The Agrinautica

Friday, September 1st, evening - the next day we'd finally have a walk in the forest. 16 kilometers of it! I was excited amd looking forward to it, I've always been more into walking in forests than going to beaches, though tropical beaches are pretty nice. Amd anyway this walk through the Tayrona Nacional Parque would take us to three remote beaches so there'd be a bit of both.

But first we had some hurdles to overcome. Cristina had only brought sandals. We'd bought some simple water shoes the other day hoping they might also work for the forest but Margarita our tourism person said Cristina would certainly need trekking shoes. Additionally she told us we'd need to bring our own lunch, and that single use plastic bottles weren't allowed in the park so we'd need to get reusable water bottles.

So the evening before we walked down to where we'd seen a big super market. On the way we stopped in at two shoe stores amd bought her a pair of sporty sneakers for like 120 kCOP ($30). At the grocery store we bought bread and ham amd mustard, as well as two reusable water bottles amd water. It might sound silly but I'd often thought wistfully of grocery shopping with Cristina, just one of those basic domestic things we hadn't gotten to do together before.

We had just gotten back to our hotel (a bachelorette party seemed to be in progress by the pool), when the actual guide for the next day texted us to remember to bring about 200,000 pesos. We had already paid for the excursion and knew we'd need 80,000 for park entrance but what was the rest? He said to buy lunch and drinks. Cue ??? face.

I wrote back that we were just making sandwiches would we still need money? Amd he wrote back with a very ambiguous "okk"

Soo we headed back out to the supermarket, which had to closest ATMs, amd withdrew 80,000 to bring our current holdings to 200,000. I wanted to withdraw more since we'd need to pay our driver back to Cartagena 700,000 two days hence (am writing this during that ride actually), but it was late amd Cristina didn't want us walking across town at night with that much money. It costs $6 every time i use an ATM though. Though in her defense I guess i haven't mentioned that to her.



Saturday, September 2nd - got up at six on the misapprehension that the hotel starts serving breakfast at 6:00. Nah mate it's 6:30. But at least coffee was out already. Breakfast came at 6:30. Cristina eats about twice as fast as i do, she says it's a doctor thing. I imagine they have to scarf down their meals as fast as they can amd get back to work. Nobodies life ever depended on me finishing my omelet. Amd i eat about twice as fast as my parents!

6:48 we received the call that our ride was here. I didn't quite know what to expect but it turned out to be a charter bus already full of other tourists bound for the Tayrona forest trek. They all appeared to be from Latin America.

Around 8:00 we arrived at the turnoff for the park. Just before arriving we were told various rules including that _no outside food was allowed in the park!!!_ and we had made ourselves an arsenal of eight ham sandwiches. Well we already had them, we weren't going to throw them out. We decided to keep them in my backpack amd only throw them out if there was an inspection or something. Sandwich smugglers!

We were released into the various restaurants lining the road here, where all the better informed people had breakfast. We paid our park admission, amd being told it was mandatory to place an order now for lunch amd indicate our order, did so as well. The options were the exact same we'd already been getting tired of, some grilled meat, coconut rice, cabbage salad.

8:45 we re boarded the bus amd proceeded up to the actual trailhead, where we started around 9:00.

I immediately noted not only did a number of the other participants have the exact kind of aqua shoes we'd been told were insufficient for Cristina, one person was wearing crocs; amd EVERY single other participant had single use water bottles. I was feeling a bit annoyed, we'd been fairly stressed out about all the specific things we'd needed to get the night before. Margarita even saying, when we asked if we really _really_ needed trekking shoes that we could always go to Playa Cristal (ie another beach) instead if we couldn't get the shoes. As mentioned we were already feeling there beach excursions were all the same. We uncharitably mused Margarita, rather abundant of person, had never actually done this trek herself.



Trek began with a bit of a traffic jam on the trail as some slow people were up front amd it took some time for people to naturally string out in order of speed, but eventually Cristina amd i even found ourselves walking with no one else in sight.



The journey proceeded through various types of jungley flora. First on amd off a boardwalk as the ground was sometimes muddy, amd surrounded by banana-looking trees, then up amd over a ridge (it was this first uphill where the slow people really caused some problems, impatient folks passing others at the slightest opportunity like a pack rally.). Then it was along the coast just inland from the beaches for much of the journey. There were periodic kiosks selling snacks amd drinks. Later places offering tent accommodation (either bring your own or pre set up army style tents). Eventually there were horses going back amd forth providing rides to those who tired of walking (it was quite rather a bit warm). The horses must have a different route back to civilization as there'd been none on the first bit of the hike.



Finally we arrived at a pair of beautiful beaches amd had an hour to swim, which by this point was a welcome amd refreshing change of pace. Listened to a British fellow telling an American woman he worked in a surgery, which amused me because a simple doctor's office is called a surgery in England (i assume. It is in Ireland anyway. In fact the school nurses office was called a surgery amd they had at best a nurse) but i think he was counting on the American woman not knowing that amd thinking he was a surgeon. It turned out later he was only a medical student.



From here we returned to another beach for lunch. It was accompanied by delicious freshly made lemonade. We sat next to a fellow who is a tourism person from Bolivia out researching excursions. What a job!



Quick dip in this beach (me: "we only have fifteen minutes to!" Cristina: "yes but i want to make pee" ajajaja)

Then hiked back. Got back to the bus right at 16:00. Got back to our hotel around 17:40. Cristina feeling she could barely walk anymore due mainly to sand amd salt water chafing, from which i wasn't immune either. But after a quick shower (my one complaint with this hotel, shower doesn't have hot water. A hot shower would have felt so nice. After two hours wet in an air conditioned bus!), i had to go down to the grocery store again to get 800 kilopesos. Went a little bit further first to photograph the street scene. Back at the hotel (another?) bachelorette party was happening in the pool area.





Ordered a margarita amd mojito from the hotel bar amd took them back to the room, where we spent our last evening relaxing.

Margarita asked us to write her a Google review, which we both did giving her five stars because she was very likeable, but i messaged her: "I gave you five stars ☺️ though as Cristina may have mentioned there was some confusion about what was needed for the excursion today. We were stressing, bought trekking shoes, and reusable water bottles, and made lunch? And then we arrive to find some people are doing it in the kind of beach shoes Cristina already had, everyone else on the tour had single use bottles of water 🤦🏻‍♂️ and we were required to buy lunch there and officially couldn't bring the food we prepared in. Just so you know for your next clients.

Amd she wrote back: the walking shoes are for safety, the sandwich is because sometimes there are a lot of lunch orders and they waste time, regarding the bottles it is better for sustainability, some people are not aware but we try to make our clients sustainable

Which i found to be disappointingly disingenuous. Just thank us for not complaining in our review amd giving you the correct information not to make the mistakes again, don't give me BS in response. 😒

Thursday, August 31st - our hotel here in Santa Marta is called "Soy Local" (I am Local), but the way i pronounce "Local," the English way, sounds more like Loco (crazy), so any time someone asks where we're staying it sounds like I'm saying "i am crazy."



Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs (decent), cold toast (just like the other place??), not-quite-ripe cantaloupe amd watermelon, amd, a first for the hotels of this trip, genuinely freshly squeezed orange juice.

Our local tour booking lady (whom our driver put us in contact with (who himself our last hotel had set us up with)) came to our hotel at around 9:30 to pick us up. We proceeded to a city beach. Where our tour lady got us set up for the day with the necessary tickets for things, coded into QR codes on wristbands. Amd then she sent us off on a water taxi to the next cove over, which doesn't appear to have any land connection to anywhere else.



I felt a bit unimpressed at first, it seemed to be "just a beach" amd we'd seen plenty of those lately.



But the immediate highlight was the tower on the ridge on one side and the lines running to it, high across the bay, from the other side! A zipline across the bay!

We did that first. That consisted of climbing the stairs to the lower station, where they got us all hooked up amd then we rode the zipline literally amd figuratively backwards as they pulled us across to the higher station. That trip we made tethered together, but from there they dispatched first Cristina amd then myself. It was very fun, we were at quite a height at that end. Somehow Cristina seemed to go faster than me amd hit the hanging pads at the terminal end hard, me i actually came to a stop before the end amd they had to throw a rope out to me amd drag me in.

Unfortunately couldn't get any pictures though Cristina got a video of me coming down.

Then we went amd swam in the water. Since this place, unlike Rosario, was crowded with people, i pretty much never let my eyes off our stuff or got very far from it, amd if anyone seemed to be lingering near it I'd immediately start approaching like an alligator ready to strike.

The water was very clear amd a nice temperature, though i still would have dismissed it all as "not as good as Rosario" except Cristina remarked a number of times that it was a really nice beach so I guess it was. Me i just don't like people 🙃



Returned to the city beach by water taxi, took taxi to the "gold museum" which was a museum containing pre Colombian artifacts, as well as information on local history until the present day. I found it all very interesting amd was disappointed we were kicked out at five after we'd been there about an hour.

Now we found ourselves by a square bordering on the city bay (the city beach we departed from was in a neighboring bay. We thought about walking back to our hotel but decided to call our cab back because the way back was 750m through narrow alley like streets that maybe could be dangerous.

We had half an hour to kill waiting for the taxi but it was pleasant by the seaside. Two general fashion observations: (1) i thought this was just an Australia thing but more recently I've seen it everywhere else amd it seems to have now become the pervasive women's fashion: why do women wear old man pants now? All my life i thought it was a given that everyone but old men wear their pants at their hips amd only ridiculous old men wear their pants at or above their friggen belly buttons. But now all the women seem to be doing it amd personally i think it's the fashion of the present decade that will look ridiculous in future ones. Second observation is that women now seem to more commonly stick their phone in their front waistband like a gun than their pocket. I suppose it's due to the current large size of phones. I wonder if it's somehow related to the high waists.

Anyway our taxi came took us back to our hotel. We relaxed for an hour or two amd then Cristina said "let's go for perro calientes!" I'd seen pictures of Venezuelan hot dogs, absolutely heaped with fixins, amd was eager to try one (assuming they're similar here). By now it was dark out so we were being bolder than usual venturing out. We left both our phones amd only took 50 kilopesos with us.

The narrow street the hotel is on continues straight as an arrow toward the waterfront so we followed it that way. First things were fairly quiet, but then as we got closer to the center of town by the waterfront things got more amd more vibrant until the street was crowded, lined with eateries, music was bumping, it was a whole thing.

We could have gotten almost any kind of food but we stuck to our original plan, found a place that more or less specialized in hot dogs, hot two hot dogs (well mine was a chorizo sausage), a margarita amd a mango juice for just under the 50 kilopesos ($12.50). There was a self serve fixings bar so i loaded mine up as directed amd it was indeed delicious.

Then we returned to our hotel. We were wishing we'd brought our cameras to document the epic street scene. Will certainly do so tomorrow!

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.

Saturday August 26th - in the morning headed to the same dock the previous day's dinner cruise had departed from, at around 7:30. Many others were queueing up there to head to other hotels / resorts in the Rosarios either for the day or overnight (i think most just make day trips though). While waiting i was able to inspect the nearby barque Phantom, it's a steel hull ship with interior pretty well optimized for use as a party boat (which is to say lots of space blandly cleared to make open space for dancing).

Most of the trips to the Rosario Islands advertise that it will be via traditional vessel, which sounds exciting, especially for a fan of "traditional vessels." So it's kind of amusing to find the traditional vessel of transportation to the Rosario Islands is a long powerful fiberglass motorboat with two 250hp motors on the back, amd rows of seating for passengers. The captain often has a con raised up above the canopy over the passengers, though not in our case. I suppose heck if this is the kind of boat they've been using for the last fifty years it's not a lie to say it's traditional.

It took about an hour to get to the islands, i had expected we'd go out through the Caribbean but we actually went around through cartagena Bay for most of the journey.

Our hotel is actually on the easternmost (closest to cartagena) point of the Rosarios, except for two tiny islands just offshore from ours that appeared to have resort facilities built on them but not currently in use.



Pulled up to the dock and we all (about a dozen?) disembarked. Smallish welcome drinks of uncertain variety were provided. Tried to check in but were told we can't till 3. Somehow i don't remember this being such a problem on any previous vacation. But we could stow our bags behind the check in counter till then. Amd in the mean time we went swimming!

The tour-booking lady at our hotel in cartagena had tried to steer us away from this place because it "doesn't have a beach," amd while strictly speaking yes it doesn't have an expance of sand descending into the water, it is surrounded by ample shallow water simply reached by descending steps. Though there's sharp coral in places amd after three days (spoiler alert) I've got some cuts on my feet.



Of the others that got off the boat with us the one guy i briefly talked to, who was traveling with a few friends amd seemed to speak very fluent English, said he was from the Netherlands.



At lunch time the staff started bringing out identical plates of grilled fish amd i began to panic, but it turns out the "day people" all get the same thing and those few of us staying on get to order off the menu.

Cristina has liked the food, I'm still mildly suspicious portions of it (the fries amd vegetables) seem like standard sodexo (generic restaurant supplier) fare. But the main part of my every meal here has been good so i can't complain. I've had mostly various forms of grilled chicken (their menu doesn't lack for variety), while Cristina has been going through the seafood dishes. Though she usually gives me the calamari rings which honestly are a bit rubbery here amd not quite a joy to eat.



We pretty much spent the afternoon swimming. Around three the day people left and it suddenly felt a lot more tranquil. Our room is essentially half a very large hut, divided by a wall down the middle amd the other side having a door on the other end. Lying in bed we look up at a thatched roof, which i find charming but Cristina has a bit of a fear of a snake falling on her. Though i didn't say so, this sounded like a silly fear to me but she said it actually happened to a cousin once.

In the evening thunder rumbled in the distance amd later could be seen snaking horizontally across the sky, sometimes lasting long enough for one of us to say "look, lightning!" and the other to look up in time to see it still going.

Having been flummoxed at seeing the sunset from cartagena due to a building being right in the way we were eager to catch it here ... amd it turns out there's another small island RIGHT where the sun sets! Such sauce

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 🙈

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.



[Will be adding pictures]

[Originally posted September 12th]

After only three days I've gone through all the pictures ... from the first day. There are nearly 1600 pictures from my phone alone for the whole vacation (which was 16 days so nearly 100 pictures a day).

Here's the pictures from the first day (August 19th), in Bogota with her cousins.












In other news today (September 12th) my baggage finally arrived. They delivered it to me at work. The delivery driver didn't know anything about how or why it was missing but according to the tags attached to it it looks like it did indeed miss the original flight and flew here from New Zealand yesterday.

Friday, August 18th - picking up after Cristina and i got to our hotel in Bogota now. Hotel is a bit small, with narrow winding corridors, feeling like it's been jammed into some space in a building it barely fits in, but the room is a decent size. My only real complaint is it has no AC _and_ the bed only has a thick blanket, no sheets.



After some unpacking and catching up presently we found ourselves wondering about food. We both looked out the window at the street four floors below asking eachother "do you think it's safe to walk out there?"
We could see people casually walking about but then there were also people rummaging through garbage cans. In the end we went downstairs and asked the receptionist, who encouraged us to go out.

As a precaution i emptied my pocket of everything save enough money for dinner, and one ID, not even taking my phone.

The hotel it turns out is not the edge of a few blocks known as the Zona Rosa known for its clubs and night life. What we saw from our window was just a side street just on the edge of the district, the main streets were thronged with people lined up outside clubs or walking between them dressed for a night out. Right in the middle of these crowds, which swirled around them, there'd be beggar women sitting on the ground with a blanket on their lap and sleeping child. But i found neither the beggars nor the club promoters were particularly insistent, desisting after a simple dismissive gesture.

We found a little restaurant that was a step above street food, i got a pork sandwich. Cristina got a churro which came cut into pieces in a bowl and accompanied with some chocolate dipping sauce. She declared it wasn't very good but i thought it was worlds better than churros I've had in Australia or the US, so there must be some amazing churros out there.

At the table next to us were three or four guys dressed like a mariachi band, i later pieced together there's a Mexican themed restaurant/club next door.

We walked around the district a bit more. I saw "I ❤️ BOG" on an illuminated sign which amused me. Normally i don't go in for "i heart [city]" paraphernalia but "i ♥️ bog" is funny. I might have to find a shirt or hat.

And then we returned to the hotel. I was thinking it was like 21:00-22:00 but we realized it was actually around 02:00. Jetlag will do things like that to you!

[Originally posted August 21st]