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Other entries in Cartagena

Bus rats (updated)

Finally stopped behaving like a prissy travellers and got down to some serious road running. A 22-hour bus journey later (with constant Vallenato music on the tinny radio and a bad case of bus-ass) and we are back in the sultry humid heat of the coast. Cartagena feels like New Orleans on a maddening hot afternoon. I think we will like it here. We have a wicked little room with a balcony in a hostel called Casa Viena in the old town. They are good friends with the owners of Platypus in Bogota and Colombian Highlands in Villa de Lleyva. All highly recommended. I have my very own little mezzanine bed in the rafters. Lucky, as we just showed up all grubby on the doorstep with no reservation. Got to see a different face of Colombia on the trip here. Small poor towns, vast valleys with lakes and rolling hills, flat never-ending swamplands and lots of military checks. Laura feels like she's in another country. Can't wait to get to the sea. I'll update the huge mountain of blog entries bit by bit, including this one. I can't out-run them it seems.

(Almost caught up with my blog backlog, yey!)

So I woke up at 4.15 am on our first night to the sound of a heavy rain storm. It was already hot and humid even with the industrial fan on full blast. I couldn`t then sleep as I had a Liam Frost song in my head about someone waking up at 4.15 and it looking like rain. At least the storm left the streets squeaky clean for when we went sightseeing the following day.

We wandered dazed around the beautiful walled old town - narrow streets of brightly coloured houses with flower laden balconies. The New Orleans flavour was unmistakable. We sat high on the battlement wall drinking cocktails next to a huge cannon facing out to sea. Later whilst chatting on our balcony we agreed that Cartagena would be a perfect place to inspire a book or a film. Our own offering was a tragic tale of spontaneous human combustion titled "The Stump, The Chair and The Greasy Roof". We`re as yet undecided if it should be made into a musical. I digress..

As the hostel wasn`t in the most savoury of neighbourhoods we also passed a couple of interesting hours watching the prostitutes and small time drug dealers doing business. Leagues better that any soap opera out there.  This wasn`t a stereotype of Colombia though, this could have been any rough street in any big city.

We found a great dive centre called Diving Planet that took us to the Corales del Rosario national park the next day. This is an archipelago surrounded by coral reef, about an hour by boat from Cartagena. The trip on a speed boat was fun though skimming the waves had us both complaining of boat-ass. Laura did a short pool course on one of the islands then joined us for our second dive. There were some impressive giant hard coral, though quite eroded and silted up at times. It felt like we were swimming though an underwater post-apocalyptic city. Some pretty moray eels and colourful fish but best of all was seeing Laura on her first proper scuba dive. She soon learnt that water enters your mask when you grin too much.

We went with some friends from the hostel to Volcan El Totumo, a mud volcano 50km east of the city. The whole area lies on an active volcano but rather than spewing out boiling hot lava it bubbles up lukewarm mud in certain places instead. Now who could resist a wallow in that? We had to climb up a rickety staircase to the crater where one by one we glooped ourselves into the pool where there were men waiting to give you a mud rub. A pleasant if odd experience as you weren`t always sure where the hands were going to or who they were coming from.. Being in the mud was strange. You kind of floated in it - suspended in this giant custardy cauldron. The volcano occasionally let rip a big sulphurous bubble which led to inevitable `who guffed?` jokes. After we`d finished behaving like basted hippos and were done with our little mud fight, we walked down to the shores of a huge lake nearby to wash off. This time there were women waiting to wash you clean! All part of the service. I was busy having a Ganges-like rebirth experience whilst Laura seemed more worried that some wiggly nasty was going to crawl up her woo woo. She did find some kind of white leechy thing but in only made it as far as her ankle. We still had mud in our ears for a couple of days but it was well worth it.

We dived again at the islands, this time spending the night on the teeny tiny island of Rosario itself. Classic quote from Laura: "Nancy, I`ll take your small island, and I`ll raise you..". After a couple more cool dives in the day, I did a night dive with José, one of the divemasters. At the risk of venting another torrent of sentimental mush about diving - this was a truly ethereal experience. I hadn`t dived at night before and I was told all manner of different things come out to play. Pitch black bar a beam of light from a torch, the feeling of swimming along totally weightless was heightened somehow. We saw enormous lobster and crabs, big barracuda and strange stringy starfish. All the familiar giant coral took on strange colours and shapes. The bestest thing of all was the bioluminescence of the plankton. José signalled for me to switch off my torch and as I did I moved my arm and an arc of shimmering lights followed it. It`s not easy to describe but it was like creating little meteor showers every time you moved. José touched a stringy starfish and it also rippled with green and blue light. And then there was the heavy unnatural silence, apart from the Darth Vader sounds of breathing through my regulator. An utterly captivating and magical experience. When I grow up, I don`t want to be a pilot or a brain surgeon. I want to be a night diver.

I was on such a buzzy high that the offer to go snorkelling through the mangroves that surround the island, in the dark, was too good to miss. Laura agreed and just the two of us set off into the inky black lagoon to meander along the roots and see what was hiding there. Normally, I would rather be seen driving a Ford Multipla then throw myself at night into a scary dark lagoon, but it was exhilarating. Hidden in the eerie twisted roots that hung in the water were big puffer fish, barracuda, langoustines and other shadowy things with bright eyes. We switched off our lights and again saw the amazing bioluminenscent plankton. Un-real. The following day, we had out 4th meal of fried fish and coconut rice in a row and returned to the city happy and chilled. We went out with the diving centre folk to another rock bar, hallelujah, and staggered home accordingly. 

During one of our many wanders around the old town (completely lost) we stumbled upon a beautiful boutique hotel with a palm tree courtyard, pool and one heck of a history. It was a favourite hangout of Greta Garbo, the Kennedy and Onassis families, Yoko Ono and Mick Jagger, who threw big parties here. So we thought, screw it let`s spend a night here, so we did. In sheer unabashed luxury. Quote Laura: "Judy, I`ll take your posh beachside hut, and I`ll raise you..". A perfect end to a fantastic two weeks with Laura. Shoestring backpackers? My arse..      

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