aggienaut | Entries tagged with cartagena

Friday August 25th - there didn't seem to be any more particular excursions to do around cartagena so we took it easy by the rooftop pool all day. It was pleasant.

We finally resolved to book a place in the Rosario Islands, the Isle del Piratas. Amd i realized I'd been looking at the price for two nights on the hotels.com website rather than per one. So while for example this place at $160 was just beyond what i felt quite comfortable with ($140), i realized it was actually only $80 a night! Wish the app would just show the nightly cost, the way i plan relates more to what i think is an appropriate price per night, amd how that relates to the overall budget I've already figured out. More easy knowing i can afford X per day than being told this block of five days is Y now what am i gonna do with that but extra math dividing it to find out how it relates to the daily budget.

In the evening Cristina and i went on an evening dinner cruise about the bay on a not-terribly-large boat they fit a surprisingly large number of dinner guests on to that i seem to have neglected to take a photo of.

While we were waiting i noticed a silhouette barely visible except for the lights it blocked behind it as it crept in like a phantom. A tallship silhouette. The barque Phantom!

I don't think i mentioned "Barco Phantom" here yet. During the city tour i had noticed with interest at traditionally rigged sailing ship at the dock. It appeared to have all its rigging in place and functional masts and spars (as opposed to the surprising number of pretend "pirate ships" that just have essentially a caricature of masts and spars), but no sails bent on (ie attached, ie not about to sail as it would take an experienced crew more than a day to bend them all on). When I'd gotten back to the room i googled it amd of course g0 advertises itself as a "pirate galleon" (a galleon would have a comprehensively different hull shape and very specifically a lateen sail on the mizzen rather than a gaff and spanker (hey i don't make up the names). Amd then ship seems to make evening motorings around the bay whilst playing party music for its guests. It made me sad to see a ship with all the rare accoutrements to be a functional tallship working instead in a capacity a motorized barge could just as easily do but i guess you gotta do what you gotta do, the hustle is real.

But then as i watched this Phantom emerge from the dark i counted only two masts. What! I joke that I'm bad at basic arithmetic but this is too much. Had i posted to facedown about a barque that was clearly just a brigantine??? The shame! I quickly pulled up my pictures from the day before but no yeah no there were definitely three masts.

I remained absolutely hornswaggled until a few minutes later another sailing ship silhouette began ghosting across the distant city lights. This one with the three masts. So the identity of the brigantine remains unknown.

Anyway we boarded our boat, which was modern amd elegant. We were seated on the top level near the con. The on either side of us were pairs of women though i don't think they were couples amd/or romantically involved. To my left they were latina, to my right young African American women with ridiculous fake lashes (together they may have averaged an average weight by being at opposite ends of the scale). Can i just say in my humble opinion ridiculously huge fake lashes never make you look like anything other than completely vapid. Anyway all the conversation i overheard was very vapid. Amd they complained about jet lag because God forbid Miami is an hour ahead. But hey i guess good for them cartagena is a brave choice for what sounded like a practically first trip abroad, but my guess is they were to naive to even realize it was a brave choice.

Oh and when their food arrived they picked at it and then declared they didn't like it (food quality as far as i could tell was excellent. They appeared to have spoken no Spanish so may have not known what they were ordering). They asked the waiter if they could send it back amd get something else amd were then shocked that they could not ("how long does it take to cook something else!") apparently they didn't notice this was a small vessel filled to the gills with diners, I'm surprised the galley could meet the capacity, amd they took our orders before launch I'm sure specifically to only take on board what was actually ordered.

Anyway OUR food was delicious, amd the captain took these adorable photos of us goofing around at the con. (Which he didn't do for anyone else, clearly we're special)

Taxis to amd from the dock, indeed all taxis except that first one, charged us in the area of 15,000 [$3.75) amd 20,000 (at night) for journeys of the similar length, so it seems only it was that first taxi driver who thought he'd take advantage of dorky tourists from the airport.

Amd just a comment about "amd," i think I've mentioned it before but my phone spellcheck for baffling reasons defaults to amd rather than and so rather than fight it every single time we'll just have to live with amd.

Thursday, August 24th - this morning we went on a city tour of Cartagena. Around 8:30 the open sided tour bus picked us up, we were apparently the first, and then it spent an hour picking everyone else up. The main tour coordinator was apparently Venezuelan but he didn't do the talking and i think actually he disappeared at some point. Of the other passengers, one couple was from Los Angeles, and one man traveling alone was from New York. I asked that man what brought him here and he apparently just likes to travel, he mentioned he's been to over thirty countries, which is more than me but not by a lot (i think I'm at around 25. Amd hey 6 in the last two months alone). We agreed that Zanzibar and Tanzania are lovely. If i was more extroverted maybe I'd have befriended him but though we got along very well during the tour i didn't get any social media information from him. Everyone else was once again Latino &/ Caribbeano. Very conveniently the tour group had two guides, one who guided most of the group in Spanish, and one giving commentary in English just to myself, the guy from New York, and a Brazilian woman who apparently speaks no Spanish, though she appeared to be traveling with two Argentinian women. She asked Cristina to translate something into Spanish to tell them but Cristina couldn't understand her English ajaja. It's funny how she and i have literally no trouble communicating but anyone else more or less can't communicate to us in the other's language.

Cristina and i were by now down to our last 20,000 pesos so we were rather desperate to find an ATM (there was none near our hotel). We wanted to buy Cristina a hat and new sandals or flip flops as the only pair she'd brought had broken already.

They told us a bunch of stuff i don't remember offhand except that Cartagena was founded in 1533 and has a population of 1.5 million.

Our first stop was some apparently iconic shoes:

I didn't catch the significance of these shoes.

Next we went to the castle, which was an impressive edifice of layers of slanted walls heaped up on a hill. I felt going here was a very apropos bookend to having last month visited first interior slave camps in Ghana, then Elmina Castle from where they were despatched, to this castle on the other side of the sea that overlooked the major slave receiving city for Spanish south America. Though this castle unlike Elmina didn't actually have the slave dungeons within it.

Here Cristina and i were mainly separated on our separate language tours. Castle was neat, i like castles. It differed from most European castles I've seen in that it made significant use of the hill it was on and what looked from the outside as walls were actually reinforced side of the hill, so on the inside you were never behind really tall walls. There were some tunnels into the hill including some that just wound around and around to eventual dead ends just to fool intruders and waste their time. Here in the castle Cristina saw the perfect hat but we didn't have money for it!

We were also told of various times pirates sacked the city (before the castle was built) amd the English unsuccessfully tried to take the city (after the castle was built).

Next we went to a big "CARTAGENA" sign amd took pictures in front of it.

Amd then finished in old Town, which consisted of a lot of adorable narrow streets with colonial era buildings lining them with bougainvilleas reaching up to balconies.

After the tour ended we were given the option to take the tour bus back to our hotels or stay here amd we chose to stay. We found an ATM just outside old Town amd were finally able to get money (300,000 pesos, about $75, is the maximum they'll disburse. Which is weird, even in the most impoverished African countries i can usually get the equivalent of at least $100 even if i need a wheelbarrow for all the notes), so we walked up amd down the cute narrow streets looking for sandals amd a hat for her.

Finally i succeeded in getting a picture of her with a bowl of bananas on her head like the Chiquita woman ajaja

We succeeded in the sandals but not the hat. The perfect hat she'd been teased by in the castle could not be found down here.

Just as we were getting tired amd hungry a woman selling tours spoke to us, amd as soon as Cristina opened her mouth the woman was like "ahh Venezuelana!!" Turned out she was herself Venezuelan from Margarita Island. So we talked to her a bit about that amd our ambitions to go to the Rosario Islands, amd then mentioned we were hungry amd did she have any recommendations, amd she took us a few blocks to a place she recommended as cheap amd good, amd it didn't disappoint. Cristina got her on whatsapp if we do go on a day trip to the Rosario Islands or something i think we might use her she was nice, i liked her more than the one in our hotel.

Then we returned to the hotel. Went swimming on the rooftop pool at sunset. Was amused to note we were one of four similar couples all doing the same thing.

Amd that was it for today, all caught up again! No idea what we'll do tomorrow. Amd i feel cured of my brief illness, though the doctor says she can still smell flu on my breath 🙈

Tuesday, August 22nd - finally were given a room around 13:00, slept for a few hours and even after that i was definitely feeling a bit sick. Dr Cristina has declared i have the flu, but no the bright side somehow flu sounds adorable with her accent.

Our hotel here in Cartagena is comfortable but mostly soullessly generic. But the breakfast are at least very good generic food, and there's a very elegant restaurant on the roof and a pool. Though unfortunately you can't see the sunset from up there as it's right behind another big hotel.

The neighborhood around the hotel I'd probably feel fine walking around in if this wasn't Colombia. But this is Colombia and we're paranoid about unsafe situations. A big consideration when booking the hotel was to be near the beach, but the nearby beach is a dark clay-y sand with no palm trees for shade or aesthetics. Just the grey sand between the waves, a highway and the mountains entirely non dodgy neighborhood. So we aren't exactly hanging out at the beach here. Which means when we're relaxing back at the hotel we're usually just holed up in the room, which isn't my favorite thing.

At some point we saw a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees car let someone out at our hotel. I'm used to seeing such things in Africa but didn't quite expect it here. Are they here about Venezuelan refugees?

Wednesday, August 23rd - after breakfast we went to talk to the tourism person in the lobby. I mentioned I wanted to go to the mud volcano, since i was still feeling very subpar and it sounded like the most relaxing option. We were told the tour bus to the mud volcano was leaving in 5 minutes! We quickly paid (300,000 pesos? /$75 for the two of us i think), ran up to the room to change into our swimwear and grab what we'd need, and ran back down just in time for the bus, which was already mostly full. We picked up one more batch of passengers, one of whom sat in a fold out seat in the aisle just beside me, who was literally obese, and not the way back had a wailing baby on her lap. Of all the passengers there was one couple who might have been from the US, everyone else appeared to be from the Caribbean or Latin America.

We drove like 45 minutes to the mud volcano. Just before we arrived our tour guide advised us that the locals provide several services for extra charges: keeping our towels and sandals for us; taking pictures with our phones; massaging us in the mud pool; and washing us off in the lake afterwards; all of which is a 5,000 peso ($1.20) charge.

Okay so we arrived to find a volcano shaped mound by a lake. I was a bit disappointed, i had assumed it was some kind of naturally occurring phenomena. I hope it's at least mud from the lake and maybe harkens back to some traditional practice, but if so they never bothered to explain.

So one hands one's sandals and towel to a man with a big bag by the start of the stairs up to the top. Then when it's your turn to go in hand your phone to the guy who takes pictures, then descended down into the square mud pool. It's smooth, a homogenous fine grain, a pleasant temperature. And of course one finds oneself much much more buoyant than one's experience with water would lead one to expect. Wallowing helplessly for a moment i was expertly grabbed by a local in the mud pool and maneuvered to the side, where he immediately proceeded to massage me. I was never asked if i wanted that, though i didn't mind. Cristina apparently told them she didn't want a massage and thus escaped it. She told me she just doesn't like massages but i kind of wonder if not a few women were reluctant to be massaged all over by strange dirty (literally at least) men in a mud pit -- it was only men working there. After a few minutes of massage i was shunted to the side near the exit ladder, where Cristina and i bobbed for another few minutes (we were in the mud for maybe ten minutes?) before climbing out.

Then we descended the mud volcano and proceeded to the lake maybe 50 meters away to wash off. Here the local women were waiting to pour water on us. It seemed so entirely unnecessary that i tried to wave them off but this was ineffectual and it being only $1.20 I just gave up and let them pour water on us.

By and by when everyone was done it was time to leave. We were (finally) given our cell phones back and then it seems we needed to find the specific person who provided each service to us (they all came and thronged us looking for the specific people owing them). Altogether this was chaotic and there were a few recriminations about what was owed to who before it was all sorted out. Considering this was all over absurdly small amounts of money i really think they should just include it in the original price and pay those people in an organized manner or something. The payment process left a bad taste in some people's mouths i think. Amd all over a few dollars! And it's fortunate i had even happened to shove some pesos in my pocket before leaving, it would have been really disappointing to, after paying $75 for the experience to then have a second class experience for lack of having brought the equivalent of a few dollars.

Anyway from there we proceeded to a hotel right on the beach not far from there. Here we had lunch (included in the original fare) and lounged around for two or three hours. This beach was actually nice, though the weather was a bit overcast.

Then we came back to our hotel. The tourism lady called out to us as we crossed the lobby, asked us how it had been signed us up for the city tour the next day, and tried to sell us on day trips to the Rosario Islands for subsequent days. We have ten more days here and i don't want to spend them all holed up in this hotel or on $200 day trips to the islands every day -- I had seen hotels on the islands that looked nice in the $140/night range which seems acceptable to me (edit! I only just realized (Friday) that iwas looking at the two night totals. These nice hotels are under $100 a night!). The tourism lady tried to tell us there were no cheap hotels on the islands and then when i opened the hotels.com app and showed her one i was looking at she said it wasn't on the islands, so i clicked the map and it was on one of the islands she'd just mention. In general it'd found travel agents to be useless for anything other than booking specific local experiences. For anything else they're trying to push the packages they get the biggest kickback for on you whether it's best for your interests or not.

Anyway, relaxed a bit, swam in the rooftop pool around sunset (though as mentioned it itself was hidden), and had another pretty good dinner at the rooftop restaurant.

(Might add more pictures -- or might not! -- we're quickly taking an overwhelming number of photos that it may take some time to pick through)

Monday, August 21st - we checked out of the hotel and Alejandro, the driver who had originally picked me up from the airport (a friend of cousin Anthony), took us to the town of Zipaquira about forty minutes north of Bogota. Outside of Bogota the road median seemed to be jungle but on either side it was relatively small plot cow pastures and lots of rural buildings, and then the town of Chia took up half the distance, and then we were in Zipaquira, which was actually a really cute town with lots of narrow streets and old colonial style buildings.

Our destination here was the "Salt Cathedral" in some old salt mines. Alejandro dropped us off at the entrance on the side of the hill overlooking the town. I think admission was 100,000 a person, everything seems to be 100,000. We got audio tour audio players. The English one it took me a moment to pin the accent but i realized what it was was someone with a thick Irish accent who was trying really hard not to sound like they had an Irish accent.

Anyway we descended into the mine along a tunnel at only a very shallow grade. Once we were 80m or so underground there were "sculptures" of the stations of the cross, but every single one practically seemed to just be a single large stone cross and the commentary explained in a different manner how some indiscernable detail of this specific cross fit that specific station of the cross. I was feeling a bit annoyed that the commentary watched entirely about interpreting these nearly identical crosses and explaining these contrived interpretations rather than actually talking about salt mining which i was far more interested in. Finally though we came to some vast cavernous chambers that were there cathedral itself and these were a lot more impressive and interesting.

After the cathedral chambers we came to an area where there were shops in every alcove, which, with their neon signs i thought was kind of a funny gaudy contrast to the cathedral section. Cristina bought a rocksalt Virgin Mary.

There was also this cool reflecting pool.

And there was an Egyptian exhibit which seemed a bit strange but i suppose the replica Egyptian iconography looked as impressive in the stone surroundings as the catholic stuff.

And there was a movie theater that played a short film explaining the history of the site and the salt extraction. It seems there's native people had collected the salty water from the local springs and boiled away the water to get salt they then traded to neighboring tribes and were relatively rich due to this resource. Then the Spaniards arrived and set the local native people to mining in effectively slave like conditions. Over the years physical mining progressed with better machinery but most recently they're rather back to the original original method, pumping water into the ground and pumping out the brine, then distilling away the water. The movie had some well-made parts and then for some reason this transformer-like rock monster narrator would address the audience between segments.

Took a "train" out, actually just a motorized vehicle with normal tires pulling three passengers carriages, though i did kind of wonder what the base for their "locomotive" had been as no motor vehicle i know of is driven from the back like that.

Just beside where the train let us out the city tour bus was about to leave, our admission had included this city tour so it took us down and through and among the cute narrow streets of town. After maybe half an hour it returned us to the mine entrance.

Cristina then called Alejandro, and the way she gasped and habla-ed with him with emphatic concern i thought he'd been robbed. Being as all our luggage was with him i was extremely alarmed about this. As it turns out it wasn't that, it was that someone had bumped his car, nothing terribly serious but he's now got a dent in the side and unsightly scratches. I asked if he could get compensation from the other driver or insurance but Cristina said no it was just his bad luck.

Since Alejandro was dealing with that and we were hungry (it was just after five now and we'd never had lunch) but town was a bit further down the mountain than we quite felt like walking we got on the city tour bus again to ride it down, expecting to go with the normal tour but the driver volunteered to just drive us directly to this good restaurant and so he did.

The restaurant had a nice atmosphere, on the corner of a block and open along the two street facing sides. The waiter casually asked where we were from and then brought a little flag holder to the table with an Australian, Colombian, and Venezuelan flag in it, we thought that was really cute.

I had pork loin with passionfruit sauce and it was delicious. Cristina had a mixed grill platter. Alejandro was presently able to park on the street just beside us and joined us. I offered to buy him dinner but he'd already eaten so he just had a beer. Total i think came out to like 100,000 like everything else.

Then we visited some of the picturesque plazas in town to take some photos and then headed back to Bogota. We'd have to get up at 3am for our flight to cartagena, so we'd stay at Cristina's cousins place this night and Alejandro would drive us in the morning.

It was as always fun to see the cousins again. It was Cristina's 34th birthday this day (she was 28 when we met! It's crazy that since then this is the third time we've been able to spend time together, so many missed years 😢).

Yineska had made Cristina a birthday cake. Alejandro, recall, his a good friend of Anthony's so he joined us for our little birthday party. Carlota (9) had made a cute card for Cristina and gifted her some sort of hamster sized little plush toy thing. In an apparent Colombian tradition Cristina had to take a bite from the whole uncut cake before it was cut and distributed. And Carlota made simple pinata by somehow getting candy into a balloon and inflating it, and then Cristina popped it after the cake.

We had a good evening sitting around talking, some beers were had. I only had one and am a bit concerned the glands on my neck feel swollen which usually means I'm getting sick. So i thought I'd consult a doctor. And now not only has she declared i have the flu but she won't kiss me!

It wasn't till after midnight we got to bed (Cristina and i in Carlota's room, she with her mother which is apparently a common habit of hers anyway)

Tuesday, August 22nd - we got up at 3:00 after three hours of sleep. Alejandro came to get us at 3:30 (we paid him 169,000 for yesterday and 49,000 today for a total of $50.47us) check in at the airport went quickly and we found ourselves at the gate by four thirty thinking hey we could have slept another hour and a half. Flight was uneventful. Arrived in cartagena to find it very tropical. Raining but the air warm and humid.

DiDi doesn't seem to work here. Looked up taxi fare to hotel, should be 14,800 ($3.59). Took a taxi. He insisted on charging us 30,000. But on the bright side it made me smile to hear Cristina tell the driver i was her "esposo" (husband) at the beginning of the journey.

Okay so after getting three hours of sleep and feeling slightly unwell and all that we could surely use a nice relaxing nap right? Yeah well checked in to the hotel and they won't have a room available till three (and we arrived around nine!). So until then we're condemned to the hotel lobby couch.
As of now it's 11:37 and we're still in this hotel lobby purgatory. Altogether not the best start to our time in cartagena.