Cartagena, Columbia

"This city is simply magical!"

Where to begin…

The old walled city of Cartagena is a magical town filled with narrow streets, and full of swimwear stores, local street vendors, fresh fruit, and tourists. Lots of tourists! But weirdly, that made us feel safer. We arrived on February 17th (the day before Hannah’s birthday) via Copa Air and were picked up at the airport by our apartment transfer. As we drove towards our place we were shocked by the rash and erratic driving of EVERYONE!! Were passed an accident with a motorcycle and car with its back window smashed in (my guess is that the guy on the motorcycle crashed into the car and flew into the back window). If there are traffic laws in this place, they are more like guidelines that lack enforcement. Thankfully we made it to our apartment in one piece. We spent the afternoon exploring a bit and getting groceries for breakfasts. We went to get a passionfruit mojito and a beer, and tapas for a light dinner, and we met two men from Minnesota! We got to talking about life, careers, politics, and easily passed an hour. We have found a lot of Minnesotans while traveling, which makes us even more proud to be from the greatest state in the country (technically 2nd best according the recent USA today article, but I think it was rigged)!

Finally, it was Hannah’s birthday :) We dressed to impress and stepped out the door to explore the city. We were drenched in sweat within an hour. Cartagena is known to be very hot, and it was. 95 degrees, humid, and sunny every day! We ate lunch at a cute café called Epocha and got a bowl of fruit and diablo chicken sandwich. We went back to our place and took a much-needed siesta. For dinner, we went to a restaurant that specializes in infused rums called Alquimico. Naturally we tried a couple. Hannah, loving all things passionfruit got a passionfruit infused tea drink, and Peter tried lemon tequila something. We tasted lobster and delicious pork balls.

We did a lot of walking around just exploring the city, stopping at ATM’s at least once a day to get enough cash to pay our sailboat captain that would take us to Panama. We walked along the wall and enjoyed a sunset, shopped at local stores, buying a pair of fun earrings and a couple swimsuits, and tried a walking tour. The tour was supposed to be 2 hours of the walled city. We made it less than an hour before we snuck away.

We decided to go to Playa Blanca one day and booked a transfer from Bluesailing in Getsmani. We arrived at Mamallenas Hostel, where the bus picked us up, at 8:30 the next day and headed to the beach. The beach was full of hostels and vendors selling various trinkets. It was very crowded, so it was hard to find a peaceful spot to spend the day. We walked down the beach for 30 minutes until we saw some beach chairs/beds we thought looked nice. We talked the price down from $100,000 to $50,000 (yes, you had to pay to sit anywhere on the beach – so frustrating) and prepared to relax. A large group of Americans showed up 30 minutes later and began ordering drinks, playing music, and taking a ridiculous amount of posed photos for their Instagram accounts. Needless to say, it wasn’t THAT relaxing, but we made the best of it. By 2:00pm we started to slowly make our way back to the bus.

We moved to a hotel called The Townhouse (another blog post just on this place because it’s that awesome) still in the walled city on the 21st. It had an amazing rooftop bar and pool which was very relaxing to stick our feet into and cool off in the afternoons. We ate delicious breakfasts with fruit, toast, and eggs, enjoying the view and the cooler morning air. The rest of our time in Cartagena was spent touring the colorful streets, diving into history at the inquisition museum, and trying street food (that may have given Hannah some tummy troubles).

Cartagena is one city that we will definitely return to. We both thought it would be a really fun place to travel to with a group of friends and even start a small hotel/b&b of our own. Maybe someday :)

Oh yeah, and Peter got a haircut! For like $5!!!

These lunch plates were also like $5 and were tasty, authentic columbian food.