Cartagena- Pirates of the Caribbean

Barry held a baby sloth today! No we have not gone deep into the Amazon jungle, but are now in Cartagena, a modern city with over 1 million inhabitants. It is on the north coast of Colombia on the Caribbean and not far from the Panama Canal. It is a delightful city and we came here because it is said to be the best preserved colonial city in all of South America.

We are staying in the old part of the city and not much has changed in over 400 years. It still has the feel of pirates about it. It is a walled city and approximately 10km of towering old walls are still standing. The city has narrow, winding lanes, cobblestone streets, palaces, churches, monasteries, plazas and huge two storey mansions with overhanging balconies filled with flowers. It is filled with small but interesting details, There are huge wooden doors with ancient doorknobs and houses have old lanterns at their entrances. Street names are on the buildings and tiled. Church bells ring, and horses and buggies clip clop along the streets and there is a sweet smell of areqipe sold on street corners. It is just magical walking around such a place. The houses are all the colours of the rainbow and it is so perfect you could think you were on a film set.

Cartagena used to be the clearing house for all the treasure from the New World going back to Spain , gold from Ecuador, silver from Peru and emeralds from Colombia. No wonder pirates were so interested in it. Sir Francis Drake was one of the bad guys, and his cannons destroyed the cathedral when the people wouldn't pay him 400,000 ducats. They eventually paid about 180,000 ducats and he went away. Not quite the hero of our history books! The funniest story though was about the one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged general who defeated the English (Vernon) when he was seriously outnumbered. Unfortunately he lost his other leg in a battle three months later and died.

It is really hard to believe we are in Colombia here. It feels as if we are on an island somewhere in the Caribbean.The weather is hot and muggy all the time but we are used to it now. In the evenings we walk into the local squares and there is some sort of music or dancing going on. Only problem is that when you sit down for a drink you get bombarded by people selling things. In the course of one drink last night we were offered, T-shirts, beads, CD's, cigars, lollies, maracas, tortiose shell salad servers, paintings, carvings, a shoe shine, a hat that could be worn 45 different ways and someone wanted to sing for us. It is very entertaining I must say.

We did a day trip out to the Rosario Islands which are 25km off the coast. Some islands are large and others so small they have only one tree on them. The water was crystal clear and appeared turquoise. While there we visited an Oceanarium which had many, many fish, but it was the sharks which fascinated us. The guy who feeds them, had them trained so that they could come up and put their heads on the platform and then flap their tails. It was amazing. The people here don't have the fear of sharks that we do, obviously, because they are not subject to shark attacks. The sharks are so well fed in this area.

This town is the perfect stop for cruise ships. Apparently they come in for 7 hours and the place goes mad. I would like to see that. There don´t seem to be many tourists here at all, but then I have been told that there are plenty, but they are mostly South American tourists. They just don´t look like us! We feel we stand out a bit especially if we both wear our Panama hats! Also there is not much English spoken which can be quite a challenge some times.

And so off to Panama tomorrow.