We arrived in Cartagena, Colombia this past Tuesday. A new country and a new continent. A huge country...bigger than all of Central America. We had to sort of ignore this fact when we decided to come to Colombia. If we´d given it more than a quick thought... well, we would probably still be in Nicaragua. Luckily we threw reason out the door (Helen and Gary would definitely agree) and took the leap!
Every review of Colombia by every traveler we met coming up from South America was a positive, ¨You have to go!¨ and with Gabriel Garcia Marquez´ world only a short plane ride away, we simply couldn´t miss it.
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| Old town Cartagena |
What do you imagine when you think of Colombia? Ok, ok, beyond the drugs, guerrillas, and violence! Maybe it isn´t somewhere you are too familiar with. Before planning our trip, we certainly weren´t. A couple of things that we have come to look forward to in Colombia are the colourful Carribean culture, Cartagena`s old town, the very friendly highland cultures, historical cobblestoned pueblos, snow capped Andes, amazing coffee, cathedrals built into salt mines...The general consensus is that this amazing country is trying to remake itself - to get away from its violent history - and that it has become much safer over the past ten years.
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| A hot, beautiful, hot city |
Our first impressions of Colombia were also overwhelmingly positive. Cartagena`s old town is one of the oldest places in the Americas, full of brightly painted houses boasting huge wooden doors and balconies, plazas on every corner, fruit stands and coffee sellers, cathedrals, narrow streets bursting with people and little local comedors (where the locals eat) tucked in back alleys. There are also the original fortified walls that you can walk around on, and all this is bordered by the Carribean.. Pretty hard to get a bad first impression.
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| A typical skinny street |
We stayed in Getsemani, part of the old town outside of the fortified walls that originally housed the poorer Costenos and still today is a much cheaper part of the original Cartagena. Good for us budgety folk. Aside from mucking around in the mud volcano, we walked the old town aimlessly and then we discovered that there was actually a castle (in view of our hostel, it turns out....it didn`t really look like a castle) with underground tunnels that apparently fill part way up when the tide comes in. This, according to Tor, could not be missed.
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| Crumbling and colourful |
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| Getsemani`s streets are less manicured than in the center, but more down-to-earth |
I finally convinced Lisa to head up to the castle - we had enough money to do one expensive thing that day, and she was of the contention that it should be Indian food for dinner! Good grief. The castle was REALLY cool, all kinds of secret chambers and war contraptions and other castle-ey stuff. The coolest part by far though were the tunnels: huge underground mazes than you could easily get lost in as light ranged from limited to non-existent. It was especially spooky for me because I had to explore much of the tunnel system solo - Lisa the scaredy-cat hardly made it passed the entrances.
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| Tor and the castle - Castillo San Felipe |
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| Wet, dark, creepy, hot...claustrophobic?? |
I found this one offshoot that really didn´t seem to have an end, it just dissapeared off under the city. No end! Unfortunately, just as it got really dark (drippy, and cave-like), there was a really creepy broken shopping cart blocking the way, and I didn´t have the nerve to climb around it and continue into the unknown on my own. At this point Lisa was cowering in a pool of her own anxiety at least 60 meters above me. My cousin Jordan (my childhood semi-dangerous adventure partner) would be dissapointed in me. Never ending tunnels Jordan!
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| Aforementioned scary shopping cart. |
Impressed, (with the city´s colour and history, and with the amount of sweat that can come out of a human body in Cartagena), we decided to continue on down the coast, and on with our adventure here in Colombia. We highly recommend Cartagena - especially if you fancy taking 4 showers a day, which is a necessity.
Thats all for now, thanks for reading!
Love Lisa and Tor
ps. We did end up having Indian food that night. I am only telling you this because the Indian food restaurant is only an Indian food restaurant at night. During the day it is your typical semi-questionable comedor serving up Colombian fare. But at night, oh at night, a nice man from Bangledesh tapes his sign `Indian Restaurant` over the permanent spanish one and cooks the BEST Indian food! Yum!
Love Lisa
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