Day 68
Today I'm in: Cartagena, Colombia
Day 68 began, as so many others have, with an early wakeup and a morning taxi ride to the Bogota airport. Once I got checked in there, I went through security and met up with Evan, one of my best friends from Chicago and my traveling companion for the next few days. We were headed for Cartagena, arguably Colombia's premier tourist destination, up on the Caribbean coast. A short 90-minute flight later and we had left rainy, frigid Bogota behind and were descending into the muggy, hazy Cartagena area.
I'm back above the Equator again, so it's summer here, but in Cartagena it's basically always summer. It's hot here - hot and humid. Within moments of leaving an air-conditioned area you are sweating, and in a few minutes you're really sweating. Sunglasses and sunblock are essential, and some of the (many) touts you encounter as you walk through town try to sell you hats. After spending the last week or so in colder climates (Chile and Bogota) it's a little jarring. But it's nice to be in the tropics again.
And none of it really matters because Cartagena is a very endearing place. The city was one of the first European settlements in what's now Colombia and occupies a series of islands fronting the Caribbean that over the centuries have been essentially merged into one large peninsula. The old city takes center stage, and the more modern high-rise Boca Grande area is off to the west, along the city's beaches. The beaches are Cartagena aren't quite as ugly as I'd been led to believe, but they're not very memorable either - mostly gray sand and pretty minimal surf. The historic center of town is what draws people here.
Our hotel, the Monterrey, faces the main gate to the old city across a wide plaza. The hotel is in a restored colonial building and the view from our room (pictured) is pretty great. On the roof there's a pool and a bar that looks across the various domes and steeples of the old town, and on the side streets leading from the hotel, in the slightly-newer-than-the-old-town Getsemani neighborhood, there are plenty of places to eat and drink. We headed out to explore almost immediately after we arrived.
Despite the heat, it's pretty easy to get around, although the old town (encircled by a wall) is a bit of a labyrinth and it's also easy to get turned around, especially since the street names change every block. We were constantly pulling out maps to determine where we were. Even while quasi-lost, it's a great place to wander - every street has a unique view toward a church, a shady plaza, or the ramparts of the old city wall. Many of the streets are lined by surprisingly upmarket shops and restaurants - wealthy Colombians come here in droves, and it's an increasingly popular stop for Caribbean cruises and European tourists as well. It's also fairly compact, so in the space of a few hours we kept happening upon the same corners, the same shops and the same little squares and plazas.
You do get hassled by touts every time you turn a corner - they sell everything, from handbags to hats to snack foods to tours of nearby "historic sights" - but it's hasn't quite morphed into a complete Disney caricature. Certain corners of the old town, especially the ones that bump up against the "rest" of Cartagena outside the walls, remind you that this is still a fully functioning Colombian city. There are locutorios selling cell phone minutes, carnicerias selling meat, bodegas selling just about everything, and a weirdly large number of places to make photocopies.
For dinner we headed back to Getsemani and found a steakhouse with just about every cut of meat you can think of (we were hungry and decided that more uniquely Colombian food could wait until the next day.) We each had steaks the size of baseball gloves for about half what you'd pay for a similarly-sized piece of beef at home. Cartagena cuisine revolves around seafood - not surprising given its location - but just inland are some of the country's best grazing flatlands, so (fortunately for non-seafood fans like me) beef is a popular option as well.
We retired pretty early; Evan had flown overnight from Chicago to reach Colombia, I'd gotten up at 6am to go to the airport, and multiple hours in the punishing equatorial sun had wiped us both out. Before heading for bed, though, we arranged a few more activities through our hotel, including a visit to one of Colombia's quirkier tourist attractions, the mud volcano of El Totumo outside of Cartagena. More on that in tomorrow's entry.
Today I'm in: Cartagena, Colombia
Day 68 began, as so many others have, with an early wakeup and a morning taxi ride to the Bogota airport. Once I got checked in there, I went through security and met up with Evan, one of my best friends from Chicago and my traveling companion for the next few days. We were headed for Cartagena, arguably Colombia's premier tourist destination, up on the Caribbean coast. A short 90-minute flight later and we had left rainy, frigid Bogota behind and were descending into the muggy, hazy Cartagena area.
I'm back above the Equator again, so it's summer here, but in Cartagena it's basically always summer. It's hot here - hot and humid. Within moments of leaving an air-conditioned area you are sweating, and in a few minutes you're really sweating. Sunglasses and sunblock are essential, and some of the (many) touts you encounter as you walk through town try to sell you hats. After spending the last week or so in colder climates (Chile and Bogota) it's a little jarring. But it's nice to be in the tropics again.
And none of it really matters because Cartagena is a very endearing place. The city was one of the first European settlements in what's now Colombia and occupies a series of islands fronting the Caribbean that over the centuries have been essentially merged into one large peninsula. The old city takes center stage, and the more modern high-rise Boca Grande area is off to the west, along the city's beaches. The beaches are Cartagena aren't quite as ugly as I'd been led to believe, but they're not very memorable either - mostly gray sand and pretty minimal surf. The historic center of town is what draws people here.
Our hotel, the Monterrey, faces the main gate to the old city across a wide plaza. The hotel is in a restored colonial building and the view from our room (pictured) is pretty great. On the roof there's a pool and a bar that looks across the various domes and steeples of the old town, and on the side streets leading from the hotel, in the slightly-newer-than-the-old-town Getsemani neighborhood, there are plenty of places to eat and drink. We headed out to explore almost immediately after we arrived.
Despite the heat, it's pretty easy to get around, although the old town (encircled by a wall) is a bit of a labyrinth and it's also easy to get turned around, especially since the street names change every block. We were constantly pulling out maps to determine where we were. Even while quasi-lost, it's a great place to wander - every street has a unique view toward a church, a shady plaza, or the ramparts of the old city wall. Many of the streets are lined by surprisingly upmarket shops and restaurants - wealthy Colombians come here in droves, and it's an increasingly popular stop for Caribbean cruises and European tourists as well. It's also fairly compact, so in the space of a few hours we kept happening upon the same corners, the same shops and the same little squares and plazas. 
For dinner we headed back to Getsemani and found a steakhouse with just about every cut of meat you can think of (we were hungry and decided that more uniquely Colombian food could wait until the next day.) We each had steaks the size of baseball gloves for about half what you'd pay for a similarly-sized piece of beef at home. Cartagena cuisine revolves around seafood - not surprising given its location - but just inland are some of the country's best grazing flatlands, so (fortunately for non-seafood fans like me) beef is a popular option as well. 
We retired pretty early; Evan had flown overnight from Chicago to reach Colombia, I'd gotten up at 6am to go to the airport, and multiple hours in the punishing equatorial sun had wiped us both out. Before heading for bed, though, we arranged a few more activities through our hotel, including a visit to one of Colombia's quirkier tourist attractions, the mud volcano of El Totumo outside of Cartagena. More on that in tomorrow's entry. 
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