Cartagena is a beautiful city, an old Spanish colonial town surrounded by new high rise modern buildings. Probably the hottest place we have been so far, with heaps of humidity and an average of 32 degrees, and it only ever went down to about 27...at night!!!Our hostel was located inside the walls of the old colonial town. We had heard in advance that it was their independence festival so we had booked to save us from having to search for accommodation, unlike the majority of our boat!!....More importantly, according to Shane, we needed to stick around for a few days as it was also Miss. Colombia this weekend!!!!

We had been told to pick up our passports later that first day, as with the carnival the office might not be open Sat. So we decided to go for a wonder around town, see the sights and head over to the office at 4pm, which would give us loads of time as the office wasn't shutting till 5pm....or so we had been told!!!Turns out that they decided to shut at 3.30pm as they wanted to celebrate too!!So we were stuck without our passports...normally not an issue but we had been told that flights were cheap within Colombia so we had our eye on a bargain for Monday...We headed out to see what the story with this festival was and with Shane not surprisingly leading the way we somehow stumbled across the bikini contest!!!{SCORE}..According to Shane!!! So we soaked up the atmosphere there and the lads managed to pick out their favourites before the tiredness caught up with us and we headed back to the hostel. We were up nice and early so that we could get our passports first thing and get our flight out.....we went to the office at 9am, then 10am....but it turns out they decided not to open till 11am!!!So 3rd time lucky we headed to get these passports! We told them about wanting to book flights so were given the address of the airlines office, so we hailed down a taxi, jumped in and headed to the address.....it was of course closed due to the festival so that was a bit of a wasted journey!!! We walked back towards town, taking in the festivities and somehow came across the Miss.Colombia contestants again....anyone would think Shane had done a bit of research on this!!!!We made it back to the hostel, attempted to book online, by which time our cheap Monday flights were long gone. Again this was turning out to be a challenge and was getting more and more pricey, so in the end we decided to bite the bullet and head to the airport to try and book....and yay...we managed to get a flight for Wed evening, for cheaper than the 36hour bus journey was!!!...so we went home happy!

We then headed out to the festival again, this time it was street parties galore!!!Every road you turned down had music pumping and people dancing {you wouldn't believe the sound systems that people have in their houses!!!} The additional challenge/fun of the evening was trying to avoid being foamed too much!! You can see what we mean from the pictures!!! Overall though it was all in great spirit and we had a real laugh mixing with all the locals. The following day was the main day for the parade! So we met up with 3 others from the boat and headed down to the main stretch, where the stands were. We managed to get into them without being ripped off too much!!! So we got a bit of relief from the sun....but no such luck with the foam...any sighting of a 'gringo' seems to automatically result in at least a bottle of foam being emptied!!! The parade itself had a carnival feel, with lots of music, dancing, bright colours and, last but not least, scantily clad women!!!{YAY!!!} We also got into the spirit in the stands, trying out Columbian style dancing!! Overall we really enjoyed being here to see this yearly event! We went out that night thinking that it would be crazy, only to realise that people must be wrecked at that stage as there wasn't much happening!!!The only downside was that Phils camera decided to break, which was following swiftly on the heels of Shanes camera breaking about 2 days before!!! So thanks to everyone who has given us pictures!!!

We booked to visit the Mud Volcano on our final day!!! Volcan de Lodo El Totumo is the official name and we have never experienced anything like it before, as you will see from the pictures! Its only 45mins away from the city, it's about 20meters high and it is full of mud!!!! You climb to the top of the steps and jump in!! It's a really strange sensation as you don't sink, you aren't touching the bottom, but you can't really swim either!!! You just kinda float...like it must be in space!! And if someone accidently knocks you, it's really really hard to stay upright! Shane a likens it to the consistency of cornflour and water....we had a great time here, and would recommend this experience to anyone in the area! The next day was spent camera hunting!!!! We eventually managed to get sorted, so hopefully we will be back in photo taking action shortly!!! Our final day we went up to the San Felipe Fort in the town for a walk around and to test the new camera!!! You can see all around the ports and town, as it would have been used by the Spanish to keep out the pirates! So that's it for our extended Cartagena adventure...now we are flying to south west Colombia!