World Tour Cartagena

Day 21 — At Sea to Cartegena

A relaxing day at sea as we head towards Cartagena, Columbia. Morning quiz game is early as we have our bi-weekly Muster Drill at 10:30AM that lasts an hour. We’re sure this is important, right? A lot of boring standing around that I guess would be a lot less boring if the emergency were real.

Today actually sets a landmark for us. It is day 16 on the ship and the longest we’ve ever been on a cruise ship is 15 days prior to this. (Panama Canal from LA to Miami 3 years ago)

Day 22 — Cartagena, Columbia

As usual so far, we sail into Cartagena at sunrise. The morning light illuminates the city as we cruise into the harbor and once again, the camera lenses are happy. So we go to breakfast and get our gear ready for the day.

Once off the ship, we get on the shuttle bus and make it into town right away, after a $20 taxi, of course. When we arrive we find out the Hop On, Hop Off Bus won’t be running for another half hour. So we walk along the waterfront and before we know it, we see the bus arriving. We board the bus and climb to the upper level which is open air with a soft top to ward off the sun. We ride the entire bus route and then decide to go halfway round again and get off in Old Town. Walking about, we are accosted by dozens of street vendors hoping to make a dollar or two from us. Managing to ward them off with multiple replies of No Gracias, we work our way through the quaint old streets and among the shops of souvenirs and restaurants that reside in the old architecture.

After a couple hours of walking in the humid heat of Columbia, we decide to stop and have a cold brew or two. We find a bar called the Clock Beer Bar and stop in to a refreshing place with great fan circulation. I order a Clock Beer and Elee gets a Mojito. Refreshed for the moment, we go back into the streets and continue to check out the city. We find the Santa Catalina Cathedral open and we go inside for a few photos. There is a mass in progress so we don’t spend long inside and go back out into the streets.

After another hour or two, we decide that refreshments are once again a desired commodity. So we find an open air restaurant named Karamairi Restaurant. Again we order cold drinks and this time they serve my beer in a ice filled champagne bucket! How cool (pun intended) is that? We also order a pizza and when it finally arrives, it is very good. While we are waiting for the pizza to arrive, we fend off many vendors selling their wares. Several of them are selling small replicas of Figura Reclinada 42, the original is a bronze sculpture of a very obese lady laying down and posing naked. It reminds us of our last time here and we look at each other and question where the original is, having seen it on our last visit. All of a sudden, we look around and start laughing when we discover the original is only 25 feet from us.

So our cameras revisit the original sculpture and then our pizza arrives. Once again, our tummies and our thirst satiated, we head off into the streets and eventually find the taxi area that offered us a $10 ride back to our ship. More cold drinks in hand, we sit in our stateroom and try to deal with a personal issue that has arisen with one of our children. Selling a vehicle from a foreign country has its difficulties.