It's Day 5 onboard the Westerdam, Wednesday, April 15th so only 15 days to go until we hit Vancouver. With all the news reports of crime and wide-swept drug issues, our tour of Cartagena was actually a welcome surprise. It’s a city of about 1.4 million people in a country that tops out at about 48 million. We found Cartagena to be very well kept – the streets were clean and smooth (this is important when walking – just one turned ankle today) but traffic was crazy, crazy. There are 75,000 registered motorcycles here in Cartagena – they’re everywhere.

We weren’t sure what the plan was going to be today as it was to be a short-stop here as we need to make our "crossing appointment" at the Canal tomorrow. We bobbed and weaved our way through the onslaught of cabbies and tour guys with my constant “non gracias senior” until we found Manuel. A nice older guy, who was 69 and apparently had 7 children with 15 grandchildren. Not quite sure how much he drives a taxi based on these numbers, but he treated us well. It was originally going to be $20US one-way into town and another $20US for the return. Manuel proposed a 4-hour tour deal for $80US so we snapped it up – can you beat a city-tour for $27 dollars a head, I think not.

We were one of the first off the ship so we made good time to most of the important places. Manuel took us to all the major sites – first on the list was the convent ($5US admission) high on the hill overlooking Cartagena, then it was off to the Fort ($4US admission). I wanted to see the old walled city of Cartagena so that was the next stop on our agenda. It was nice, the city streets closed to traffic but still accommodated the horse-drawn carriages that seemed to roll down the streets in bunches, 6 – 10 carriages at a time.

I got all my shots, 275 pictures here today before it started to rain. One the way back to the ship it started raining and it came down but secretly I think that we were all good with the soaking given the 44 degree Celsius and ungodly humidity. Manuel said that today was nothing; you should coming in July or August when it gets hot. We pretty much saw everything we needed to see from the Miami Beach like condominiums that circled the bay in the Centro district to the ritzy, gated homes of the Columbian rich. Unfortunately no opportunity for Wi-Fi so I’ll have to put it off until one of the upcoming ports-of-call. All in all, it was a good day.