Welcome to Colombia! - Cartagena, Colombia
Cartagena, Colombia
After a particularly long and exhausting week spent sailing the rough Caribbean ocean from Panama, myself and the other passengers from the Delfin Solo relished the moment we set foot on land. I'm sure it would have been a relief no matter where we alighted, but to arrive in the beautiful and colourful city of Cartagena was an exceptional delight. Walking from the dock to our hostel, we instantly felt the change in continents. Costa Rica and Panama had a decidedly.... American feel to them. Aside from the times we made an effort to escape into the country and stay with locals, we were exposed to almost none of these countries natural cultures and flavours. But arriving in Colombia, we were instantly smacked in the face with Latino culture and colour. It was like having a wave of Colombia wash across you. For once us tourists were out-numbered by locals, and we had to use our Spanish everywhere we went. On our first day a man sitting on a doorstep in our street noticed us walking by. He must have somehow figured out we were foreign (our sunburnt skin probably gave us away...) and jumped up to yell out to us: "WELCOME TO COLOMBIA!" Within moments I was in love with the place.
We stayed in Getsemani, the backpacker suburb, just a short walk from the walled city. The walled city (aka the Old Town) is the main attraction in Cartagena. Once a fortress, this UNESCO world heritage site is home to cobblestone streets, lined with colonial buildings, each painted in bright colours with flowers spilling over the edges of their balconies. There are lots of upscale places here, but you can still find old men sitting in one of the many plazas, sipping coffee from a street vendor, playing a nice long game of chess. As you walk through the clock tower entrance of the wall, you enter a sprawling plaza with small markets selling everything from tourist bric-à-brac to James brown records, horse drawn cartridges waiting to whisk you through the maze of streets, and, best of all, a long corridor of vendors selling Colombian sweets. Mmmmmm. You can walk along the top of the wall that surrounds the city and get great views of the ocean and the city. Not to mention that it's a great place to sit and people watch from above.
Our hostel was located on a great block filled with restaurants offering set lunches (veggie and non veggie) of delicious Colombian fare for only $3-4. Fresh fruit and coffee vendors walked up and down the street all day too, so we were never hungry. And on top of all this delicious local food, I've discovered that Colombia is a great place for the gluten intolerant (praise be!). In Colombians and Venezuelans have a staple food called arepa that they eat pretty much daily. It's a corn bread type of thing (totally gluten free) and can be served on its own, or stuffed with eggs, cheese, meats, whatever. You can get both sweet and savoury arepas, and they usually cost less than a dollar. Amazing.
Aside from the food, Cartagena also has an amazing nightlife. It can be a little crazy (Sam was offered cocaine three times in two nights, once by a guy claiming to be friends with Ben Cousins), but it can also be quite laid back. You can have any kind of night out you wish. For example, at one end of our street was Cafe Havana, a world famous place for live Latin Jazz music and rum. It gets packed out at around 11pm by salsa dancers and party people, and keeps kicking till sunrise. On the other end of our street is Plaza Trinidad, where we met up with some friends from the boat one night for some drinks. Plaza Trinidad comes to life at night. When the sun goes down the street food vendors flood in, offering an array of cheap greasy food and selling beer from eskies. The plaza becomes a tangle of locals, tourists, kids, old folks, cops, beggars, and street performers. Patrons from bars and restaurants spill into the plaza, and music leaks from every open door. It's the kind of place you can sit for hours in the warm Caribbean night, drinking and chilling and just taking it all in. Which we did. And then, if you are that way inclined, in Cartagena you can have a BIG night. I'm talking really, really, really big. Which is exactly what the young Swedish guys from our boat did. We ran into them one morning walking around Getsamani, and they looked like hell - red eyes, ruffled clothes, the lot. They had to catch a plane in a couple of hours and were desperately seeking street food. We later learned some details of their night from another boat friend who was staying at the same hostel as them. For example, at one point during the night, they were arrested. One of them threw some street food on the ground as cops passed them, and the cops must have thought they were trying to hide a weapon or drugs or whatever. So they were brought into the station for questioning. However, by this stage they were so drunk that they had forgotten all the Spanish they knew, so the police were asking them questions and all the could do is laugh. Eventually they were released. The next day it took the cleaners at the hostel 6 hours to clean their room. Curious, our friend Christoph decided to peek in and see how they had left it. It was not good. He said it was like something out of the Hangover. As Christoph described it to us: "the paintings were on the floor, there was vomit everywhere. And not just vomit. There was other ..... Bodily excretions..... All over the place." What the hell happened that night?! But with cocaine and prostitutes and cheap booze and late night clubs and greasy food waiting for your poor hungover self in the morning, that kind of night is totally available to you here. Not my cup of tea though. The most wild thing I did here was have two ice creams in a night, two nights in a row.
Cartagena is definitely my favourite city I've been to so far on this trip. I was sad to leave it after only 3 nights, but we're on a tight schedule. We have to be in Peru in just 7 weeks to meet our friend Tobi and do Machu Pichu. And between now and then we have to see as much of Colombia and Ecuador as we can. You heard of first world problems? Well these are our first world backpacker's problems. So we're speeding off to another magical place: Tayrona nation park in Northern Colombia. Let the adventure continue :)