Cartagena, Colombia= warm weather and awesomeness

After arriving at the airport a little bit later than
we should have, Taylor and I made our way through all the lines and made it to our plane just in time. We had a short lay-over in Bogota, Colombia's capital, and arrived in Cartagena just after 10am. While walking across the tarmac we both immediately noticed that the weather was much warmer and that Colombia just has a different feel than Ecuador. The city is located between Cartagena bay and the Caribbean Sea on the northern coast of Colombia (east of Panama where Central America connects to South America). Please reference the map above if there is any confusion about Cartagena's location.

I guess I should take a moment to introduce Taylor. He was an Ohio State student as well and did the same study abroad program that I did through OSU...only he did it six years ago. He currently attends UCal-Irvine and is working on his Ph.D. in Anthropology. His thesis is about the "dolarizacion" (the change in Ecuadorian currency in 2000 to the US dollar) and its impacts on the day to day lives of Quito's citizens. Very interesting, but I digress. We met last year when he was working at the hotel I currently work at and decided that we needed to do some traveling together since we were both back for this summer (my second time in Ecuador and his fourth).

Since we have spent so much time in Quito it was strange to be in a new city, with people who spoke very differently and much more quickly. The only thing we knew about the city was where to get dropped off at to find cheap hostels and that the government made a list of prices taxi's are supposed to follow. This came in handy many times throughout our trip and saved us a bit of money. Our taxi dropped us off right where we asked him to but we immediately were lost and wandering around. We would later find out that we walked through Cartagena's Old Town and then through another neighborhood named Getsemani, where we found a good enough place to stay for just over $9 US or 17,000 Colombian pesos a night.

After getting settled we saw two people that were on our flight, who were also staying at the same hostel, and struck up a conversation. Rafael and Rosallia are siblings in there 20's traveling on their break from school. Their father is German and their mother is Colombian and their parents live in a city in Southwest Colombia. Needless to say they were super interesting people and it was fun to have new people to hang out with. They told us they had heard about a day trip via boat that went out into the Caribbean Sea and stopped at a few different islands and invited us to come along. Being that we literally knew nothing about the city or what to do, this seemed like a good way to spend a day. After purchasing our boarding passes we split ways and Taylor and I started on our next mission: wander around all day and buy disposable cameras to document our trip. Note, any pictures tagged on these posts are images I took from a google search.

Despite the staggering heat, we quickly began to love the city as we learned more about its history and from admiring all the vibrant colors as we walked around. We learned much of its history because we went into a book store to hang out by the air conditioner for a few minutes, and ended up buying a book. Cartagena was under Spanish rule and was constantly under attack by France and England due to its geographical position that made it a good place for military and trading posts. The old part of the city is surrounded by a stone wall, or muralla, that served as a way to protect it. Despite this, it was ransacked multiple times and robbed of all its wealth and would have to be rebuilt. That being said, its historical section of Cartagena is very well preserved and we had a great time exploring and enjoying all the different views.

We were pretty tired after our long day in the sun so we grabbed a bite to eat and hung out at the hostel with our new friends and rested up for our island hopping excursion the next day!