Cartagena

Next on the cards was a long bus journey from Bogota to Cartagena, 20 hours roughly. I am curious to total up the amount of nights we have spent on buses since we left Ireland, or even the amount of kilometers travelled in them! In South America alone we have travelled by bus well more than 62 degrees of latitude, this figure obviously takes no account of any east/west travel.

Anyway we arrived in Cartagena tired and with sore bums! The first thing that we noticed was the heat! Even though Ecuador is on the equator we experienced nothing different from a hot Irish summers day but Cartagena is different. Within seconds of stepping off the bus I was dripping with sweat! Its like Malaysia all over!

We established ourselves in a hostel with a ceiling fan over the bed and set out to explore the city which is amazing. Cartagena is an old walled port city, which has a wonderfully coloured history full of pirates, sackings, slaves and rum! Walking the walls in the midday sun would be just the ticket we thought. The street sellers, hiding in shady nooks and crannies, kept us alive with iced cold plastic bags of mineral water which they produced from their cooler boxes. By the time three o'clock came we were fit for bed. We agreed that the next day we would get up early and siesta during the midday heat!

We spent a few days wandering round old Cartagena visiting the sites. There is a wonderful old fort called Castillo San Filipede Barajas. In case of attack, this castle had its own underground

reservoir and a labyrinth of unlit underground passages which steeply fall or rise from the depths of the earth. Often they are half full of water and I began to wonder if we'd ever find our way out! The passages provide emergency escape routes out, as well as a means to move troops from one area of the castle to another. The passages are riddled with nooks and crannies in which we half expected to find old Black Beard himself, jumping out with muskets blazing! The castle has only fallen once and this was before it was fully built. A French pirate called Baron de Pontis gathered together an army of 10,000 buccaneers who he cheated out of their cut of the immense loot. He sailed back to Paris with the loot as quickly as he could while the pirates, understandable annoyed, killed, raped and pillaged the remains of Cartagena. Since then the finished castle held out for 56 days with 27,000 angry men outside, its defense was led by a one eyed, one armed, one legged hero called Bals de Lezo who is commemorated with a statue at the entrance to the fort.

The stories of pirates go on and on in Cartagena's history. The walls and castles bristle with cannons, there are so many cannons in town they use them as street bollards, turned nuzzle down and set in the concrete. In fact any descent Caribbean pirate worth his shivering timbers seemed to have spent time either defending or attacking this city.

We frequented a local cafe/restaurant every day for a set lunch. A communal seating policy leaves one elbowing for space amongst the street sellers around a small table. There's half a dozen large fans that spin lazily suspended from the ceiling, the walls are decorated with mounted stuffed fish and turtles as well as box of chocolate style pictures of alpine lakes, pine trees and scenes from more temperate climes. The set lunch is a filling bowl of soup with barley grain, potatoes and a chunk of gristle. This is followed by fish or meat (both unspecified) and a double serving of carbohydrates; spuds and rice. Its all washed down with what they call a refresco, a sweet warm cordial. After this heavy meal and a morning in the sun all we are fit for is a siesta under a squeaky fan.

In the evening there is a street bar in which we enjoy a few beers, they belt out the salsa, rumba and mambo at full volume. This goes down great with the Colombians who need no excuse to dance, especially when on holiday. There is a lottery ticket man who has a little street side stall just by the bar, people que to buy their tickets, but in the middle of filling out the forms the bar plays his favorite tune. He slaps down his open palm on the table and upsets the neatly stacked piles of coins he has ready for change, the queue of people wait patiently while he dances up and down the street, punching the air for joy. This seems to be normal behaviour and who are we to come between a man and his music.

We spend a couple of indulgent days scuba diving, near to the local Islas del Rosario. It is beautiful with all sorts of wonderful fish, sunken wrecks and lobsters for lunch!