In Cartagena

One week of our vacation we spent in Cartagena, a very touristy place in Colombia. It's a port town on the Caribbean that been around since 1533 and was sacked and pillaged by pirates several times, including Sir Francis Drake. In response, over 200 years, miles of wall were built and a huge fortress. Cartagena was also one of two ports allowed to participate in the slave trade (the other was Havana) by the Spaniards and was one of three cities in all of the Americas to be a center for the Inquisition. It was a very wealthy and decadent city. Now that you have that little bit of history, I'll continue on.

Ana showing her hook.

Chilling with Tio Cesar and Abuelito at the beach. Isabel you can see, passed out that day. We thought we'd only been at the beach an hour or two, when Cesar came and informed us that we'd actually been there about 4 hours. We were having fun. My kids loved the playa. In the bottle you can see some of the shells we gathered and then Ana put them in a bottle and much to our surprise, we saw the little animals emerge later on.

We ate fish almost every day in Cartagena. Ana was not happy. She hates fish, and she was shocked to discover that both Elena and Isabel really liked it. In fact, Elena asked for pescado all the time after that. They also make patacones with plantains there that I really liked. Yummmm. And the rice they made with coconut milk, that was okay, but Leo doesn't like it at all.

Here's some views of the cool ships in the harbor. Or one of the harbors. There were the huge shipping boats at other parts and the huge cruise ships in still other harbors. Cartagena is still very much a port town.

This was us exploring the tunnels in the fortress. It was really cool, but at one point I was a bit claustrophobic. They said they made the tunnels really short on purpose so that invaders from Northern Europe would have a harder time, because they were generally taller than the Spaniards.

Here's some views of the fortress from outside. It was really fun.

And here is the beautiful old section of the city. It's all walled in by the old walls of the city and there's parts you're not allowed to drive cars into. It was beautiful. But if any one plans on going there, just be warned, the taxi drivers will totally rip you off given the chance. Martha and Orlando would get taxi drivers at half the price of Leo and I, just because of me being a gringa, although Leo quickly learned to call them on it.

Just some more beautiful views. We really liked the houses. These one had more of a Moorish look. However, on one particular taxi drive (where I think the taxi driver took a really long route just to rip us off) we drove around the poorest neighborhoods I have ever seen in my life. Seriously. There was several miles of little shacks of wood and scraps--which you could see into, they were so many holes in the walls--that were in streets with water and trash and sewage and pigs and little kids playing naked, usually soccer. It was terrible. Much worse than anything I saw anywhere else in the country.

But overall we had good times. Except for when my father-in-law was mugged at knife point. Luckily we weren't present then. Oh, and we went to church there and our kids were overrun. Seriously, when we stood up from Sacrament meeting someone came ooohing and ahhing over my blondies and took Isabel away and they were swarmed by charmed women from then on. They really nice though. (Cartagena is largely African descent, so we stuck out even more.)

They also speak extremely fast in Cartagena. I couldn't understand anyone at all! In Bogota, I was pretty good at catching the gist of a conversation.