Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

After leaving the mysterious town of Mompox, in our double cab Toyota hilux "shuttle", it took us just under 5 hours before we arrived at the last stop of our South American journey, Cartagena...

Cartagena is probably the most famous and most picturesque of the old colonial cities found in South America...It was the biggest Latin American port in the old colonial days and thus the principal connection to Spain...Thus you can imagine that the symbolic influence from Europe is very significant but that being said, the place still has a very colorful look and feel, which does give it some Latin American flavor!

Our hostel, El Genoves, was situated right in the heart of the old walled city, in what was surely one of its most colorful streets! It's a really nice hostel, that is reasonably priced, centrally located, has nice big dormitories with A/C and a pool! 

We arrived a little before our check in time, so dropped our bags and went for a leisurely stroll through the old city to the outer wall. Today the old wall is a big part of the aesthetic appeal of the historic centre of Cartagena, back in colonial days the wall also played an important role...to keep out pirates!

Back then the Caribbean was a cesspool of ruthless scalleywags and buccaneers, and as the biggest and most lucrative port in South America, Cartagena became a big target for these thieves and marauders! One of the big advantages that the colonial outpost had was that the harbor had a very narrow natural channel that led ships from the open waters to the harbor. This allowed the Spanish to strategically place an arsenal of cannons all along the part of the wall facing the narrow harbor channel, thus enabling it to defend itself against sizable attacks!

Kristi and I walked all along the wall, enjoying the stiff ocean breeze that brought some reprieve from the suffocating heat! The views both across the ocean and back over the city was really beautiful, but after an hour or so we rushed back to our hostel to jump in the pool! This routine was repeated many times during our stay in Cartagena!

That evening we met up with a friend of ours who we last saw right at the start of our journey, in El Calafate, Patagonia! Our trips just didn't cross paths again after that, well until now...

It was really good to catch up with old Anders (from Norway, and yes for an afrikaans person it's an easy name to remember!), his girlfriend and his sister had joined him for the latter part of his trip and they too came with for dinner. We had some good but somewhat overpriced seafood - the old town is very touristy so first world prices prevail at most of the restaurants! But the beer was not too pricey, the company was great and we got to see Wayde van Niekerk smash the 400m live! So not a bad night if you ask me - it was also quite funny because the Norwegians only really follow the winter Olympics, naturally, and thus were probably as intrigued with the (normal) Olympics as we are when we watch that winter Olympic sport where it looks like they brush the ice with brooms - it's called curling btw! Also now we have a place to stay in the notoriously expensive Oslo!

The next morning we got up nice and early (before it gets unbearably hot) and went for a run around the wall, the old town is really quiet before the general public wakes up and pours in and thus a real pleasure to experience even if it was just for a short while...

Later we again signed up for a free walking tour and learned about the big role that slavery played in Cartagena back in those days, which was something different from the other big colonial cities further south. This not only brought a lot of wealth to the city but also some African culture, which is still evident nowadays, with one of the nearby towns now a completely African-Colombian settlement...

While the slaves added a uniquely African component to the story of Cartagena, the immense wealth shaped the city architecturally, with massive Cathedrals built in honor of Roman Catholic Spain and large extravagant mansions all over the old city.

It was by far the hottest free walking tour that we've endured but the sites and history did help keep our minds off the heat.

Afterwards we ran straight to the pool at our hostel, cooled off and had a lovely budget friendly lunch of half a watermelon, plantain chips (banana chips) and ice cold beer!

We weren't able to book for three nights at our hostel - Colombia is crazy this time of the year - so we booked a place in another old neighborhood just outside the wall, Getsemani. It was once one of the poorer areas of Cartagena, but like a lot of places in South America, it has been transformed significantly into a very culturally rich, vibrant and tourist friendly place! Our hostel in Getsemani, One Day Hostel, was also really nice, again the dorms were really spacious and the place was neat and clean.

For our final night in South America we met up one last time with our traveling compadres, Simon and Joh-nell!  We went to a really nice vibey restaurant in the Getsemani area with a cosy rooftop setting and really good and reasonably priced food (we still have to go to USA people), called Malagana. It was a great way to close off the first part of our journey, and cheers to the diverging paths that lay ahead - the Veenstra's will be spending a few more days in Colombia before flying down to Buenos Aires where they will catch their return flight back home!

The next morning we had to get up early for our flight to Bogota, where we would be boarding our international flight to the US of A!

As we drove around the impenetrable walls of the old city, on the way to the airport, with a pale blue Caribbean horizon stretching as far north as our eyes could see, we couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness that we'd be leaving a continent that we've become so fond of and have in a way become so familiar with despite its wholly foreign culture...I suppose that will happen if when place becomes your home for more than four months!

Muchas gracias para todos Sud America!