of them and i was concerned that if this was all there was to it it was kind of dull, though we did see a large iguana in one of the mangroves. Then we entered a circular inlet only connected to the sea by a narrow channel and nosed into a tunnel-like passage in the mangroves a short distance before he shut off the engine. It was peacefully quiet with just the sound of insects like crickets amd various bird calls. After awhile i asked if i could swim amd he said sure. Cristina thought i was crazy to want to swim in the mangroves amd joked I'd have to sleep in the other bed after this. I swam up the channel amd around the corner. The channel seemed to just keep going amd going. I climbed onto a mangrove root to see further amd saw some tourists coming along from deeper in the channel in a little canoe they were paddling. So i sat on the root. As they came by. The greeted me bemusedly amd then asked me a question, to which i could only respond "no hablo Español" amd they continued on laughing. I imagine they must have been very confused to randomly find someone by themselves in the mangroves.



Then i swam back to Cristina and our driver, amd the canoe came back past going the other way, the occupants now apparently saying "oh good you got the American!"

Then we returned. It was nice but if i were to do it again I'd insist on being able to either kayak in or get on this canoe deal. I'm sure the people at any hotel on the island would know where to send me to get on a kayak for it. Then i could have thoroughly explored the mangrove tunnel.

An occurrence when we got back shed some light on currency exchanges here. Cristina amd i were going to buy some souvenir little carved items from a guy amd it came out to 130,000 pesos, so i was going to give him $30 US plus 10,000 pesos. He said that wasn't enough, i said that was 4,000 pesos to the dollar which is less than the official exchange rate. He said maybe in cartagena but here it's 3,500 to the dollar. I only had about 6,000 more pesos though so i added that, said it was all my money, amd he accepted it. (And it was indeed all my pesos but i still have about $180 US on me for when the card doesn't work)

Among the recent arrivals on our island is a woman with three 8/9 year old kids (twin boys and a girl), she reminds me of a friend of mine who despairing of finding a good husband had the sperm bank knock her up amd had triplets. Hearing her speaking English to her kids i asked her in English where she was from amd she said "I'm from the Estados Unidos" which was such an unexpected bit of Spanglish i had to ask her to repeat it. Then i said "oh I've heard of that place" amd she looked at me like i was being a smart ass. Anyway it turns out she's from Los Angeles.

Amd then we swam a lot the rest of the afternoon, watched the sunset as usual amd that brings us to just now.



Tomorrow we plan to leave here for Santa Marta though we're still working out the details amd don't have a hotel reservation yet.