C A L I, C O L O M B I A: Cartagena

Cartagena is a beautiful port city on the Caribbean Coast. We arrived Wednesday evening and stayed until Sunday. It was a nice relaxing get away. Cartagena is an old colonial city with brilliant Spanish Architecture, plazas and fine restaurants. We spent most of our time strolling the streets and enjoying the sites. Mostly viewing the beautiful houses, churches, museums and plazas. We ate lots of great street food, saw some pretty cool street performers, visited a castle, watched the sun set over the ocean, went on an all inclusive trip from hell and totally RELAXED!

The photos are all out of order but enjoyable none-the-less.....

Aaron walking done a colorful street in the old city

An old ship setting sail in the harbor

The ship heading out as we returned from our "cruise"

Swimming with a fun family from Medellin

This is the boat we took for an all inclusive tour (don't ask, sometimes that just happens), with 100 Colombians roaring to party. I don't know what we were thinking, perhaps we weren't. The first clue should have been that lunch was included..bahhhhhhh

But it is hard to match the Colombians who were already drinking beer on the bow at 8:30 am and dancing shortly there after. Why would we take a tour to a "white sand beach" after living in Hawaii and exploring many deserted, quite, non-touristy beaches....because we are suckers sometimes.

All in all it made for a really funny, not fun but funny day. The video really does explain it all. Yes, on the trip back the man who had been mopping the floor and the girl who spend the day touting mango and salt, changed into some jazzy clothes to perform a bit of Michael Jackson and a bit of Latin Swing but before that there was some serious bumping and grinding....I was so embarrassed I could barely video tape but what I should have done was take pictures of the children's faces!

Playa Blanca

The old fort as you leave the bay

Fishing Boat in the bay

Puerta de Reloj in the evening

One of the many plazas at night

Sunset from the wall

We visited an old fort called "Castillo de San Felipe, it is a massive structure that was built in the 16th century. It was very impressive. You could walk below in it's maze of tunnels. We arrived late afternoon and the dusk lightening was amazing.

Here is the a video of a perfromer at the fortress...

Interior tunnels of the castle

The view from the top of the castle, well more like a fortress.

Casa de Cultura

Gold Museum

More gold at the wonderfully air-conditioned museum- did I mention it was a 100 degrees in cartagena? Not a cloud to be found in the sky with a ridiculous amount of humidity. Hot is an understatement, sweltering is more like it!

A way to make a quick peso, cover yourself in charcoal, pretend your a statue, tourist take your picture....all in a days work.

Helado?

An appealing wall, to me anyway in the Contemporary art Museum

Some lady art from the museum

More art, it is weird to be allowed to take pictures in an art museum....maybe I wasn't suppose to?

Evening Stroll- chances are we were probably lost, we did a lot of walking in circles.

The old City of Cartagena is completed surrounded by a massive wall, these were built in the 16th century to help protect the city from the many pirate attacks. Now the wall is a bit of a soc ail divide. It makes for a great place to watch the sun fall.