Where's Grayleen?

After Villa de Leyva, we decided to head north toward the sun and sand of the Colombian Caribbean coast.. Is it too soon for a beach vacation from our travels? Absolutely not!

We flew into the largest town on the coast, Cartagena. Cartagena is a colonial town founded by the Spanish in 1533 in order to transport the gold and silver they “acquired” from natives inland back to Spain. It has had the honor of being sacked by pirates many times including one particularly fruitful mission by Sir Frances Drake who held the town captive until he received his ten million peso ransom.

I was struck immediately by the differences from the Bogota area: darker and much more diverse skin tones, twangy music, big smiles, endless blue waters, and hot! Unlike the other parts of Colombia we’ve seen, this area seems to draw a lot more foreign tourists. I can’t say I blame them.

Cartagena by night

We spent most of our time wandering the streets of Old Town Cartagena. At night we watched and listened to the festivities leading up to the national beauty pageant, El Reinado, a huge event for Colombians. There’s been music, dancing, and pageantry in just about every square in the town. By day we’ve wandered long, narrow streets of shops and stalls and spent hours strolling along the top of the city wall built to keep out the pirates.

We spent one full day on a boat trip that headed to the Rosario Islands. This provided beautiful ocean views and our first opportunity to swim. Cartagena has many things, but it has no beaches.

These Colombians sure do take their safety seriously

Colombia is known for being more expensive than many other South American countries such as Peru and Bolivia. I’ve noticed that food is particularly expensive. One night in Villa de Leyva we dropped $44.000 (US$22) on a nothing-special dinner and drinks where we shared an entree. That same night, we paid way less, only $25.000 (US$12.50), for our private room with bath in a great little guesthouse right off of the main square. All this is background to so you understand how proud I was of us when, here in Cartagena, we acquired a delicious seafood, rice, & chicken jambalaya of sorts from a street vendor for the low, low price of $3.000 (US$1.50) or just 75 cents each. Now that’s cheap eats.

See our very minimal now full fledged photo gallery here, mostly of our trip to the Rosario Islands. Next we’re off to Parque Tayrona where where we expect nothing more than sun and sea.

[Note: We left Cartagena on November 7th but have not had internet access to publish this until now.]