Cartagena, Colombia – June 18th – 22nd, 2017

Well, what do you know, we took another crooked taxi to our hotel in Cartagena. He was a pleasant enough driver until we asked for change when paying and he became quite angry – he said he didn’t have any change, but, miraculously, once Dani went inside the hotel to get exact change from the receptionist, he conjured the money from thin air! Not only a taxi driver, but a magician with an attitude! How fantastic!

Some of our first sights in Cartagena including our group of soccer friends.

Since our hotel room seemed to take inspiration from a prison cell, we spent most of our time out and about the beautiful old city of Cartagena. Surprisingly, the architecture reminded us of elements we saw in some old Asian port towns. We made sure we spent plenty of time walking along the old city’s walls, through the very photogenic streets, and through the plentiful plazas. Most buildings seemed to be well taken care of and had very colorful paint schemes with elaborate old doors to. We also found an AMAZING gelato shop in town that we continued to visit each day we were in the city – it was really hot out!

Walking around the old city of Cartagena. 

One night happened to be the Colombian league’s soccer final so we wandered around and found a local bar where we enjoyed the game with some locals. With a beer in one hand, a pretty decent slice of pizza in the other, and surrounded by exuberant and enthusiastic locals (and travelers), we thoroughly enjoyed the game. The resulting 5-2 score in favor of Atletico Nacional made quite an impact on the group, especially since their previous game a few days prior was absolutely dismal. It really was like watching two different teams play.

Some more beautiful sights around Cartagena. There's so much incredible street art!

While in Cartagena, we also learned that all of our past two weeks of Spanish-speaking experience was for naught. The coastal language was technically Spanish, but it was spoken extremely fast, with other indigenous words thrown in, and without any gaps whatsoever between words. It honestly sounded like gibberish. The locals were also very different from the locals in Medellin and Salento in that they didn’t seem to care that we were trying to speak their language, and when asked to speak more slowly, they simply wouldn’t. Over time, it did get a little easier to understand them, but we never felt as confident as we did in the other regions of Colombia.

Some more sights around Cartagena including the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, some garbage, and impressive wildlife.

A couple of days into our stay in Cartagena, Dani’s mom joined us for a two-week trip on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. For her stay in Cartagena, we decided to move to the beach area of town for a bit of relaxation to start off her vacation. Our hostel was nice enough (though more homestay than hostel since there was someone’s clothes in the closet and it looked like a very lived in room) and the beach was a two-minute walk away which we enjoyed for a few swims and beach walks. However, it turned out that we were not in a very good part of town. It began with the receptionist asking if we were going to go out for dinner or not so he could plan his evening around locking up the big gate to the hostel. It continued with us walking around the area looking for dinner restaurants and finding absolutely nothing except weird and intimidating looks from the locals. It ended with a kite school staff member seeing us, running over and telling us we shouldn’t be walking around the neighborhood at night as it is extremely dangerous. So, our dinners were simply homemade sandwiches and fruit in our safely locked-up hostel. We spent one day back in the old city in order to show Momacita around the beautiful area and to get some decent grub – we also felt a bit safer and more comfortable there, especially with that gelato in our bellies!

Turns out we didn't take many pictures of the beach, but here's some pictures of our beach hostel along with one of the beach!

Though it turned out that the coastal locals were not as friendly as their mountainous compatriots, the city’s beauty helped make our time in Cartagena special nonetheless.