With slightly overcast skies, the haze was making the day a fair bit cooler than usual. On my previous trip to the city, at times of the day the heat was almost too much to deal with, but this time at least 5 degrees cooler weather has been nice.
After breakfast, Chris goes off to find a mall for more prepaid cell minutes. I walk to the beaches at Boca Grande, a strip of land with premium hotels next to the old city area. I go for a swim in the ocean and then, looking for a spot to settle, get a message from Chris that he is nearby. We meet up and hire ourselves a couple of chairs for the day under an umbrella on a nice strip of beach. Moments after sitting, once vendor after another swarms us, as the new people and try to sell us their wares. We finally get through them all, including me managing to get a beachside massage lady to “come back later”, as she had come over and just told me how good the massage would be, and started rubbing my shoulders. Chris also managed the get a massage lady to quit.
After a nice swim and another hour in the sun, the massage lady comes back and reminds me that I had said “later”. She just starts massaging my shoulders again. This time, not really getting anywhere in the discussion, I agree of $16 for 45 minutes. Not sure what was more worthwhile, me getting the massage or watching all the massage people now try to get Chris to go for it. Anyways, it wasn’t a bad massage and fterwards I went for another swim.
After an afternoon on the beach, we went back to our hotel, this time by cab as the walk was probably 3 km or more there. Back at the hotel, we went for a decent coffee and then relaxed for a couple hours before heading out for new years eve and dinner.
Looking for dinner, at about 8pm, all of the restaurants were already closed or reservation only for New Years. We finally found a little bar/restaurant with seats available and went in. With a limited menu, both of us ended up with burgers. After an hour or so there, we wandered off to under the Walled City Clock Tower, perhaps the most famous part of Cartagena. This is where the fireworks are set off, and the streets had been taken over with tables and chairs in preparation for the crowd. We got very lucky, finding a table almost directly below the tower, and after some not so successful bartering on the price and location of a table, a Peruvian gentleman at the table next to us solved the issue for us. Telling the table vendor to just do what we asked, and suddenly he did. Sometimes it is amusing how tourists can be treated differently.
By midnight the streets had become so packed people filled more than a square kilometre. When the countdown happened, fireworks lit up the sky, not only from the clocktower area, but all over the city. For about 20 minutes non stop, the city was alive with colour.
We made our way back through the crowds and back to our hotel. A most interesting evening.
Colombia Motorcycle Ride 