Refrigerating busses, colonial forts, boat trips, amazing food, paradise beaches, a rooftop bar and swimming in a mud volcano. It´s some of the stuff I have been experiencing the last few days.. Check it out!
Day 13
After a refrigerating busride I arrived in the early morning in Cartagena. I had been warned about the airconditioning in Colombian busses, but it turned out to be even colder than I had expected. Yet I was able to catch some sleep on the bus. As soon as I got off the bus, I was welcomed with a sauna-like climate. Humid and extremely hot. The difference between the Antartica climate inside the bus couldn´t be bigger.
I shared a taxi with a Swiss girl and a German girl. The Swiss girl had been here before, so she knew where to go. It took the taxi a good 45 minutes to get to the citycenter. The busterminal happens to be quite a far bit out of the city. On the way to the city I had to question myself whether I was still in Colombia. The differences between Southern and Northern Colombia are a difference between day and night. Not just the climate, but the people and the whole way of life are 180 degrees different. The people here are all black and don´t look the slightest bit like the Colombians you would find in the South.
Once we got to the city we were dropped off at one of the hostels in the area. We checked it out, but it turned out to be a bit shitty. We walked around and finally found a nice hostel with a courtyard where people were having breakfast. We checked in and had a shower.
We went into town and checked out downtown Cartagena. The city turned out to be stunning and nothing like Bogota or Medellin. The colonial influences can be seen on every corner of the old city. Meanwhile temperatures were still climbing.
After a little stroll around the town and drinking a fruitshake we sat down in one of the parks. Soon enough we all decided to go and head over to the beach, cause we had to cool down. We got back to the hostel, changed into our swimming clothes and grabbed a taxi to the beach.
The beach is a 20 minute drive from the hostel. There are a few beaches around the city, but they aren´t as impressive as you might expect from Carribean beaches. Yet, it was nice to finally see a beach after the last 10 days of visiting cities and mountains. The water didn´t really cool us down, it felt like sitting in a warm bath. After a few hours of sitting on the beach, we went back to the hostel. We had a shower and went out for some dinner.
Cartagena has some really nice setmeal restaurants. The meals on offer can be as cheap as 7000 pesos (3 euros) which is not a bad deal. We had some food at one of the restaurants near our hostel. That night I met up with some other people at the hostel. It happened to be the birthday of a British girl named Julia. We decided to head out for some partying. It also happened to be independence day the day after, so we were expecting a lot of people to go out and party.
We walked to Zona Rosa, which is the main area where all the clubs and bars are at. A short walking distance from the hostel. Once there we found out that most bars and clubs were asking for entrance fees varying between 5000 and 10000 pesos. Some of us didn´t bring a lot of money so we ended up drinking a beer in front of the bar instead of in it. We decided to walk back to the hostel. Right across the street from our hostel happens to be a somewhat more expensive hostel with a swimming pool and a rooftop bar. We decided to have a drink there instead. This turned out to be a good idea, as the views were really nice from up here. We stayed at the rooftop bar for a few good hours. Afterwards I headed back to the hostel for some sleep.
Day 14
After a good night sleeo I woke up around 11 am. I had a shower and grabbed some cheap breakfast from one of the nearby restaurants. Afterwards I checked my Lonely Planet to figure out what to do today. I read about a big fort very near from the hostel. I walked up to the fort and found the entrance was free today because of independence day. I walked up to the fort which was quite nice. The fort contained a lot of escape tunnels which were fun to walk through. After spending an hour at the fort I walked back to the hostel. There I met the German girl from my room. She asked me whether I wanted to come and join her for some lunch in town. She read about a good restaurant in her guidebook. The Swiss girl phoned the German girl later too and joined as well. Meanwhile it started to rain a bit, which was a bit stupid as I was expecting nothing but sunshine up here. Thankfully it didn´t last long. Lunch turned out to be really good value for money, I am definitely having some lunch there again later.
After lunch I went back to the hostel and looked into ways to get to Playa Blanca, one of the most beautiful beaches in Colombia. One of my travelbuddies told me to go and spend the night there in a hammock, so that´s what I wanted to do.
A travelagent at the hostel wanted to sell me a whole tour to Playa Blanca, including going to the Rosario Islands. I wasn´t really interested in the tour, but it turned out to be just as cheap to go on the tour and check out the Islands than to catch a ferry. I booked the tour and made a reservation at the MediaLuna hostel across the street for when I´d get back from the beach (the pool just looked too tempting).
That night we played some drinking games with a few of the other people at the hostel. Also a Mexican girl named Nadia joined in, I had met her before at the hostel in Medellin. The night ended with us looking for food at 3 in the morning. We found a hamburgerstand in the middle of one of the squares. Afterwards I went to sleep, cause my tour was starting in less than 4 hours. I asked the guy at reception to wake me up around 7am, as I was afraid I would miss the tour.
Day 15
7:20am, I hear people talking outside of my room. I check my watch and figure I wasn´t woken up by the guy at reception, nor did I hear my alarm on my watch. I brushed my teeth, drank a liter of water and grabbed my bag. I had already checked out the night before, so I could just go and leave the hostel. Still a bit drunk I walked with the rest of the group to the port, which is about 10 minutes away. There I received my boatticket to go on the tour.
After two hours of boating we got to the Rosario Islands. They are a group of small little islands as big as not even a house where people have build houses upon. It was funny to see, but not really worth boating for two hours for. We made a stop on one of the bigger islands where we could go to an aquarium to see fish and dolphins, entrance fee of 15000 pesos (7 euros) still had to be paid. Me and a Candian girl I met on the boat decided not to go in. We waited for an hour for the tour to continue. From there it took another hour to get to Playa Blanca. Right before we arrived it started to rain. The conditions were not as great as we had hoped. Thankfully we were going to stay the night, so we had time to check out the island in sunshine later.
We had some lunch that was included into the tour. After lunch we walked down the beach to look for a hammock where we could sleep. We found some accomodation at the end of the beach called Mama Ruth, it had been recommended by the hostel in Cartagena.
We got ourselves a hammock for 6000 pesos (2,50 euros) and sat down. The weather cleared up and we had a little swim in the crystal clear blue water. Afterwards we headed over to one of the bars on the beach called Hugo´s bar. From there we watched the sunset which was an amazing sight. Meanwhile we were sipping Caprinha´s and Piña Coladas.
After watching the sunset we went back to Mama Ruth, as I had read they did really good food. Three Israeli guys decided to join us. The guy put up a table on the beachfront right next to the water. He put up a candle on the table and there we were having dinner in paradise. The food took a good hour to cook. The guy already told us to just relax and enjoy the moment, as all the food had to be cooked fresh in a very simple kitchen in a little beach hut. Once the food came out we were surprised by what we got. The food turned out to be amazingly good and really tasty. I had spaghetti with shrimps which was delicious to say the least.
The Isreali guys had brought a guitar and some rum. We sat down, made a campfire and sat around it drinking Cuba Libre cocktails. A few other people joined us later on as well. Afterwards we headed back to the hammocks for a good sleep, with the sea only 5 meters away, it wasn´t too hard to fall asleep. The mosquito nets made sure we weren´t being eaten alive.
Day 16
I woke up around 6:30am. The sun had just come up and the first thing I saw was the beach and the crystal clear sea. I heard mosquitos buzzing around my mosquito net and decided not to get up just yet. I closed my eyes again and slept for another 2 hours. Around 8:30 I got up and checked out the deserted beach. Amazingly stunning. I grabbed my camera and shot as many photos as I could. Slowly more locals turned up on the beach who tried to sell us anything you can probably think of. Mussles, neglaces, fruit salads, drinks, ice creams, body massages, you name it. They all sat down next to us and told us how they had to walk for 2 hours from the town, somewhere in the middle of the island, to the beach in the hot sun. We felt bad for them, but we just couldn´t go and start buying stuff of these people.
I ordered some breakfast from Mama Ruth´s restaurant and sat down to enjoy the views. Afterwards I did some sunbathing and had a little swim in the water. Sporadically more boats started to arrive, including more tourists. The nice and deserted beach it happened to be in the morning changed rapidly in a beach full of people: more tourists and more locals trying to sell stuff to tourists. I ended up buying some stuff off them, as they also have to make a living somehow. I had a fruitsalad and some mussles I didn´t intend to actually have, but the guy kind of talked me into it.
For lunch I ordered a nice and big fish for 15000 pesos (7 euros) including coconut rice, fried egg plants and salad. It took another hour for them to cook it, but again the meal turned out to be really nice. After lunch I had a piña colada out of a freshly cut coconut. At that point it was time for me to grab my stuff and catch the boat back to Cartagena. On the way to the boat I heard some guys call my name. I looked up and saw two Argentinian guys I had met in the hostel a few days before. I said bye to them and got on to the boat. It took another 90 minutes to get back to Cartagena.
Once back in Cartagena I grabbed my big bag, which I had left in the hostel while I went to Playa Blanca. I checked in to the hostel across the street, the one with the swimming pool and threw down my bags. I was still feeling quite warm so I had a jump in the pool. I chilled out for about an hour and spoke to some people who were sitting down in the pool too. Afterwards I had a shower and I had some food with two of the guys I met in the swimming pool. After dinner we had a few drinks at the rooftop bar of the hostel. Everyone was a bit tired so after a few drinks we headed back down for some sleep.
Day 17
I woke up early, brushed my teeth and walked to reception. Today I wanted to go and check out a mud volcano that happens to be not far from here. The tour started at 2pm. I was picked up from the hostel. The tour wasn´t cheap, as they charged about 37000 pesos (15 euro) just for bringing and taking us to the volcano. Another option involved in getting a local bus to a nearby village and afterwards a 45 minute walk in the boiling heat along the highway. So yes, I chose for the tour.
The tour was alright. Me and the other people on the tour were expecting a massively big volcano, but upon arrival we were slightly disappointed by the small thing we saw. The volcano is about 10 meters high and had a stairway up to the top. I grabbed my camera and got up to the crater. There a guy with about 15 camera´s around his wrist asked me to give me my camera so he would take photos of me while I was getting in. At first I wasn´t going to give it, but soon enough I found out I had no other choice as there was no way to bring my camera into this mudbath. As soon as I got into the mudbath I was told to lay on my back. Laying in this mud was the weirdest thing I ever felt. As the mud is buoyant, you really aren´t able to sink. Even if you wanted to try to go down, you just can´t. Rather than swimming in the mud, people tended to ¨float¨ upon the mud. A guy started to give me a massage, even though I didn´t ask for one. These ¨additional¨ services our guide was talking about on the way to the volcano weren´t all that ´additional´ but rather mandatory.
I spent about half an hour in the mudbath that wasn´t bigger than about 2 by 2 meters. It got a bit crowded as we there were multiple tours coming to the volcano at the same time.
After half an hour we were told to get out of the bath. Meanwhile the guy who had my camera kept shooting photos of me. It was actually quite impressive how he remembered whose camera belonged to who. I endeded up with only photos of me on my own camera.
After the mudbath I walked down with my slippery feet to a little lake. In the lake were older women with little bowls who helped tourists to clean theirselves. I had already read they would strip you down all the way, which was something I really didn´t feel like doing. I ignored the women and started to wash myself instead. The women got mad about how I didn´t wanted to be cleaned by them. One came up to me and started to clean my back and my ears. There wasn´t much I could do about that. She asked me to take off my swimming shorts, but I sure as hell didn´t let her anywhere close.
After being clean of the mud I got back out of the lake. I found out the women who had cleaned me still had my sunglasses. It turned out she first wanted me to give her a tip before she´d give my glasses back.
Soon enough the guy who gave me a massage, the guy who took photos of me and the women who cleaned me wanted a tip. I had also put off my watch next to me flipflops, yet it wasn´t there anymore. It turned out some other guy had taken care of my extremely expensive watch (not). He wanted a tip for taking care of my watch. I gave them each 2000 pesos (0,80 euro) and walked off to the bus.
The mud in the volcano goes down to 2300 meters told my guide. I wondered how the volcano was able to ´refill´ itself, as a lot of mud was being taken out every time a tourist would exit the mudbath. The guide told me whenever it started raining, the mudbath would be refilled.
Once I got back to the hostel I jumped in the swimming pool and had a little chat with the people in it. Afterwards I had dinner with an American guy I had just met in the pool. After dinner we went up to the rooftop bar for a drink. At the start the roof was quite empty, but it got graduadly busier. Later that night I went with a group of people at the hostel to a club in the old city center. Clubs happen to be quite expensive out here. Entrance is usually about 10000 pesos (4 euros), which is quite a bit of money if you consider you can get dinner for about 8000 pesos. The club was quite nice though and thankfully it had airconditioning as even in the middle of the night, temperatures are still extremely high. I got back to the hostel around 5am.
Day 18
I got up around 11am. I jumped into the swimming pool and sat there for about 3 hours. I had a chat with some of the other people at the hostel, including an American guy from Kentucky who was working in the army in Afghanistan, repairing Apache helicopters. I had an interesting chat about his work and life in Afghanistan. That´s stuff I just love about traveling, as how else would I ever been able to talk to an American soldier who is working in Afghanistan. He told me he had 3 weeks off from the army and was allowed to pick any place he liked to go to, just so he could get his mind off the war he was still in. The flights were being paid by the American government.
After those few hours in the pool I went to have some food with another American guy. We walked around the city for a little while afterwards. Once back who sat around the hostel for an hour. I proposed to watch the sunset from the official ¨Cafe del mar¨ bar, where cocktails cost about 16000 pesos (6,60 euro). Needless to say this bar is only for the rich around here. It was a nice experience though with loungy music and a little breeze from the sea. We were in quite a big group, all people from the hostel, which was fun.
After the sunset we walked back to the hostel. On the way home me and the American guy, Jim, grabbed some food from a nearby restaurant. After dinner I got back to the hostel and felt really tired. I had a few more beers with a few Irish people and then went to sleep.
Day 19
Travelday! I woke up early as I had to catch a bus at 9 am. I was heading to my next destination: Taganga! A small beachtown about 5 hours away from Cartagena, close to the Venezuelean border. I was picked up from the hostel and 5 hours later dropped off in Taganga.
I walked up the hill to find me a hostel. The two Australian girls I met about a week ago had told me to go to either hostel Casa de Felipe or Bayview hostel. As Casa de Felipe turned out to be full, I walked over to Bayview. The hostel seems pretty nice. The hostel has got a swimming pool and a bar next to it. At night the owner does BBQ´s for which I have signed up for.
Taganga is apparently a place where lots of people get stuck in and I can easily see why. The town is fairly touristy, but is still a small fisher´s village. The weather out here is extremely nice, maybe even a bit too hot in the afternoon. This place is known for its cheap diving, so that´s what I am planning to do. This afternoon I have been checking out diving prices, and it´s indeed not very expensive. I am planning to do a new diving course for my advanced certification. It´s the next step after getting your open water certification (the basics).
Soon more news from Taganga!
Jul 19th 2010 – Jul 25th 2010
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