Weekend in Cartagena

The weather will be beautiful, it will be so hot, you’ll love it there...well at least the last part of that sentence proved right. Everyone we spoke to said you must go to Cartagena for the weekend and the Lonely Planet concurred. We could have flown to New York rather than 1000k across Colombia for the cost but it seemed a shame to come all this way (for free!) and not to see something of Colombia. Also, we found out that we could check out of the hotel in Bogota for the weekend and so not pay for that and I exercised all my negotiating skills to get a pretty good deal on the hotel I had found in Cartagena so some of it was grabbed back!

Having been warned there were roadworks on the way to Bogota airport, Roger, my work colleague, and I dived out of the Embassy very quickly on Friday lunchtime and arrived in plenty of time, so early, in fact, that we ended up on an hour earlier plane, brilliant we thought....read on dear friends! As I took my seat I realised I was sitting next to a British family, not only that, Daddy worked for the Embassy! This proved very useful, or at least his language skills did. They were (actually I presume still are!) an adorable family and Harry aged 8 and Isabel aged 4 kept me entertained marvellously on the short flight. I tried to look out of the window, from the aisle, but it was very cloudy-I soon found out why!

As we came towards Cartegena we dutifully fastened our seat belts and turned off our electronic devices and then....didn’t land! The captain made an announcement, there was an enormous storm over the airport, if we couldn’t land in 7 minutes we’d have to divert as there wasn’t enough fuel to keep circling. Bye bye Cartagena, hello Barranquilla! No, I’d never heard of it either (mind you I’d never heard of Cartagena until last week!). According to Wikipedia, it’s a city and municipality located in northern Colombia by the Caribbean Sea. Ah, by the Caribbean Sea-good, can’t be that far! In fact, it turned out to be only about 15 minutes flying time but, despite my next-door neighbour’s language skills, the captain wasn’t giving much away! We landed at what, I later discovered, was the first airport in South America. Everyone sat there as no-one, including it would seem the crew, knew what was happening. After a while everyone started leaving so I followed, asking the Brit family if I could stick with them as he understood Spanish. The heat was amazing but the terminal nice and air-conditioned and they brought soft drinks for us. We were told not to leave the room we were in and, fortunately, after less than an hour they put us back on the plane and we headed off back to Cartagena, into a taxi and to the weekend hotel.

What a lovely beautiful place Cartagena is. It’s a Unesco World Heritage site and the main part is an old walled city with gorgeous old buildings in a colonial style. The streets are lined with beautiful buildings, although some are a little shabby and in need of repair. The walled town is so atmospheric although outside is a different story, a real conflict of styles, looking south rows and rows of tower blocks containing smart holiday apartments and hotels whilst to the North are miles of what can only be described as shanty towns where, I guess, all the people who have to work to please the tourists live.

The hotel was two 15th century houses joined together. You went through a narrow entrance and behind the small street front house it opens up into three interconnecting courtyards open to the sky with tall palms, chairs and tables and even a swing! The rooms all open onto the courtyards so it was ideal to hear the hammering tropical storm on the first night! My little room (you didn’t seem to be allocated the posh rooms when you’d sliced the price right down!) was lovely with exposed brickwork and a big wetroom shower built into the eaves of the hotel. Despite arriving late I dumped my bags quickly and, as the storm hadn’t yet started again, went for a walk around with Roger. We found a lovely outdoor restaurant in a square with a cathedral where I ate the most yummy fish.

The storm continued through the night with the most enormous claps of thunder and I awoke to pouring tropical rain. Breakfast was eaten watching a river course down the street outside but, me being a Shrosbree, put on flip flops, shorts and a cag and, with Dad’s excellent folding umbrella which I seem to have inherited, I hit the streets. The picture on the left is the rain running down the street outside the hotel!

The first mistake I realised was, surprisingly, to wear a coat at all. The maximum any of the locals had was an umbrella and that was fairly unusual. It was brilliant fun walking through lovely warm puddles and having the streets and squares to myself. It seems you just get wet as you dry an instant in the warmth so, before long, the coat was relegated back to the bottom of my bag in the hotel. For a bit of a respite I visited the Museum of Modern Art (entrance £1) and the Gold Museum (entrance free and surprisingly interesting) and, yes, the little man on the right is made of gold, apparently, they made a wax mould and clay outside and poured the gold in, and this was thousands of years ago. By lunchtime I’d managed to have a lovely time and spent only 3,000 Colombian Pesos, just over £1!

I had a wander around the souvenir shops (guess what I bought you, Mum!) and I then decided to explore a bit further afield and found "downtown" Cartagena FULL of tat shops, marvellous! I kept walking, stopping at a supermarket to buy lunch, and suddenly found myself in a labrynthine market full of dead (and alive!) animals and fish for sale with everything imaginable for your eating or living pleasure hanging from every free spot. I didn’t read about it in the Lonely Planet until I’d stumbled across it and come out safely the other side! It turns out I’d unwittingly ended up in the Mercado Bazurto and, to quote the LP: “For adventurous souls only, it is both dirty and enthralling, an all-out assault on your senses. If it’s marketable, it’s for sale here!” It was great and I just made myself look big and pretended I knew exactly where I was going. Actually, being tall is turning a few heads and getting a few comments, Colombians are not very tall and I don’t think this part of the world sees many strapping great Europeans with blonde hair!! So far people have guessed Scandanavian and Dutch and been very surprised when I’ve come back with Yo soy Inglesa!

The whole of Cartagena was marvellous, full of all different kinds of people and things going on, health and safety and hygiene authorities in England would pass out on the floor! You could have fried plantain, yummy, and all sorts of dead things wrapped up in banana leaves, I looked at those but drew the line there! In one corner there were even people making sweets on the side of a square and selling them. Everywhere feels very safe. Colombia was, of course, anything but safe and, therefore, anything but a tourist destination over the years, but the Government is working very hard to make, and keep, it safe. They are doing a pretty good job. In Cartagena the presence of uniformed security guards and Tourist Police was everywhere. I think they tolerate the hawkers as they are really not invasive, you just say “no” and ignore them and they don’t hassle you like I’ve experienced in other places and everywhere feels very safe, everyone says Buenos Dias as you walk around and are very friendly and helpful.

Actually, the year of Spanish I did at school, the bits I’ve picked up here and there and a charity shop phrasebook have all come in handy. Very few people in Cartagena speak English but I managed to figure out that fresh lemonade from a guy with a big vat of it on ice which he ladles into a plastic cup costs 1,000 pesos and the guys walking around carrying huge polystyrene coolboxes and shouting “agua agua” will sell you a bottle of mineral water con or sin gas for 2,000 pesos. See above for exchange rate, basically 35 or 70 ish pence!! I even managed to haggle the price of a lovely bead necklace from a streetside seller down with much “quanto”, “no hablo muy bien Espanol, Inglesa” and holding up fingers to represent the price I thought it was worth! I did have trouble convincing the many many hawkers as I was walking around, that no, I did not need either a hat, a reclining statuette of a naked women, a t-shirt, salad servers made from a coconut, or, indeed, a box of cigars amongst many other irresistible delights!

After 6 hours of walking around I headed for the roof terrace of the hotel for a sauna, swim and Jacuzzi and a lie on a sun(!)bed where I caught up with Roger’s explorations of his day. Another kind of very cheap fish dinner followed when we then heard bangs and drums and saw fireworks. There were weddings and, it seems, you go to the church and then the bride and groom and the whole wedding party troop down the street accompanied by 3 or 4 guys banging drums and playing percussion. I was watching and a very drunk young American from the crowd started talking to me, it turns out his friend from Maryland was marrying a Colombian girl and moving to Bogota. All his mates had come over for the wedding! We then tracked down more drums and found a young group of boys and girls doing fantastic South American dancing and break-dancing for the boys in the square where I’d enjoyed a resting pause that afternoon. That inspired me into a few beers at a pavement cafe but I was soon ready for bed.

Sunday, dawned much clearer and warmer and I set off again. I decided to explore a bit outside the walled city and walked about 3k round the bay to where there are many hotels and beaches. Read above for hawkers but add sarongs, silver, suntan lotion rubs and massages. I didn’t have my cozzie but I can at least say I’ve paddled in the Caribbean Sea! It was very very hot though, about 35 degrees so I decided to head back before the middle of the day, another wander around inside the walls including just sitting in a few plazas and squares soaking up the atmosphere and I headed back to the roof terrace for a quick dunk before heading off to the airport.

A final barter was on the cards though, we’d paid 10,000 pesos from the airport-to stop the tourists getting ripped off getting a taxi from the airports in Colombia, you buy a ticket from an official booth which you give to driver and that’s what he has to charge you. The hotel hailed a taxi for us and when we got to the airport I gave him a 20,000 note and he gave me 5,000. Much laughing and him waving me bye bye and my holding on the door waving 5 fingers at him twice and he smilingly gave took the 5,000 back and gave me 10,000! Don’t feel bad, the actual fair was 8,600 so he still got a tip. What a shame for him he got a Shrosbree not a stupid tourist!!