Cartagena Day 3-

After some well needed rest and some more delicious new Colombian breakfast foods (arepas!) Taylor and I were ready to explore the city. Much to our demise, just minutes before leaving our breakfast spot it began to rain, and rain hard! After about 5 minutes of standing by the door and the rain not lightening up, we began our tour anyway. It is actually quite refreshing to walk around in the rain when the weather is still warm so we didn't mind our soggy walk.

We started in the colonial part of town known as, El Centro, and followed a path that our Cartagena book had suggested. It was a beautiful walk and we saw the majority of the churches as well as a graduate university. We were curious to see what a university looked like so we asked the guard if we could walk around. Reluctantly he agreed and we walked around the courtyard and read some of the research and history that had been down there about the slave trade through the centuries. It was very interesting and neat to see a school. Who knows, maybe Ill end up back in Central or South America to go back to school?!

By the time we finished our walk in the late morning hours, the rain had stopped and then we were just wet while we walked around. After drying of a little bit and getting some food, we decided we were decent enough to check out a few museums. First we went to the Naval Museum of Colombia which was super interesting and a lot cooler than we actually expected. It was a bit cheesy, as military museums can be, as it described with quite creative adjectives the braveness and superiority of the Spanish Conquistadors and later military achievements of Colombia over the savages and simple folk. There was also an interesting, to say the least, tribute to South American hero Simon Bolivar, the military leader and visionary who helped liberate 6 countries (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Panama) from the Spanish.

After the Naval Museum we went to check out the "Gold Museum" which was full of artifacts, documenting the different tribes, styles and changes in making golden objects throughout the centuries. It was interesting and fun to see all the ways these tribes used jewelry and other objects to express themselves. After this museum we went back to the hostel to change and figure out our plan for the rest of the day. We had read about the neighborhood Boca Grande, the Miami Beach of Cartagena, and decided it had to be somewhat interesting since it is the new part of the city.

On the way to Boca Grande we stopped in the Old town because it was on the way, and this is when we saw the colonial dance going on in the plaza. It was really fun to watch and there is just something lively and energetic about warm, coastal regions that isn't present in the colder landlocked areas of the world (sorry, but this is a complete personal bias!). After enjoying the show we continued our walk with our end goal being to visit a light house at the end of the peninsula. After walking for about an hour we came to find out that the lighthouse is in a restricted neighborhood and that, in my opinion, the Boca Grande barrio lacked all the character, energy, restaurants and all cool things to do that the rest of Cartagena contained. It was a nice walk because on one side is the calm Cartagena Bay and on the other is the beautiful Caribbean Sea, but unless your goal is to walk six kilometers like we did, a picture of the Boca Grande is sufficient.

I was so hungry by the time we got back because Taylor didn't want to stop and eat anywhere, that I ordered a pizza and a chicken sandwich dinner at the restaurant across the street from our hostel. After absolutely dominating an inordinate amount of food, I spent the next four hours with a horrible stomach ache that reminded me every minute of my stupidity of eating a days worth of food in about 20 minutes. Nevertheless, I still went to the bar with our friends and hung out because I wasn't going to let one silly decision ruin an entire night. Though I was so full that I managed to drink one beer in about 5 hours.

While we had a nice day and got to see a lot of the city, we still had a lot of things on our list to see before we left. Even though we had to leave for the airport at 4:30pm on Sunday, the places we went before we left were incredible! To be continued...