I'm tired, tired and more tired. This is our 4th stop on this journey.

We'd called for a 5:30 A.M. wakeup call. Can you believe that and we're on vacation.

We had to get up and get some breakfast, gather up our things and head down to the shuttle buses for a short ride to meet up with Jacinto and begin our tour for the day.

Cartagena has played a major part in Colombia's history, protecting the country from a number of invasions, as well as battling pirates who desired the city's treasure and riches.

The city was founded on the 1st June 1533, by Spanish Commander Pedro de Heredia, who took over an abandoned Amerindian Caribbean village known as Calamarí and started building a settlement of his own. The first Spanish settlers were sailors who had arrived from Cartagena, Spain to start a new life; they established the town as Cartagena de Indias in reference to its Spanish counterpart. At this time there were about 200 inhabitants and a church. In 1552 a fatal fire flattened all the wooden buildings, after which the governor ordered all the replacements to be made from stone. Treasures were discovered in the tombs of the Sinus Amerindian tribe, who buried their dead with all their riches, this led the city to prosper.

The city was invaded many times due to its prosperity and reputation for great treasure. In 1563, the city was invaded by French Huguenot nobleman Jean-Francis Roberval, Sir Francis Drake (1586), Sir John Hawkins (1576), Robert Baal (1586), Jean-Bernard Desjeans and Jean Ducasse (1697). All wished to lay claim to the city's riches for themselves and their homelands. At this time all the Spanish riches were transported through Cartagena, earning the city large sums to build mansions and the city attracted people from all over the country who were looking to make their fortune.

At the end of the 16th century the city identified its need for protection and started to build a wall and fortress surround. The Spanish poured huge amounts of money into the creation of the defenses to protect their wealth. At this time the port was the largest in the Americas and held a lot of raw materials. In the 17th Century the King of Spain ordered the city of Cartagena to become a hub for the slave trade, adding further to the city's riches.

In 1741 the Queen of England ordered Edward Vernon to invade every Spanish port in the Caribbean and take the country for their own in order to gain control of the Americas. The Battle of Cartagena was a deadly one for both sides, ending in a Spanish victory. After this intense battle, the city fortified further, improved and rebuilt its defenses to became the most protected port in South America.

Cartagena played a significant role in Colombia gaining its independence, in 1811 it was the first city to declare independence from Spain. This failed attempt resulted in the city being taken back by the Spanish and captured by General Pablo Morillo. During the War of Independence the city was once again the first to declare independence from Spain in 1821. The city recovered well and remained an important trade and shipping port.

1948 brought on one of the country's civil wars, this time between the Liberals and Conservatives in a war named 'La Violence', the city wasn't directly involved due to its importance for the country's imports and exports. It continued to prosper through the export of oil, platinum, coffee, sugar, tobacco and textiles.

Today Cartagena has rapidly expanded and is now home to over 1 million inhabitants and is still the country's largest port, specialising in petrochemicals. Despite all these changes the 'walled' Old City remains unchanged, with colonial architecture and its historic buildings preserved.

Our driver today, was Luis. During our drive, Jacinto stated that it took him 7.5 hours to get to Cartagena. The traffic was bad due to construction. Cartagena is actually a 4 hour drive from Santa Marta.

We were confused on where the tour was going to start today, but Jacinto stated that heading out to El Tutomo was best to do, first. We'd get out there before all the other ships' tour buses pile up here.

Driving along the coast was pretty interesting. There were lots of interesting things to see. We passed a herd of cows crossing the street and the military with automatic weapons lining the coast for miles. Jacinto stated that the president would be travelling that road and that's why they were there.

We drove through and are called Loma de Arena.

Loma de Arena, also known as "Lomita Arena", is a Columbian municipality located in the municipality of Santa Catalina in Bolivar, 47 km northeast of Cartagena de Indias.

The corregimiento of Loma de Arena, is located in the Caribbean coastal region of the department of Bolívar, limits to the north and west with the corregimiento of Galerazamba, to the east with the Caribbean Sea and Cartagena de Indias and to the south with the municipality of Santa Katherine. It is at sea level in a predominantly flat region. The population is predominantly engaged in fishing and rarely in agriculture. The relief of the corregimiento is uniformly flat, with some geological curiosities such as the mud volcano of Totumo, one of the tourist attractions of the corregimiento. To the north, near the cove of Galerazamba, the lands are low and it drains the Totumo swamp, which it also shares with the Atlantic department .

Jacinto also told us that the folks here also practice voodoo.

After a nice coastal scenic drive, we arrived at Totumo. As I looked around the bus, I noticed that my group didn't look to enthusiastic. Sabrina kinda looked like, "what the hell?" We all got undressed on the bus and were led up the huge volcano. Some of the steps were over 2' tall and we had to pull ourselves up all of those steps.

Once we all got up there, we laughed and got into the mud pit. The guys guided us around and started massages. After massaging on our backs, they turned us over.

I noticed tiny frogs, that at first I thought were fake, until the guide pushed some mud on them and they started jumping around.

The mud was grey and kinda creamy like.

After movies and photos, we were led to get out. I was on way over to the steps when all of a sudden I felt something go up between my legs, I was kinda startled only to find that it was Hope's foot. I said, "gurl, get yo foot outta my coochie!" We laughed until we couldn't laugh any more.

We all climbed out and carefully descended the treacherous stairs. The rocks were painful and scary.

We took lots of photos, covered in this grey mud. We looked scary.

We all headed down to the dirty lagoon, were women poured the water over us to rinse the mud off. I knew I was going to get typhoid or something from this water. Hope and Clark's water girl wanted Hope to remove her trunks and wanted them as a souvenier and kept pulling at Clark's trunks trying to get him to take his trunks off. After the semi bath, we all headed to the van to get out clothes and go to the bathroom to get dressed.

I was trying to change i the tight bathroom all the while watching this big spider on the wall.

Outside there was a bit of comotion.

Sabrina went in to change while Hope waited to watch her stuff. The water girl kept hounding Sabrina for money and she kept telling her to wait. The woman kept on and finally someone told Sabrina that she was crazy.

As I made my way back to the van, I asked Jacinto to get into the van and I asked him how much should I be tipping these people. He told me $5 for the masseuse and $5 for the camera man. He opened the door and there was a different guy there, who I found out, was the money collector for the masseuse and i tipped the guy who washed my shoes $2.

From here, Jacinto took us through the city explaining the significane of the huge doors and door knockers of the city.

There is a wide range of doors in Cartagena, all of them meaningful in some way and with so much character whether they were bright colors or muted neutrals. Some doors were small, some large, some with both a small door inset a larger one. And most of them has these intricate metal door knockers.

Due to Cartagena's very warm, tropical climate homes and doors were constructed to provide natural air conditioning.

Since large, intricate doors were a status symbol it was important to have a large door. However, opening large doors all day would allow too much of the cool interior air to escape, small doors were included within the larger ones.

Additionally, the door knockers, known as aldabas, represent a very important cultural significance of colonial Cartagena. The door knockers size and type of metal were indicative of wealth and social status. While the actual motif usually depicted the type of profession. Marine motifs such as mermaids and seahorses adorned the homes of men who made a living in the seas, lions represented teachers and lizards represented royalty.

We drove through Old Town and passed this huge statue of a woman is appropriately called Fat Lady. The reclining figure was created by sculptor Fernando Botero. He is a famous artist from Medellín, Colombia, who specializes in creating people with exaggerated shapes. The La Gordita artwork dominates the center of Plaza de Santo Domingo. This square once served as a market for slave trading. Goofy folks were rubbing her and taking photos with her.

We saw beautiful murals painted on the sides of buildings and just took in all the beautiful people scurrying about.

We were wisked on back to the port, we paid Jacinto, shook hands, hugged and thanked him for a great day.

We headed back in and up to O'Sheehan's Bar & Grill for some Wings and Fries.

I came on back to the cabin to try and work a bit on this blog.

My final thought for today: "I believe being us, in all our glory and dopeness, is revolutionary because the world would rather we tone ourselves down. I celebrate all this noir pixie dust by showing up every day and being me. Unapologetically." Luvvie Ajayi