We flew into Cartagena on a Thursday morning. Cartagena is very different from Bogota. Cartagena is:
- The Colombian vacation hotspot (Bogota is the seat of power)
- On the shore of the carribean (Bogota is inland)
- At sea level (Bogota is at about 9000 feet above sea level)
- Hot and humid (Bogota is cool and cloudy)
We didn’t realize all of this until we got off the plane. We had been in 60-degree weather in Bogota; it was 95 when we landed in Cartagena. Our water bottles immediately misted over.
We arrived at our hotel, sorted out the problems with our reservation, and got some lunch. Then we relaxed in our room, while we planned out our activities for the next couple of days.
They centered around resting, but there were a couple of things we wanted to see in Cartagena:
- The Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, which was a major part of the Spanish invasion.
- The old city, a classic colonial city center.
- The mud volcano which is, well, a volcano that shoots out mud.
- We also discovered that a collection of tall ships from several carribean countries had descended on Cartagena, and that seemed like a great idea.
We visited the Castillo as part of an all-day tour that was classic Cartagena. We were picked up by a chiva:
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| From Cartagena – City Tour |
A chiva is a converted schoolbus, and we drove around the city as the tour guide picked up more passengers (I think they have a quota to meet, because we drove around until the bus was full before they started the “tour”).
We drove all around the city, stopping around the various ports for photo opportunities. Here are some of them:
Then we stopped at the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. It’s actually pretty impressive, with lots of battlements and a really cool interior tunnel system that was designed to trap invaders and protect soldiers in the know:
There was a freelance trumpeter there as well:
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| From Cartagena – Castillo San Felipe de Barajas |
From the Castillo, we continued on to the old city. Were entered a few jewelers shops (Cartagena is known for its jewelery industry), and walked around a few of the city squares:
Our tour finished outside the old city walls at sunset:
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| From Cartagena – Old City |
Another day in Cartagena, we went to a mud volcano outside the city. It is what you think it is – a big hill that is filled at the center with mud:
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| From Cartagena – City Tour |
The locals provide massages (in the volcano). We went, and it was alright – but it was really weird. The mud was fine, but let’s just say that we did it, and leave it at that.
After we first arrived at our hotel, the receptionist told us about a tall ships exhibition that was that weekend in Cartagena. He gave us a few VIP passes for one afternoon, so we headed over. It was awesome – there were seven or eight several-hundred-foot sailing ships from a variety of countries:
- Ecuador
- Colombia (naturally)
- Venezuela
- Chile
- Argentina
- United States
We stopped on a few of them – the Ecuadorian, Argentinian, and the American one. It turns out that this was a part of an all-Caribbean cruise, and these ships were all training vessels for their respective navies or coast guards. The crews would switch out every month or so. We had a blast – it was really cool to see all the ships and to talk to some of the sailors. We even got to surprise the Americans with native English and an American accent (most of the crew also spoke Spanish – pretty well, too!). Here’s what we saw of the tall ships:
And that was Cartagena! After that, we flew back to Bogota for a few days, and then back to the states.
