Colombia: Day 5: Cartagena

Saturday, June 8

The next morning we woke up early, got our things together, and took some croissants and coffee to go. I wasn’t feeling too well after the night before (too much booze, not enough sleep), but powered through. We had a bus to catch! Thankfully I was able to sleep for a good portion of the ride and felt better by the time we got to Cartagena. I also took a fair amount of photos out of the bus window. The tiny little towns (if you could even call them that) were unlike anything I’d ever seen (outside of this trip, that is). Small little one-room, colorful homes made of concrete or terracotta blocks. Lots of donkeys and cows. The towns would practically be gone by the time you blinked.

We eventually made it to Cartagena and caught a taxi to our hotel. There was a slight mishap with the room, but we eventually made it into our private room with an A/C, TV, and private bathroom, which we had paid for online (at $35 this was an absolute splurge in Colombia). We dropped off our things and, not having eaten lunch, went off in search of food. We ended up wandering around for quite a while, not wanting to settle for crappy food just because we were hungry. Along our wanderings we bought beautiful almost-matching red seed necklaces, got coconut water, ate pandebono, and admired the beautiful colonial architecture. Ali kept saying that Cartagena feels a lot like Old Havana, and she kept expecting to turn a corner and know where she was. It’s absolutely beautiful. Rows of brightly colored buildings, with beautifully ornamented balconies, and often dripping with vines and flowers. I was torn between wanting to take hundreds of pictures, because it was all so beautiful, and feeling like it was okay to put my camera down because it did start to look the same after a while.

It took us a while to find a place for early dinner (we were way past the point of lunch), because I didn’t want to eat Italian food on my last night in Colombia! Just when we were about to give up and settle for mediocre sounding food (compounded by the fact that Colombia isn’t super veggie-friendly), we found a place with a half vegetarian menu! We were elated, and barely even looked at the menu before heading in. We sat by ourselves in a nice open courtyard. We started with hummus and white wine, and took our time enjoying our last meal together. I got a vegetable paella, and Ali had salmon with shrimp and patacones. Ali was elated to be eating salmon, because even though it’s often available, she doesn’t usually eat it because it’s usually pretty expensive. But it was my last night, so we were ballin out!

Dinner was lovely, and after our meal we walked out to the edge of the city, where an old colonial fortress wall still rings much of the perimeter. You can walk along the top of it, go into the small tower-like lookouts at the corners, and walk right up to cannons. The part that I was most excited about, however, was the concrete blocks! Being a coastal city, they used the materials available when making concrete. Usually the cement is mixed with sand and rocks, but when you’re on a beach, your rocks also include shells and coral! There were pieces of marine aggregate all throughout the material and I was super nerdily excited. Of course I’d read about this method before, and it makes perfect sense, but there’s something about seeing a piece of coral the size of a plate in the middle of a wall that’s pretty damn cool.

On our way back to the hotel (we were pooped!) we stopped in a bar called Donde Fidel. We didn’t get any drinks, but rather came to hear the salsa that the place is so known for. This bar has the most amazing stereo system I’ve ever heard. They don’t have live music, but just play recordings. The system is so good, though, that I was convinced there was a band in the next room. I’ve never experienced recorded music that loud that was that clear and sharp. Usually on most systems when you crank the volume, there’s a certain amount of static and loss in quality. I could tell that these were really, really good speakers. The walls of the bar are lined with photos of the owner, Fidel, posing with famous salsa musicians, too. After soaking in the scene for a bit, we made our way back to the hotel to lay down for a bit.

Once back in our freezing-cold air conditioned room, we took advantage of the TV, mostly watching trashy MTV / VH1 shows. After a while, though, we decided that we really shouldn’t be bums and stay in all night. And since we’d had such an early dinner, we went out for a light dinner 2.0. We went to a pizza place down the street, and ordered a large margherita pizza, which ended up being way too much food. The Argentinian couple next to us, though, put their pizza AWAY. This was a substantial pie, and they just ate it all. It was impressive. Ali told me that it’s a Latin American stereotype that you can always recognize Argentinians, because they usually look like hippies, haha.

Anyway, after eating about half of our pizza, we decided to give it away to someone on the street, since we had no way of keeping it and didn’t want it to go to waste. It was surprisingly hard to find homeless people, actually. Since Cartagena’s fairly touristy, it seemed like the local police were diligent about keeping people off the streets. We eventually found a man rummaging through garbage and gave him a slice. We walked around for a while and after not seeing anyone, went back to him and gave him the rest of the pie. I’m sure he was pretty surprised to be handed half a pizza, but it made us happy.

We had every intention of going out salsa dancing after dinner 2.0. Ali knew of a place called Havana Club that was supposed to have live music and good dancing. After our previous late night, though, we weren’t up for too much, and weren’t planning on having drinks. So when we found out that there was a $12 cover to get in, we decided it wasn’t worth it when we only wanted to listen to a few songs. So back to the hotel and TV we went! It was actually pretty nice to just kick back with Ali and relax after the action-packed week we’d had.

Sunday, June 9

I woke up a little earlier than Ali the next morning so that I could go out and take a few more pictures before I had to leave. It took a while to get my camera working properly, though, because the camera was cold from the air conditioning, and it was so humid outside that my lens kept fogging up! After my camera warmed up, though, I was back in business and wandered up and down the street taking a few more pictures. I also sniped a tiny piece of coral that was loose in a church’s wall. Seriously! It was completely detached, I was just saving it from falling. And now it’s sitting on my desk.

When I got back, we finished packing our things up and had a nice breakfast in the courtyard of the hotel. We had a platter of fruit (kiwi, watermelon, papaya, and cantelope), starfruit jugo, coffee, and a traditional Colombian breakfast of bollos, sour cream, and queso. Bollos are cornmeal that’s been wrapped up in a corn husk (like a tamale), boiled, and then sliced. It was a little strange, but once my mind equated it to polenta it made a little more sense to me. It was fairly bland and dry, though. The queso was served warm, and although it looked a bit like feta, it was more porous, salty, spongy, and squeaked against your teeth as you ate it. I enjoyed eating all three (the bollo, queso, and sour cream) together- not something I’d ever crave, but I’m certainly glad I tried it.

We then took a cab to the airport, where Ali dropped me off, then she continued on to the bus terminal to make the trek back to Santa Marta. The airline had told me to arrive 3 hours before my flight, so I did, and ended up breezing through customs and security in about 20 minutes. Oh well, good thing I still had some NY Times in my bag. I also ended up getting some dados (one queso, one with queso and guava paste) while I waited. Customs were also straightforward once back in the US, and my bag was literally the first on the carousel! And thus my trip to Colombia was over.