This will be quite the challenge as I am writing on the bus ride from Cartagena to Bogota to catch my Tuesday morning flight and just as I mentioned about these tour buses before, they drive extremely fast and the ride is rough. At least now I'm in the bus instead of a target. 20 hours on a bus is long, but since it covered a night its not so bad. I met an old guy named Esmar on the back of the bus who knew a little English so we went back and fourth communicating in English / Spanish, obviously poor and broken regardless of which but it was a good start to my ride since bus trips are known to be one of the more risky events of traveling.
So on Thursday after getting settled in the hostel some guys invited me to dinner to celebrate one of their birthdays. We we went to the old city, inside 'the walls' I mentioned in my last post (BTW to correct a typo there, the walls 'WERE' built to kerp pirates out, no issues with them now - my bad) and had a pricey by Colombian standards but nice dinner. We then had some beers out in a square that had heaps of people and blairing salsa music pouring from one of the beautiful Spanish architecture inspired bars. I haven't done a lot of the night life scene, so for the first time on my trip a couple of us went over to mingle with some locals and surprisingly they took us up on our offer to go to Havana Cafe, a Salsa bar, for the rest of the evening. No one at the bar seemed to let being packed in really tight hinder them from dancing all over the place, bumping into eachother as if exiting a sports venue just as the game ends. It's like that everywhere here. Even on public city buses, which are really just slightly longer mini vans, they pack in 18 people and blast Latino music and people sway to the beat while sitting on top of eachother, totally content. The next day after sleeping in for the first time on the trip, I roamed around the old city admiring the architecture and taking some photos. I've hesitated to break out my real camera out much but Cartagena is a tourist mecca so I figured at least here there are plenty better targets than myself, in the case that the street theives were roaming around noon. Had a nice set meal for 6,000 pesos, which is $3, and hiked over to the Castle of San Felipe which isn't comparable to those of Europe but pretty unique because it looks older than any other castle I've ever seen. Photos are below. I found a good panaderia and picked up some fresh breads and cookies. Like a typical American, I bought a small bun like loaf and took it to a Vende de Chorizo (sausage vender) across the street and asked him to make a sandwich with 'salsa de tomate' out of it. Hey I've had my share of the authentic creations, so why not.
On Saturday I beaded out to Playa Blanca to meet the group I bad dinner with previously, Niles from Ireland and Jez and Allison from Australia to name a few. After an extremley annoying 4 hour boat ride, again really packed, really loud music, witn an MC dude going around with a mic chiming in on the music and asking other tourists where they were from. When he came to the 3 of us (2 other guys who are from Israel and look just like it) of course said 'Israel' as if representing the 3 of us. So picture them saying that and then there's me, a fair bit larger then them, blonde hair, blue eyes and a big cross tatoo... I just kind of pursed my lips and make the hmmm sound. I'm sure that was the reaction of others on the boat as well. After we scarfed down the included lunch, which of course was a whole deep fried fish, we got out of the tour boat scene and hit the turquoise water beach. Once the tour boats clear out around 4:00 and the venders of crap retreat, it really becomes an extremely tranquil place. For anyone reading who may be on their way there eventually, I highly recommend staying at 'Refugio de Carol'. It's ran by a real nice guy named Ube who has really nice cabana style pavillions covering hammocks with mosquito nets for only $3 per night. No power or running water but that's the same for everywhere at Playa Blanca. He also serves really good seafood meals for $7 that are as fresh as can be. The guys I mentioned and myself were sold on his Octopus catch that had come in only 5 hrs earlier. Kinda crazy that this dude and his one helper cleaned them of their ink sacks and whatever else is necessary, in a primitive little kitchen consisting of a grill over coals and wood burning powered fryer, to result in restaurant quality dishes that were pretty impressive in appearance and taste. He also had fish, shrimp and chicken, but considering I was trying to experience life on the Caribbean, as they say, when in Rome... Plus I had never tried Octopus (beyond Calamari) before. It's strange I spent about 30 hrs. at that beach however between sleeping in a hamock, laying in the sun, enjoying a bottle of rum with the group and reading, there isn't much to elaborate on. It was really nice but I must say I was thinking to myself, man I don't think I could have spent the next day the same way. I felt so unproductive that I went for a couple mile jog down the beach in the morning just to prevent a crazed twitch from starting. It's funny, the whole time there I was thinking conversely how much Liz would love to lounge there for ages, less the lack of power and showers of course.
Although an extremely boring read, I though it would be fitting to finally get into Adam Smith's Wealth of the Nations over the past two days which goes into the most basic theories of economics. When traveling, especially in a place like Colombia it is quite interesting to see the real life applications of that work in things as simple as when I experienced fish become cheaper and more common as I approached the coast and saw how the abundance of colonial infrastructure is by no coincidence located at the port towns such as Cartagena. Many other things also, such as when you have a country such as Colombia with all the resources such as salt, fish, sugarcane, fruits and even coca it allows so much more labor to be put to useful purpose as opposed for instance to many nations in Africa of the same approximate size and amount of people.
