Cartagena de Indies, located on the Northern Caribbean coast of Colombia, is a beautiful city made up of just under a million inhabitants. The main touristy part of the city is the old town, a walled in hub of beautiful shops, restaurants and bars. Due to the higher prices in the old town, the guys from the boat and I decided to locate ourselves just outside the walled city in a busy backpackers area called Getsemani, known for it's beautiful architecture and slighty dodgy red light district.
Mapale dancing in Old Town Cartagena.
After the tuna incident putting our first big night out on hold, the next night about 15 of us headed to a few local bars and then one of the famed local nightspots in Getsemani,
Mr. Babillas. The place was packed, full of locals, Argentinians, and Chileans all dancing Salsa and drinking the local spirit, Aguardiente, a fiery blend of distilled sugarcane and vegetable macerations. It was a great night!
Mr. Babillas club, Cartagena, crazy salsa place with hot chicks dancing on the bar, nice!
Much of my time in Cartagena was spent chilling out by the pool in the hostel and generally just walking around the city, visiting sites such as the Fortress of San Phillipe de Barajas, a 16th century monster of a building designed to protect the city from pirate attacks built by the Spanish after a naughty Englishman by the name of Sir Frances Drake invaded and took control of the city.
On one morning I got up early and headed out to a mud volcano that I heard was a bit of fun. After climbing a few volcanoes recently in Italy such as Etna and Vesuvius, I was expecting a long day of climbing to the peak. I was slightly underwhelmed to come across this little mound a mere 20 metres high.
After the short climb to the peak with a couple of American buddies I met, James and Dallas, I jumped in the naturally occurring pool and promptly received a massage and a face full of mud. Even though the liquid mud reaches hundreds of metres underground, it's impossible to actually sink in it due to it's density, it's actually damn hard to control you're movements making it a very strange experience. After 20 minutes or so of natural exfoliation, I headed down to the lagoon and proceeded to get a slightly too intimate wash down from a local lady. When she started pulling my shorts off in front of dozens of other tourists a slight level of discomfort came over me. But I do have to admit it was a highly unique experience and I'd definitely recommend it. Unbeknownst to me the tour also included a fabulous lunch of rice and fish on a nearby beach. Not bad at all.
El Totumo Mud Volcano, see if you can spot me. Stop looking in the top right hand corner guys!
A short boat trip from Cartagena took me to the beautiful Island of Baru, and namely Playa Blanca Beach. After spending the night on a hammock, followed by a day of chilling out on the beach, the owner of the shack we were staying in got a little stoned and randomly decided he'd build a volleyball court. A tournament ensued, me and an American guy called Jonas were knocked out pretty early by a couple of 8ft Argentinians. Ever the athlete, I felt a massage was in order...followed by a nap.
Playa Blanca Beach on Baru Island.
After Isla Baru I headed back to Cartagena for the night and then headed out to Medellin on an overnight bus the following day. A 13 hour bus journey managed to seem like 30 minutes due to some highly potent but perfectly legal local sleeping pills. Arriving in Medellin is an amazing sight, it's a sprawling Metropolis based in a huge valley with slums heading up the steep slopes of the mountains and modern high rise flats and shopping centres occupying the base. Most people associate Medellin with the violence and riches of the drug cartels in the early 90's, where Pablo Escobar was disposing of 800 police officers a month and spending $7500 in the same period on elastic bands to bind all the cash. Today the city seems to have changed dramatically, crime is decreasing, with the powerful cartels generally being based further South towards Cali. It actually appears to be one of the safest places to be in Colombia right now. One thing I can't get over is how incredibly friendly the people are, they help each other off buses, have no problems striking up conversations with perfect strangers and welcome idiots like myself visiting their city with open arms.
I pulled up to the bus station and was greeted by my old friend Juan, who used to work for me in Cambridge, but has lived in Medellin pretty much all his life. After chilling out on Friday morning at his apartment, we headed out to check out the local nightlife. I was introduced to the local dish of Arepas, basically a delicious corn bread that can be served with all sorts of different accompaniments, we had ours with a variety of different meats such as chicken, beef and chorizo.
Me, Juan, and our big ass arepas.
On Saturday, Juan, his wife Isabella, and I took the cable car up the northern side of the city to one of the national parks. The view from the cable car was incredible, overlooking a population of 2 million people with such a massive divide between rich and poor.
Medellin from the Cable Car.
We ended up in a huge National Park, walking round the Rainforest and taking a boat down across the lakes.
1800 hectares of un-spoilt beauty in the National Park
Juan is a big football fan, and one of the biggest games of the Colombian football season was taking place on Saturday night in Medellin, so he got us all tickets to go along. His team, the local Atletico Nacional, were playing their long time rivals America de Cali. It's a derby that has apparently been long contested largely because of the associated rivalry of the country's big cartels. Suffice to say it was pretty mental, Cali fans were outnumbered 10-1 and suffered all kinds of abuse, luckily it seemed there was a small army of police there to keep things in order. The terraces stank of weed, bodies were being flung all over the place, and players were escorted off the pitch individually with a riot brigade. Oh, and the score, 3-1 to Nacional, apparently I bought good luck to their recent losing streak!
Juan and Isabella before the game.
Atletico Nacional vs. America de Colombia.
On Sunday we took a drive around the town and up into the mountains. At one point Juan looked up in the sky and said 'Andy, look at that!' There were 15-20 people gliding like birds in parasails way above the city.
'Vamos' I said, 'but I'm only doing it if you do!'
After half an hour of convincing him that he wouldn't die, we took a gruelling trek up the side of the mountain, paid our dues and got strapped in. It was nothing short of incredible.
Geared up for the skies!
Flying above the city.
Juan dropped me off in the El Poblado district of the city at my hostel,
The Black Sheep, last night. I've got a week of intensive Spanish lessons here so don't expect a lot of excitement at all. Right now I've got a ton of homework to get through, verbs to conjugate, and sentences to form. Apparently when my teacher first met me she thought I had been in Colombia for a long time because my initial conversations and pronunciations were pretty good. I see a long road ahead of me though. Tengo mucho trabajar por hacer!
