Cartagena- The beautiful sauna of Colombia

On Wednesday we finally made it to Cartagena.  I was very excited to go here as I had read it was an old walled city settled by the Spanish in the 1600's, and I am a sucker for that kind of history. We arrived, got in a taxi, and within 5 minutes were already driving through the old streets in the walled city.

The taxi dropped us off at our hotel, an old colonial mansion converted into a eight room hotel.  It was gorgeous.  We were a little early, so we dropped off our bags and set off to find some lunch and explore this great city.  

our hotel

love this mansion--errr hotel

We were sweating within seconds of crossing the street.  It is HOT in Cartagena.  We knew this going in, but we are so spoiled by the weather in Medellin that we were not quite prepared for how steamy a city it is. Regardless, Jay and I were both ready to sink our teeth into some seafood, and luckily there was a Cevicheria directly across the street.  I looked at my notes that I took about the city before we left (nerd alert!) and score! The cevicheria is the most recommended one and the one that Anthony Bourdain visited.  It did not disappoint, the ceviche was DELICOUS.  Seafood heaven, we have arrived.

cevicheria!

Jay and I started to walk around the city and I was immediately in love.  It is gorgeous.  It is exactly like you would picture an old Spanish colonial city surrounded by a wall to look like.  Every building is painted a vivid color, flowers are hanging from rooftops, cobblestones are lining the streets...it looks like a scene from a movie. While I was wandering around all googly eyed, Jay was ready to take a break again, so we found a nice little plaza, ordered up some beer, water, and ice cream, and watched the city go by.

just your average street in cartagena

huge doors, and then a door within a door to actually get in the building

Plaza Santa Teresa

park

Cartagena is definitely a tourist destination for Colombians, Europeans, and a lot of southeast Americans. I was surprised when we sat down to hear a few English conversations going on. That is a huge change from Medellin and Cali.  We enjoyed our rest and headed back to the hotel to check in.  Jay cooled off in the hotel pool and I found myself taking a little siesta in the hammock outside.  Once we had cooled off, we headed back out, and ate a delicious seafood pizza.  Since it was nighttime and a few degrees cooler, we walked around Cartagena some more, and found ourselves sitting on the castle wall, looking out at the ocean, and having a few drinks.  

wall to the ocean

old city wall, keeping out the bad guys

The next morning we had to get up early to go the beach. The water on Cartagena's coast is not very beautiful, since it is a port town.  However, you do have the option to buy a roundtrip ticket and go to one of the many islands off the coast for the day, which offer a little more of that Caribbean beach experience that you want.  Jay and I headed to the port, bought our tickets for Playa Blanca, and waited.  About and hour later we were zooming along the ocean in a crazy speed boat, and another hour later we were plopped right onto the beach.  

Playa Blanca is very beautiful. It is literally just a white sandy beach with green tropical forest behind it and crystal clear blue water in front of it.  The beach is lined with little cabanas, restaurants, and hammocks if you want to spend the night.  The cabanas and restaurants are pretty much just branches from a tree that were stuck in the ground with some cloth put over them, but it kept me from turning into a lobster so I'll take it!

playa blanca

fruit lady selling mago

the guy who made our coco locos.  he's using that machete to break open the coconut.

coco loco!

little cabanas along the beach

All along the beach locals come up to sell you seafood that they have literally just pulled from the ocean, massages, jewelry, snorkels, banana boats, and drinks.  Jay and I spent the day in the cabana eating ceviche and other seafood, having some drinks, frolicking (yep, frolicking) in the water, and getting a little massage. We decided to leave when the boats came back to pick everyone up. We had every intention of spending the night in hammocks on the beach, but after the day we thought it might be nice to go back to town, shower, and enjoy Cartagena a little more.  Plus, we did not bring enough money for any more food, hammocks, or the boat ride back in the morning, so that cemented the deal.  They don't take cards or have an ATM machine on the island, haha! That night we had another seafood dinner (so good here!) and walked around a little more. 

On Friday, we basically just continued our Cartagena eating and walking extravaganza until it was time to go to the airport.  Jay also managed to talk his way into getting an awesome haircut.  We were so excited to back to Medellin, our apartment, and to not be so sweaty. We were all ready to go, get back, and go out with our friends that night.  Then, we ended up sitting in an airport for 7 hours thanks to a delay and a crappy airline.  Definitely not the highlight of our trip.  Oh well, we made it back to Medellin around 12:30 am and are now ready to spend our last few days here.

Final thoughts on Cartagena:

1.  Cartagena is seriously stunning.  Yeah, it's a little steamy, but once you wipe the sweat from your eyes you realize there is a photo opportunity around every corner.

2.  Speaking of steamy, this is a city for lovebirds. Jay was impressed with Cartagena, but not as impressed as I was thanks to the heat and lack of a beautiful Colombian woman next to him, haha.  Meanwhile, I can fall in love with buildings and ice cream so I was good to go!

3.  If this is "touristy" Colombia, then this is still one of the least touristy places I have been.  There were vendors everywhere but a simple "no gracias" and they left you alone.

4.  If you love seafood, then this is the place to be. Anyone with a shellfish allergy might want to stay far away from here.  Or you can just go to Crepes y Waffles, which is definitely a solid choice.

5.  Never fly VivoColombia from Cartagena.  Worst.Airline.Ever.  They may or may not hand write your name on your ticket, may or may not put the wrong date on your ticket so security looks at you with crazy eyes and won't let you through, and they may or may not have 10 people working at the counter and only one person actually talking to anyone and highlighting the names on a list of any one checking in.  Avianca all the way!

When life gives you lemons, make limonada

There we were on Friday: backpacks packed, passports ready, excitement bubbling, and all set to go to Cartagena.  Jay was busy double checking the details about taking a bus to the airport, and I was checking us into our flight so we literally just had to roll up to the airport and get on the plane. Except Avianca wouldn't let me check in, no matter how many times I tried.  It was then we discovered that the untranslated email Avianca had sent Jay wasn't a "Thanks for choosing Avianca, we'll see you Friday" email, but a "We need you to call us within 24 hours of this purchase to confirm the charge to your credit card" email.  Our reservation had been cancelled since we had not called them, and so no beach filled Cartagena weekend for us.

***Lesson learned-always translate emails.

After our initial rush, with no luck, to try and find a flight that would take us there, we had about an hour where we were a little disappointed.  Then, we looked at the bright side.  Oh darn, we have to spend the weekend in the fabulous Medellin.  So, we picked ourselves up and started walking to a restaurant for dinner.  There is a popular street here called Calle Buena Mesa that is a street full of delicious restaurants, but somehow it kept eluding us.  Not tonight.  Since we were not going to eat fresh Caribbean seafood in Cartagena, we decided to eat at Piscos y Mariscos, a fancyish Peruvian restaurant that specializes in seafood.  Both our meals were amazing, and it turned out to be a pretty good night.

Saturday we decided to finally do the Metro Cable.  Medellin is surrounded by mountains, and there are many farms and barrios on the sides of the mountains.  In the past, it was really difficult for the people that lived up the mountainsides to get down to the city, it pretty much wasn't done.  When Medellin built their above ground metro, they included a metro cable that goes up the sides of the mountains.  It is functional part of Medellin, giving people transportation to and from the city. For visitors like us, it is basically the coolest sky ride ever.  

Jay and I took the metro down to the station that switches to the metro cable cars.  Unfortunately, we had poor timing, and got to the station when everyone else was going home for the day.  After waiting in line for about 20 minutes, we finally got to load into a car.  I kept thinking how it was so weird that I honestly felt like I was waiting in line for a ride, but this is actually an everyday part of these people's lives.  Our ascent up the mountain started immediately, and we had an amazing view of the whole city.  This would be a great place for a picture, but it is a little awkward to snap pictures when you are in a small car with 6 others who don't think they are on a ride for 15 minutes, haha!  As we headed up the mountain, we also had a bird's eye view of the different barrios.

We got to the station at the top, and were dropped off into the barrio of Santo Domingo.  We immediately loved it.  Everyone seemed to be out in the streets, eating, drinking, and visiting with eachother.  We walked around for awhile, and found an awesome view point.  We took some pictures, had a drink, bought some snacks, and watched a really cool neighborhood in action.

view from Santo Domingo

view of the barrio

little ninas that wanted us to take a picture of them, and wanted our bottle of water, haha!

finally tried banuelos, little fried balls of heaven

these street carts are everywhere!

it was a little windy on top of the mountain, my hair was everywhere

night view from the car 

After the metro cable we headed home and got ready for Saturday night in Medellin.  Jay and I had been out to some fun bars, but we had yet to experience any of the many popular discotecas that Medellin has to offer. Angela came over, and brought her muy guapo (and bonus-tall!) friend Camilo with her.  We hung out at our apartment for a little while, and then began our extremely fun night out in Medellin.  Angela and Camilo took us to a place in discoteca central, Barrio Colombia, which is surprisingly really close to our apartment. It was actually raining that night,  so we only made it out to one of the discotecas, but I think we got a pretty good experience. I think it was pretty equivalent to a Vegas style club, except with more spanish music and better service. There was lots of dancing, music, dancing, music, go go dancers, dancing, music...it was awesome.  I wish I had taken pictures inside but I was too busy dancing, haha!

Doing some salsa dancing before we head out

Jay and a discoteca ready Angela

A not so discoteca ready me and Camilo 

On Sunday, Jay and I had made plans to go to La Piedra del Penol. We had heard about it from our spanish teacher, and after researching it on the internet, it seemed like an awesome place to go.  It is in the town of Guatape, a tiny town about 2 hours outside Medellin.  La Piedra del Penol is a massive rock that you can climb up, and it has amazing views.  

After a very late start, Jay and I took the metro to the bus station and figured out how to take a bus to Guatape.  We were pretty proud of ourselves for figuring this all out, but our elation was short lived once we realized we were on the worst bus ride of our lives an unfortunate bus ride. It was a long, loud, crammed, twisty way to Guatape.  We were pretty happy to see that rock at the end.  

view of Piedra del Penol from where the bus dropped us off

We got off the bus (at the wrong place, but the rock is huge so it was easy to find) and started to walk towards it.  Still a little queasy from our ride, we took a break at a little restaurant and enjoyed some guanabana juice.  That was when I realized how GORGEOUS Guatape is.

Guatape from the restaurant

Once we felt better we trekked over to the rock, and checked out some of the things around it before we went up.

open grill 

of course there is a place for salsa dancing, should you feel the urge after you  climb down the rock

Then we finally started to climb the rock. 

stairs only, this is one steep rock

And then we made it to the top.  It probably is one of the prettiest views I have ever seen.

360 degree view of this

Jay's panoramic view

Jay had a friend getting married that day in Chicago, so we celebrated our climb and cheers'd to her atop the rock.

After we had our fill of the beautiful view, we went back down and had our fill of some Colombian food before going back to the area where the buses pick people up to return to Medellin.  We asked some ladies where we could buy tickets, and we basically understood that there were no more tickets being sold and the line outside was for the last bus of the evening back to Medellin. Oops. 

So, our only options were to stay the night in Guatape or try and figure this out. We stood in the line of people waiting to get on the bus with some hope that we might get some more information about this.  Luckily, there was a very sweet older couple next to us that took some pity on the "americanos without tickets."  The guy spoke a little english, and told us that if there was room on the bus that we would be able to get on, no problem.  The only thing was that the line was pretty long, so it looked like there would be no room.  Then he talked to a policeman, the policeman waved a different bus down, the little man ran over and talked to bus driver, and the bus driver made room on his bus for us.  We were so thankful for the kindness of all these people!!  We then had a much more pleasant ride back to Medellin, complete with blasting spanish music and way less motion sickness.

It was an epic win of a weekend.

And thanks to Jay's uber-slick skills at finding inexpensive plane tickets, we still get to go to Cartagena!  We'll be soaking up the Caribbean Wednesday-Friday, hooray!

zapatos

Angela:  Estefany, you like my shoes?

Me:  I love them!

Angela:  Next time I see you, I will give you some shoes.

Me:  Mis pies son mas grande que tus pies.

Angela:  What size?

Me:  40.

Angela: Ohhh siiii, my feet are small. 

Me: I have big feet.

Angela: Si.  Americans have big feet.

Another day....

Jay:  Stef, these shoes are cool?

Me:  Yes, very cool, you need to get those.

Jay to sales guy:  Can I try these on?

Sales guy: What size?

Jay:  45 (size 11)

Sales guy:  (Confused look)We don't have that size in Colombia.

It's official.  Jay and I have the biggest feet in Medellin.