20/07/13 to 25/07/13 – We left Palomino by bus and at Santa Marta we switched to another bus headed for Cartagena de Indias. The bus ride was long and sweaty and we had to change bus twice, being dropped off by the side of the road. We arrived in Cartagena by taxi around tea-time. We celebrated what we hope was the last long bus journey of this trip… whoooo-hoooo!
Cartagena is a lovely walled city, right on the coast. It was the first colonial city in South America and in its early years it was frequently looted by pirates, including Sir Francis Drake, who held the city to ransom in 1586. He caused so much damage that they decided to build the walls to defend the city. Spain spent a whopping 2 trillion US dollars in today’s money subsidising the walls (makes the RBS bailout look like a bargain). The walls were built of coral stone, and you can clearly see the coral in the walls today.
One of the most famous guys around here is a one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged chap by the name of de Blas de Lezo. He helped defend Cartagena despite being greatly outnumbered when the British tried to invade Cartagena in 1741. There are several statues of him about the city.
The old town is beautiful, and full of lovely old colourful buildings, many with nice wooden balconies and flowers growing up the walls. The streets are often narrow and have plenty of character. The centre has several green squares, with musicians and ice-cream sellers, and the residential neighbourhoods are buzzing with people sitting in the street chatting and caribbean music coming from inside. We think we probably saw the world’s narrowest baseball pitch just inside the city walls.
In most of Columbia the food has been pretty average, with one exception being the fruit juices. Not only are they blessed with the sweetest pineapples, mangoes and passionfruits, but they also have some fruits that are unique to Colombia, such as Lulo and Mora. Lulo in particularlar makes a lovely refreshing juice. In Cartagena however, we did find some good food too, in the shape of fried/grilled fish with coconut milk and coconut rice. We made an easy mistake and over-ordered, thinking we were just having a main course, but quickly a hearty soup, a plate of salad and accompaniments turned up (we couldn’t believe how good a value it was).
We wished we could spend more time here, but we were still able to explore most of the town and spend a couple of nights there. On our last night we sat for a quiet drink in a small square … in front of a church. As soon as the church doors closed it was party time. Quite a big group of people gathered in front of the church for a Zumba class, and everyone was getting involved (well, those who weren’t sucking on beers or playing football with improvised objects). Hamburguesa and Salchipapa stalls had gathered around the square to help people replace any calories they were supposed to be losing. There was also a few people sitting playing chess and Flora took on one of them at a game with 5 minutes on the timer… she lost narrowly but it turns out the guy was a chess teacher, so she didn’t do bad at all. 
We took the plane the next morning to Bogota, the capital city (and back up in the mountains at 2600m). Arriving at midday, we had time in the afternoon to visit the Museo de Botero, an artist who paints fat things. It was actually pretty good.
The next morning we visited the famous Museo de Oro (Gold Museum). We visited a smaller one in Cartagena but this was much bigger. The museum showed how the ancients used to smelt, mould and hammer gold into various objects used for rituals, decorations and practical purposes. Ironically, there was probably more security at the Botero museum where alarms went off every time somebody stepped too close to the paintings.
Even though we didn’t originally plan to come to Colombia when we started our trip, when we left we wished we had spent more time in Cartagena and the rest of Colombia as the people were very friendly, their culture was interesting and their landscape so beautiful.
Entonces ahora esta adios Sudamerica y hasta lluego!
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