Cartagena Part 1: Cartagena has the whole Pirates of the Caribbean feel; A beautiful city dipped thoroughly in history which looks like it has been pulled out of a fairy tale with it's cobbled streets, plazas and flowery covered buildings with Rapunzal type balconies! The historic city is surrounded by a great stone wall with canons inset, which dates back to the 15 hundreds, a time when the city found wealth and became under threat from invading army's and pirates. Apparantly the most attacked town by pirates in the whole Carribean! After arriving in Cartagena the first thing you notice is the humidity. 30+ degrees but it is incredibly sticky and wandering around for 5 minutes can leave you drenched in perspiration. After hours spent in the passport control queue, we eventually arrived at the Iguana hostel which had a great location being about 100 metres from the sea and gateway to the historic town; however we were placed in a tiny box room with a ramshackle bunk bed and two rubbish fans which circulated hot air! No wind blew through the window and that night the room turned into a mini fan oven. We wasn't too happy as the hostel had stated Aircon! Even the copious amounts of alcohol drank, food consumed, and the fact that we had barely slept the night before due to us flying did not help the matter, and we spent most of the night tossing and turning and awake. At one point I even had a mini arguement with myself as I debated whether or not I should kip on the roof terrace. Midnight came and I gave in! Perched outside for an hour and ravaged by Mosquitos id finally cooled down enough to attempt to sleep again. Waking the next morning after dozing on and off all night we packed our bags and headed to the hotel down the road for a room with Aircon. More expense but money well spent! Checking into Hotel Marlin we finally began to relax. After a nice walk around we familiarised ourselves with our location, visited the tourist info for a map and then headed to the supermarket for supplies of beer and food for tea. We realised that Cartagena is generally split into three parts: 1) The historic town surrounded by the wall. 2) Getsemani, the part of the town that we stopped in which borders the historic part. 3) A strip of coastline which holds the beach, a modern array of shops and restaurants, and is most likely where you would stop if you had plenty of money and enjoyed all-inclusive resorts. This is also all based around a port and large Naval base. The following day we decided to visit the beach for the day to relax. The beaches in Cartagena do not look very Carribeany, however the sea is still lovely and warm and although though the sand is slightly darker and not as attractive, it still makes for a pleasant seaside visit. The only problem is you get majorley hassled off people trying to sell you things, braid your hair and massage you. After all the 'demos' we received that day we quite nearly came away with a full body massage and half my hair braided. Unfortunately sometimes if your not quick enough, they have grabbed a limb and chucked a load of lotion on you and started there demo faster than you can say "No Gracias" in a hope that you let them continue. After repeatedly having lotion thrown at us and resorting to cowering on the edge of our sunbeds in an attempt to escape, we finally gave up and headed back to the hotel to cool down. On our journey back we went off route and discovered an amazing supermarket/delicatessen. I was in heaven gawping at the variety of cheeses, meats, pates and other tempting delights... including goats cheese! Also, It even sold the Pataks curry sauce range and the Old El Passo Mexican range. This I was fairly excited about as you can never buy anything simple and interesting in South American supermarkets, especially anything with some spice!
The following day map in hand we began a historic walking trail of the old town taking in the beautiful architecture. After a couple hours of being snap happy with my camera we began to plan our trip along the coast towards the National park Tayrona. First stop, a town along the way called Santa Marta. I'll save my very few comments of Santa Marta for the next blog on Taganga as there isn't much to say about it. Ciao for now amigos, Hayls and Jonathan x