We flew into Cartagena from San Jose, Costa Rica at about 11pm, and we felt a little uneasy about that because everyone still seems to think Colombia is very dangerous, even though we read/heard different. Either way, it’s probably never the best idea to arrive in a foreign country you’ve never been to that late at night.  We grabbed about $200,000 pesos (about $100 CAD) from the ATM at the airport and jumped into a cab.

The hostel recommended by Lonely Planet (Casa Viena) was full, so we were stuck to find another place to stay.  Luckily, two fellas who were on the same flight were put in the same predicament and we all walked down the street together to another hostel.

We would end up hanging out all week with these guys in Cartagena. Their names were Carlos and Pär (from Spain and Sweden) and they were a bucket of laughs. It also helped that Carlos spoke fluent Spanish.

These pics were taken on their balcony the last day we hung out together, so now everything is chronocologically out of whack.  Now I’m going to take you back in time…

Cartagena is an colonial style town.  Part of the city is walled in.  It’s probably one of the bigger tourist spots in Colombia, so we got hassled a lot by merchants, but we really liked it overall.  I wouldn’t recommend going to the city beach.  We got hassled so bad by people trying to sell sunglasses, necklaces, massages and seafood that we spent the entire time saying “No, gracias” and couldn’t even talk to each other.

Imagine this multiplied by twenty.

You try not to be rude, these people are just trying to make a living.  However, when the 50th guy selling sunglasses approaches you within 30 minutes of being at the beach, you just start to ignore them.

We went to Volcán del Totumo on our second or third day in Cartagena.  It’s basically a little volcano that spews mud instead of lava.  You get to jump in there and try and wiggle around in the mud.  It’s suppose to be therapeutic but it’s mostly just fun.

Afterwards you go down to the lake to wash off and standing in the water there is a group of local women to help wash you off.  They basically beat the shit out of you.  I tried to avoid it because I thought it would be awkward and they expect a small tip (which isn’t a problem, but we weren’t sure how many small bills we had on us) but she threw me into the water and ripped my shorts off and stuck her fingers in my ears.  She got me real clean.  It’s a really funny experience; Brianna couldn’t stop laughing (she also had her bathing suit ripped off).  It was almost the best part of the whole thing, so if you ever go, let the women clean you off.

… or you could be like Carlos and say, ´why the hell would I pay money to jump into a vat of mud?`

Our hostel was in the Getsemani area of Cartagena which is where all the backpackers hostels are located.  This is considered the grungier part of downtown Cartagena, but we liked it and it felt safe enough.  The walled city has high class stores and hotels and a lot of cruise ships stop off and let people wander around there.  There was a park right near to where we stayed (Hostal Real) that we walk through everyday as a jumping off point to go elsewhere in the city.  We saw giant iguanas and tiny little monkeys in the trees right there in that inner city park.

Some of these guys were a few feet long.  Next time I travel I think I’ll bring a small realistic looking figurine of myself to place beside the giant lizards, frogs and cockroaches in the pictures I take and and really freak people out.

Dogs find funny places to lay down around here.  Sometimes they´ll lie right in the middle of a busy sidewalk and just tolerate everyone stepping over them.  Every once and a while I´ll stop and check if they’re breathing.  So far, they always have been.  Dogs seem to have their on lives here in Central/South America.  They walk around town like they´ve got jobs and errands to run.  They even seem to stick to the sidewalks and obey traffic laws.  There´s also very few places that care if dogs come in or not.  You could be sitting having a beer at a small bar and a dog might just walk in… and buy a treat… a dog drove us to the airport in his taxi once… we paid him in Beggin Strips….. I´m lying now.

This monkey is eating a saltine that a man was feeding them.  I would have liked to have seen him eat a giant turkey leg.

After a couple days in Cartagena we decided to go to Playa Blanca.  This is a really nice beach near Cartagena that you can either get to by boat or by a series of buses, a canoe and then motorbike.  Although the latter sounds fun, without fluent Spanish it tends to be worth it to take the easier route.  Also, I think it only would have saved us about $5.

We walked to the harbor area at about 9 in the morning only to find out that the cheapest deal already left at 8:30 that morning.  Buying a legit ticket involved paying a tax, and even though it still wasn’t that expensive (about $15 for the boat ride there) we still wanted to go cheaper.  The thing is, once you’ve talked to other backpackers and find out that they managed to do something for $10, it’s hard to pay $15 even if the extra $5 doesn’t matter to you that much.

We bartered with the locals who were all trying to fill their boats up with people going to Playa Blanca.  They take a different route and don’t pay the tax, so it’s cheaper (we paid $10).  We got to leave from the big market/fishermans port instead of the harbor and take a small cargo boat.  We had to wait around for them to find people to fill the boat with, but they also drove there 3 times as fast as the big boat we would have taken.

The market we left from.  A man tried to sell me a Mach 3 razor while I sat in the boat.  I tried to explain to him in my best Spanish that my reason for having a beard had nothing to do with not being able to find the proper razor.  I laughed to myself as I imagined buying the razor and then desperately shaving my beard (and head?) in front of him leaving patches and bloody cuts.´Muchos gracias señor´.

The kind of boat we took to Playa Blanca.

is nice.

We slept in hammocks for about $3 a night.

The sun beat the shit out of me… and the rum…

Me y mi perra.

Ok, and here’s one more pic of Cartagena…

And now I’ll move on to the next post before this computer completely crashes on me…