Rapido y furioso (Cartagena, Colombia)

We’ve been here a week now.. long enough to start to get a bit of a flavour of the place.

Cartagena is a vibrant, colourful, friendly city. It’s significantly tailored toward the large numbers of tourists who throng the streets. They’re a mix of international visitors, cruise line passengers, hippy backpackers and lots of South American visitors from other surrounding countries coming for their holidays.

There’s little to no language barrier. We get by with a combination of smiles, my poor Spanish, a lot of arm waving and pointing ….and Google translate when it all gets too hard.

Architecture is a mix of 2 main types: tall rectangular whitewashed high rises with balconies for all. They’re not altogether unpleasant when looked at as a whole skyline. Then there’s the older original Mediterranean/Colonial styled two story places. Either white or colourfully painted, they’re quite grand with pillars and wrought iron balconies and lush gardens. It all makes for a nice mix - not an ugly city by any means.

We’re anchored close to the marina, where we pay a weekly fee ($20) to use their dock, showers and good fresh water.

From the marina it’s a hot walk along the water front to the old town - along the way there’s dog walkers, bicycle taxis, kids basketball training, hand cart vendors and exotic birds singing in the numerous parks and tree shaded areas.

The old town and an area called Getsemani, are a charming urban/rustic mix. The warren of narrow cafe and bar filled streets are decorated with tasteful street art and potted palms. Above, the streets are shaded by flags, bourgonvillia, colourful umbrellas, and a few remaining Christmas decorations. This is the main hub for street vendors peddling fruits, juices, pastries, hats and various other nicknacs.

We’d been told of the large numbers of vendors/touts who hassle you here. There are a lot, but they’re really not that bad. They seem to lack any real gumption to close a sale. So far, a smile and a “No gracias” has been sufficient for all but the most persistent.

We wandered around in a ‘this street looks nice’ way for a while, got a little lost as a lot of them did indeed look very nice.

Yesterday we headed all the way round to Boca Grande beach, a good few miles walk round the bay from where we are. It was +30 hot, and we’d both admit that our legs don’t get the exercise they should onboard. We’re both tired and achy by the time we get to the proper touristy area.

The beach is packed; kids, sandcastles, bronzed beauties of all varieties. Theres a lifeguard on shore who constantly chirped and tweeted on his whistle, waving swimmers out from too deep..or too close to the jet skis.

Returning from town, we’ve twice treated ourselves to a cheap taxi ride back to the marina dock. Both these journeys have been fast and furious joyrides, weaving through traffic, with lots of sneaky shortcuts and fearlessly barging in. Yesterday’s driver/racer sang as he drove - when we arrived safely back to the marina, we thanked him and said that he was like ‘fast and furious’ - beaming he replied: “Si Si! Es rapido y furioso!!”

In the evenings we sit up on deck and watch the sunset behind the line of hotels along Boca Grande. The pelicans who’ve made the old, gracefully lined, boat next to ours home, come back to poo and roost as the temperature cools. As darkness falls the disco boats start heading out from the marina - all shapes and sizes. They slowly make their noisy way around the bay, the occupants having a great time dancing away with the now twinkling city as backdrop. The music is a happy local mix, guitars and trumpets - sounds something like a mariachi band on cocaine… in fact… it probably is a mariachi band on cocaine.

It’s a shame to think that probably the first thing that springs to mind when thinking of Colombia is drug related; be that cocaine, cartels, Pablo Escobar and the like - or maybe coffee!

Either way, this has been another place where my own preconceived ideas have been shattered - Very warm people, absolutely no feel of underlying threat, just a handsome, happy city going about its business.

…..Admittedly though, this is also the only place in all my travels that I’ve ever actually been offered cocaine. A sugar cube size lump proffered by a smiling, but not overly persistent, street vendor. I declined.

As I sit here finishing this off, I forgot to mention there’s a naval base across the bay from us - each morning at 8am and each evening (one minute away as I write) at 6pm they play the national anthem - stirring stuff: a saucy 70s sitcom theme tune played with gusto by the armada’s brass section.

Also on the dot of 6pm, the second cruise liner for the day ‘Mein Schiff’ signals her departure, letting out two loud, deep, bass ‘bye bye’ toots and slowly starts pulling away from the dock.

…and with that, I’m also going to toot toot and call it a day there.