Dear all,

we had to take a hard decision: Go to Colombia by boat or by plane (over land is not advised)??? The sailing trip is supposed to be pretty..but it is the worst time of the year to do it because of strong winds. But the decision got easier when we met someone who had done the trip and told us that he was unable to distinguish ceiling from floor during the 3 days on the open ocean. So we decided for the plane...

At the airport we met a spanish couple we had met before and decided to share a room in Cartagena. Room prices in Cartagena were just surprising...So we discovered Cartagena together with Patricia and Juan from Bilbao / Madrid: Cartagena is called the pearl of the caribic coast with its colonia style houses and many fortresses. We thought this nickname was not exaggerated (even though not having seen much more). We spent the days wandering through the beautiful streets of the old town, had a cup of the famous colombian coffee here and there and just enjoyed. What a great start!! The second day we met the cruiseship tours close to one of the foretresses. The large group of "ants" are all wearing tags to distinguish from the other groups and have to take photos from the entrance gate in order to remember which location the last photos were from. Horrible..

Based on this experience we decided to cancel our plans for the next day - a SUNDAY - to visit the islands / nice beaches close to the city. We just could not stand the thought of cruise ship tours combined with weekend visitors from the city. Instead we decided to make an about 7h drive up north to the nice beach of Palomino.

Palomino was advertised as a hidden paradies in our guide book. And surprisingly it still kind of was when we arrived (probably because the edition of the Lonely Planet just came out some month ago). BUT it started raining when we got there :(. And it did not look like it was going to change the days after. So we did not stay for long.

We decided to try to make our way further up north instead - to Cabo de Vela and Punta Gallinas. It is the land of the powerful Wayu tribe that has defended against all invaders...in the desert. The region sounded so interesting and bizare that we decided to go there even though little information was available on how to get there without a tour. But we thought it was a good idea to do so when we were still with the four of us.

Those adventures you can read in the next entry.

Hope you are all doing good.

Yours,

Anna & Maarten