Day 69
Today I'm in: Cartagena, Colombia
After a nice, long night's sleep we woke up and headed back into old Cartagena for lunch and to continue exploring. Although still sweltering, the skies were a bit bluer today and it was maybe five degrees cooler than it had been the day before (when you're dealing with this level of heat and humidity, that's pretty meaningful!) We found a great place for lunch - a little corner snack shop called Bocaditos Madrid that was recommended by my guidebook, but that had moved locations since the book was published, so we were lucky we found it at all. It had excellent food (cheap too, which is no small feat in Cartagena, where prices are several levels higher than the rest of the country) - we each got a bowl of caldo de res, with coconut rice, salad, and a side of fried chicken, and we split an order of arepa con huevo (corn fritters with scrambled eggs inside) and fried yucca dumplings with ground beef inside.
Following lunch we went back to the hotel to don bathing suits and meet the bus that would take us to Volcan de Totumo. This is Colombia's famous "mud volcano," which has become a de-rigeur stop for tourists in Cartagena. It's located about 50 kilometers to the northeast of Cartagena, and when we got there we found what looked like a miniature volcano or a very large termite mound. According to legend, the volcano was formerly the normal kind (with lava) but a local priest, convinced the devil was inside, sprinkled it with holy water every day of his life. When he died, the lava turned to mud, and the volcano has spewed mud ever since.
Regardless of whether you believe the legend or not, the volcano is pretty cool. You clamber up a rickety flight of wooden steps to the top, where the caldera (if you can call it that) is full of people. When it's your turn, you're pretty much pulled in by "helpful" "masseuses", who roll you around while giving you half-hearted massages of dubious quality. The mud itself is pleasantly cool - not cold, but not warm either - and it's got a bizarre consistency that neither of us could really describe. It's famed for its therapeutic qualities, which I suppose it has, but the best part was that it didn't have that rotten-egg stink you usually find in mud baths. You're very buoyant in it; once you're vertical it's difficult to get yourself horizontal, and vice versa. We couldn't touch bottom either - the mud comes up from some mysterious underground conduit, and we decided it was better not to think about how deep it was or how the volcano actually worked.
When you're finished up, you're helped out and you waddle down another flight of steps to a nearby lake, where more "helpful" personnel rinse you off. They even take your bathing suit off for you, such that you find yourself naked in mostly-opaque water surrounded by people you don't know. The mud is thin enough that washes off pretty completely - I was expecting to find bits of it for the rest of the night, but we were clean as whistles when we left the lake.
The bus took us back to Cartagena and we finished up the day with dinner at Crepes & Waffles, a Colombian chain restaurant that, at dinnertime, serves an enormous menu of savory dishes. We headed to a nearby bar after dinner to finish up the day, although as with the day before, the sun had really sapped a lot of our energy, so we hit the hay around midnight.
Today I'm in: Cartagena, Colombia
After a nice, long night's sleep we woke up and headed back into old Cartagena for lunch and to continue exploring. Although still sweltering, the skies were a bit bluer today and it was maybe five degrees cooler than it had been the day before (when you're dealing with this level of heat and humidity, that's pretty meaningful!) We found a great place for lunch - a little corner snack shop called Bocaditos Madrid that was recommended by my guidebook, but that had moved locations since the book was published, so we were lucky we found it at all. It had excellent food (cheap too, which is no small feat in Cartagena, where prices are several levels higher than the rest of the country) - we each got a bowl of caldo de res, with coconut rice, salad, and a side of fried chicken, and we split an order of arepa con huevo (corn fritters with scrambled eggs inside) and fried yucca dumplings with ground beef inside. 
Regardless of whether you believe the legend or not, the volcano is pretty cool. You clamber up a rickety flight of wooden steps to the top, where the caldera (if you can call it that) is full of people. When it's your turn, you're pretty much pulled in by "helpful" "masseuses", who roll you around while giving you half-hearted massages of dubious quality. The mud itself is pleasantly cool - not cold, but not warm either - and it's got a bizarre consistency that neither of us could really describe. It's famed for its therapeutic qualities, which I suppose it has, but the best part was that it didn't have that rotten-egg stink you usually find in mud baths. You're very buoyant in it; once you're vertical it's difficult to get yourself horizontal, and vice versa. We couldn't touch bottom either - the mud comes up from some mysterious underground conduit, and we decided it was better not to think about how deep it was or how the volcano actually worked. 
When you're finished up, you're helped out and you waddle down another flight of steps to a nearby lake, where more "helpful" personnel rinse you off. They even take your bathing suit off for you, such that you find yourself naked in mostly-opaque water surrounded by people you don't know. The mud is thin enough that washes off pretty completely - I was expecting to find bits of it for the rest of the night, but we were clean as whistles when we left the lake. The bus took us back to Cartagena and we finished up the day with dinner at Crepes & Waffles, a Colombian chain restaurant that, at dinnertime, serves an enormous menu of savory dishes. We headed to a nearby bar after dinner to finish up the day, although as with the day before, the sun had really sapped a lot of our energy, so we hit the hay around midnight.
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