Cartagena

Again, we woke up early for our bus ride to Cartagena. It’s supposed to take about 4 hours, but it took around 5 and was supposed to be door to door. However, I do think it is better than the alternative of schlepping to a bus station outside of Santa Marta, only to be dropped off at a bus station outside of Cartagena.

We booked with Juana Ballena agency which ultimately uses Marisol Transport. With various checkpoints and picking up passengers and hitchhikers, we survived the ride. Even at one point, we dropped off folks at the Cartagena airport - then one of them found us in the city 10 minutes later as he had trailed us via taxi because he left his bag in the overhead - and here I was like, “a hitchhiker in the city?!” The best part of the ride was that it rained, so it didn’t rain when we were outside at the hotel pool later on. But the worst part was that there was a leak on Amanda. A view of the road to Cartagena:



We passed our hotel too which was within the walled city, so the driver stopped on what seemed like a highway and we walked to our incredible hotel, the Sofitel Legende Santa Clara. The hotel is a converted convent and absolutely gorgeous. The service so far has been impeccable where they have delivered macarons and bonbons to our room and have been very attentive.

Our room wasn’t ready until 3, so we decided to enjoy our welcome drinks and eat some snacks in the bar. Here’s a collage of our bites, and most notably, wonderful mojito with lulo and margarita:

When we were done, our room was ready! We were upgraded to a room with a pool and ocean view and a nice balcony. Here’s the view:



The music around the pool was delightful jazz and instrumental pop music for a wedding. We were also invited to a reception with the general manager of the hotel that’s held weekly on Thursdays for VIPs. I kept telling them I’m only silver status, but they said that was “muy importante.” The reception was held in the Presidential Botero suite - Botero is the Colombian artist and we had previously taken photos with his statues in Medellín. We enjoyed chatting with Sergio, the Food and Beverage manager on duty. Here are some photos:





We then walked a bit around town - even in the dark, you could see the colorful buildings. We finally settled on La Cevicheria which was across the street and enjoyed ceviche and some paella along with or drinks.



Here’s Amanda in the hotel courtyard on our way back to our room!



I’ve wanted to visit Cartagena for many years, so I’m very excited to finally be here! As we learned at the hotel reception for VIPs, Cartagena is the walled city that protected the continent - heroica!

Tayrona

I’m so proud of us today! We woke up early to catch a bus from the middle of the city to Tayrona National Park famous for secluded beaches and hiking. According to Amanda’s pedometer, we walked 10 miles and over 22,000 steps! I’m especially proud considering the humidity and how tough the Colombian sun is - I’m so burnt!

Here’s a photo of our bus ride through the city and to the park, which took about an hour and cost about $2 or 7,000 pesos.



The entrance to the park with a map - from the entrance you can walk to the trail or take a bus which we did and got to sit in the front seat. We enjoyed the American mix that our driver was playing:





Some photos of our hiking experience:

We saw monkeys!



And several secluded beaches:

We had breakfast at a restaurant at one of the campsites - an arepas with egg!:

More beach...

You can kind of see Amanda in the water - we waded in, played in the waves, and napped under the palm trees:

We saw many lizards:



Here’s the Welcome sign to Cabo - where all the backpackers and campers hang out and the end of our hike. Along the way, we saw several people from our hotel afternoon yesterday by the pool:

Beach at Cabo - so blue!:

On our return, we saw this guy, very common in South America:

Our return was tiring, but we made it back with very little wait times for the small bus within the park and then the bus back to Santa Marta. Instead of going to the hotel first, we opted for an early dinner

Amanda had researched a restaurant called La Canoa, where I had delicious lemonade and langoustines with coconut rice while Amanda had yummy chicken - all in an air conditioned room. Here’s a collage:

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and jumped in the pool and shook off the sand from our things on the deck. We enjoyed the sunset and the moonlight as we washed off the grime and sweat from the day. We were pleased with our day’s accomplishments as we packed for Cartagena!

Santa Marta

I woke up early to go scuba diving while Amanda relaxed at the hotel. We came to Santa Marta to visit Tayrona National Park which is known for hiking to beaches and scuba. So my hotel hailed me a taxi at 6:45 am and we were off to Taganga - a fishing village and a backpacker haven with many dive shops.

The ride was about 15 minutes to Poseidon Dive Center, a 5 star Padi shop run by Germans - I knew they would be legit and I could trust them. I’m technically Open Water Scuba certified, but really don’t go enough. I got certified just to feel more comfortable and safer in the water. As my last dive was several years ago, I had a “tune up” session. Our teacher was Jorge who was very nice and the other students were not certified and were just learning basic skills. It was an American uncle and his Colombia nephew on a family vacation, promised to the uncle”s wife who passed away from canacer last year. It was sad, but nice to see the uncle fulfill his promise.

Here’s Taganga beach where we climbed into our boat and a selfie during our ride to the dive site:





There were three groups on the boat - Jorge went with the uncle and nephew, three guys were getting certified, and I had Edwin as my guide. Edwin was very patient and kept elongating my name, “Cyyynthiiiia!”

We went on two dives, one at Cali Chan and Punta Aguja. We saw blowfish, trumpet fish, spotted eel, moray eel, lobster, and etc. I even got to hold a spider crab.





On my second dive, I lost one fin, got it back, then lost it again, and then lost the other fin. I really sucked a lot of air during this ordeal, but managed to get through it. They had me wear diving shoes because of my toe. Other than that, the dives were uneventful and it was like riding a bike. A few of the guys on the boat got nauseous, but I was okay as I took Dramamine. For lunch, we had chicken kebabs and packaged cake and guava jelly for dessert. Here are a few photos from our return trip:





Back at the hotel, I met Amanda at the rooftop pool. She had explored the town a bit and I was starving, so I ordered beef flautas and mango lemonade:



Amanda was enjoying our do-nothing afternoon and decided to take some fun rooftop photos. Here’s one:



We continued to relax and eventually headed out to dinner at a Greek restaurant where we shared several appetizers. I was super hungry and paired the meal with a rosé. On our walk, I got to see some more of the town that Amanda had explored during the day. We headed to bed early as we have an early day of trekking Tayrona!

Medellín

On our last day in Medellín, Noelle and Ricky planned to meet at our hotel in the morning. We decided on an itinerary and we headed out. We were excited to explore the city and continue to share and Airdrop photos to each other’s iPhones!

We took the metro at Industriales where we efficiently bought our passes and quickly caught the train. We took it a few stops to Parque Berrío where we exited through a shopping arcade and wound up at our destination, Plaza Botero.

Here there are famous sculptures of large people and as Ricky noted, “Americans”. We had a lot of fun taking silly pictures and noted the police presence as this is a touristy area. There are sculptures apparently all over the city and if we had more time, would have probably explored some more.

We returned to the metro and took it north where we got off at Acevedo and transferred to the gondola - Medellín is at the bottom of a steep valley. The gondola stops several times, but the top stop is Santa Domingo. On our ride up, a cute girl continued to wave to us after they disembarked and she and her mom almost missed their elevator. Here are some photos of our ride up:

There is street art all over the city and even on the roofs of the many homes. Here are some fun examples:

We walked around only a little and decided to head back down. On our ride down, a cute but shy girl in pink glasses showed us that she could count in English but clammed up very quickly. Here are some photos of our ride down:

Here’s a video playlist of our gondola experience taken by Amanda! You can enjoy the music of our fellow riders and hear our silly conversation!

We then took the metro to Poblado where we walked to a restaurant known for their Ajiaco and Mondogo soups which are traditional Colombian dishes. The restaurant was also called “Ajiacos y Mondongos”.

After the lemonade and hearty soups, we walked a few blocks for ice cream. Here’s a photo of me and Noelle with our ice cream cones:

We had a rousing conversation as the awesome foursome had enjoyed each other’s company for the past few days. Noelle then came back with us to our hotel where we got ready to check out and Noelle who had stowed her luggage in our room headed to her next hotel.

I had again booked a car service with SunTransfers which was a bit early for our pickup to the airport. We hit no traffic and arrived before we could even check in. We enjoyed some Juan Valdez coffee and then waited for our flight on VivaColombia, a low cost airline. Amanda and I were headed north to Santa Marta so we could visit Tayrona National Park.

Our flight was supposed to be an hour, but was a bit longer as we couldn’t land due to weather and had to circle. When we did land, we were disappointed to learn that our SunTransfers pickup managed to forget us. So we got a taxi to Santa Marta city from an elderly man named Jairo who kept pointing things out to us like cactus - we finally arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn which was a friendly and very new hotel.

However, this was not our only disappointment as we all had received what we believed to be drunken texts from Ricky. Ultimately, we learned that Airdrop was probably a euphemism, but alas, there will be no more Airdrops. It is what it is...