Day 222 - Volcan De Lodo El Totumo, Colombia- Friday 25th May 2012

After gorging on a deep fried snack from a street vendor and then a cheese and ham pastry from the corner bakery, our 9am bus finally showed up. Today we were heading to the attraction of the Volcan De Lodo El Totumo - in short a miniature volcano with a mud bath at the top! After an hour on the bus we arrived to a frenzy of men and woman hustling people to the top of what looked like a large mound of earth. Stripped of our clothes (swimmers on, of course!) we made our way to the top of the stairs to where the mud bath sat. In there already was a mud covered and grey looking Danielle! After waiting our turn to get in and all the while watching the series of people being floated in and then massaged very rigorously by some local men, it was our turn. We decided to opt out of the massage and instead launched ourselves in for our first float around. It was the weirdest feeling ever! You couldn't feel the bottom; it's like floating in cream and it's actually quite difficult to stay upright, it's almost like experiencing weightlessness it makes for fun though, knocking into complete strangers as you try and stay in one position with your head above the mud! Apparently the mud contains minerals acclaimed for their therapeutic properties; we weren't too sure about this and were slightly suspicious of the massage guys who stay in there the majority of the day and what they do when they need to go to the toilet……

After 20 minutes of floating and coating ourselves in the mud we were told to "vamos" and so out we came looking like mud monsters - all caught on camera of course! After trudging down the mini volcano we made our way to the lake to wash off; here lots of local women try to wash you but again we avoided this and just washed each other - much to their disgust!

With the volcano down we had a quick coffee and some fruit before getting back on the bus to take us to a little restaurant for lunch. We arrived in a tiny coastal town and were served up our lunch; I had fish with coconut rice and fried plantain and Ad had the fried chicken - it was tasty.

Full up and tired after all our floating around we headed back to our hotel in El Centro of Cartagena and had a shower and chilled out before heading out for evening drinks. We walked to the Café Del Mar, which seems like it's a bit of an institution in Cartagena, and met Danielle for drinks watching the sunset. The views and atmosphere were amazing and we happily chilled there for several hours drinking beers (Ad) and Coca Loca's (for Danielle and I). After far too many coca loca's we headed to the Plaza De Bolivar for some more drinks; by now I was a wee bit tipsy and finding it hard to work out what to drink and so just said "dos" to what Danielle ordered - the waiter looked at me as if I was loco and then a double whisky on the rocks turned up I realised why! After even more drinks, some cigarette tricks, some pestering of the local hat man and general tipsy chat, we headed back to our place to crash.