This is colombia!

Cartagena

Apologies, I have neglected the blog. Not purposely, you understand, but maybe not accidentally either. Colombia is, well... Colombia. A juggernaut of a country, we have arrived in South America with a bang. The history, culture, people, scenery, all come at you a million miles an hour. An absolute feast for the eyes, ears and stomach...

We landed late at night in Cartagena. Did I mention it was hot? It was hot. After wandering around aimlessly looking for an ATM (they are seemingly thin on the ground in Colombia), we eventually procured some cash and went to crash out at our hostel. Arriving at midnight we walked into a lovely leafy courtyard with a pool, open-air kitchen and two levels of colonial-style rooms, probably built in the 17th century, a rooftop terrace, a bar... and a large crowd of people who look like they'd walked straight off a kontiki tour and onto an 18-30 holiday. Apparently things don't really get going in cartagena until 1 am, so they were hanging around for cheap beers before hitting de clubs. "Come with us", they cried. "Oh, maybe tomorrow, we're very tired". "What, you old or something?" "Us, old? No, just exhausted". And so it went on... We got to our room overlooking the courtyard only to realize not only do none of the rooms have locks, they also don't really have doors, it being deemed too hot to need them. Security - so overrated... Once in, we apologized to our room mates for the commotion, climbed our seven-foot bunks and slept on top of our valuables for the whole night. Oh, and it was bloody hot... Welcome to Cartagena!

Pretty hostel

Shame about the animals in the pool...

After catching a few hours sleep and getting over our fear that everyone is either trying to rob or murder us (they're not), we ventured out for some much-deserved shopping. This is because our backpacks are filled to the brim with thermals, sleeping bags, mourinho tops, all in anticipation of our time in the Andes, as we are so petrified of the cold. Who needs clothes by the beach, right? Wrong! When you're sweating several liters of water every day, it seems you really do need several changes of clothes. Bad packing on our parts. What were we thinking? Laden with shopping bags (not really a very Colombian experience), and very thankful for two hours of air-con, we returned to our delightful hostel to drink beers and mingle/get drunk with our fellow beautiful travellers. What else were we to do?

Day 2 and we wandered to the old town, the best preserved colonial city in South America. Cobbled streets, cathedrals, ornamental park squares with locals selling everything from fruit to arepas, beautiful buildings, all housed inside the biggest walled fortifications I have ever seen. Built to keep pirates out it is a dominant feature of Cartagenian architecture. Our first port of call was La Cervicheria, Cartagena's finest ceviche restaurant, and recommended by Anthony Bourdain in his show, No Reservations. This, surely, is a good enough reason to drop $30 at lunch, right? (Yep, it pains me to admit it but the budget is not going well. See musings on money soon to be posted (sounds thrilling, I know..)). I think I would have happily paid $50 for the ceviche we had - white fish marinated in coconut lime juice, prawns in chilli lime juice, and crab claws in oil and lime, all washed down with a couple of micheladas (thankfully without ice). I can not even begin to describe how delicious it was. Ceviche is certainly shaping up to be the dish of the trip, thus far.

Pretty buildings, and....

Ceviche!

Anyone for dessert? The fruit, not the lady.

In the evening we went out for a 'cheap bite', and found ourselves in a local church square with a wedding going on at 9pm on a Friday. As the bride and groom skipped out of the church the square erupted into a party with locals and guests alike taking a partner and dancing to salsa blaring from a nearby street sub-woofer system. (Colombians LOVE to party and every day and night you can hear music pouring out of windows and doorways as people gather to sing and dance. They don't need an excuse, it's just what you do in Colombia.)

Party time!

We left the revellers to their salsa and stepped into a local tapas bar. Armed with only one tapas item each (we were trying to be good), we nibbled on prawns (Lucy) and lamb (ais) and nurtured are forever warming beers - you have on average about 5 minutes to drink a beer in Colombia before it turns into a warm, flavourless beverage, masquerading terribly as an alcoholic drink. It makes having 'just the one' extremely tricky indeed. Thankfully some Colombians from Bogota who were holidaying in Cartagena came to our rescue and invited us to drink with them. Colombia's finest rum was on the menu along with polpo ceviche (the only time I have ever liked octopus) and Dominican Republic cigars. How could we refuse? They were absolutely lovely to us, and we ended up at a salsa club trying to learn (again badly) simple salsa moves. I have always thought I had a bit if coordination when it comes to dancing, but clearly I have the biggest two left feet in the world. Two guys gave up on me while the old men seated around the edge of the club looked on totally bemused... I think I'll stick to Louis' doughnut moves for now.

We spent our last day in Cartagena being thoroughly lazy (it was the heat, I swear!), lazing around our not-so clean pool and visiting the old city again at dusk for photo opps. We also stumbled across cafe del mar - Cartagena's version of Ibiza's most famous bar. Probably the only bar ever built on a 16th century barricade, we watched the sun set to chilled out music and delicious micheladas (the photos do not do it justice). 

Late-night snack for Ais.

We thought this was a pretty perfect way to end our time in Cartagena, but the city had not finished with us yet. On returning to our hostel we were accosted by the only decent crew we had met there and were persuaded to 'hit the clubs' at just after midnight. Cartagenian clubs could not be more different to the ones we are used to back home. Involving a live salsa/hip-hop band (don't ask me how this worked, it just did), about 200 people squished into a space the size of a Mini Cooper and enough sweat to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, we shook our ever-growing booty's until the wee hours. Four hours later we were up, hungover and on a bus headed for Taganga, Colombia's gringo hippy town.

Ciao Cartagena - you did not beat us!