1/21/02 | Tourists in Cartagena

We were still at the marina when Kevin arrived to join us. We wanted to treat our guest well, so our first morning we went over to the marina restaurant for breakfast. That was the morning that one of the resident boas, who live in the open-structure building and are responsible for vermin control, escaped out into the street. As we sipped our fruit juice, one of the marina workers came in with the huge snake in his arms, and encouraged it to climb back into the rafters. Instead, it fled toward the dining tables, which made a few of the diners quite nervous! Finally, after repeated attempts, the snake was set in the right direction. It eventually slithered behind the Panamanian flag and out of sight.

Kevin had arrived late Friday afternoon. On Saturday morning we went down to the maritime agency with our passports, hoping to obtain our zarpe in time for a Monday departure. But the immigrations officials don't work on weekends here, and apparently all the papers have to go through a number of people, so it wasn't until Tuesday morning that we got everything we needed to leave. This, of course, was not a problem for us, as it meant we had a nice long weekend of touristing. Since we'd been working on boat projects for most of the past two weeks, we hadn't gotten many chances to go out and enjoy Cartagena -- so that's exactly what we did.

We spent several hours wandering through the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a big fort on top of a hill just outside the walled city. Begun in 1687, the Castillo guarded the land approach to Cartagena. Since it wasn't a "cruise ship day", there were no English-speaking guides available, but we had a good time exploring every nook and cranny from the watchtowers down to the dungeons. Another day we visited the Museo Naval. The lower floor is filled with old maps and charts, ship models, and dioramas illustrating the many historic battles for Cartagena. On the upper floor we learned about the modern history of the Colombian Navy. None of us had known, for example, that Colombian ships (which were formerly American ships, recommissioned under the Colombian flag) fought in the Korean War.

Santo Domingo Plaza at night

We watched a futbol de salon (sort of a mini-soccer played by teams of six with a small ball on a small, hard court) match at a playing field near the marina, and ate mysterious fried street food and hot roasted peanuts washed down with beer. One afternoon we went to Bocagrande, the high-rise hotel district along the beach, and strolled among the fifty million or so tourists (mostly South Americans, by our guess) playing in the violent surf and baking on the sand. But our favorite place remains the old city. Narrow streets, crenellated walls, flowers hanging from wooden balconies, horse-drawn carriages carting tourists from place to place -- it's a beautiful and magical place.

The old downtown is at its best at night, when the temperature has fallen to the comfortable upper 70s. The many plazas and squares are alive with musicians and other street performers, and vendors selling beaded jewelry and watercolors of Cartagena street scenes. There are many restaurants and bars, and thanks to Kevin's generosity we ate out in a different place each night, feasting on all sorts of wonderful dishes. In the courtyard of the Hotel Santa Clara we were serenaded by frogs (coquis imported, the waiter told us, from Puerto Rico), at Plaza Santo Domingo we were serenaded by mariachi ("Besa me mucho"). We drank vino tinto and had flan for dessert. Street urchins importuned us for money, skittering off as the policemen made their rounds. But I did give a few dollars' worth of pesos to an older man, squat and brown with a face like a gargoyle, with whom we fell into conversation on the street. He spoke better English than any of us did Spanish, had worked in the merchant marine, traveled to Norway and Sweden on oil tankers. He admired the socialist policies there, and disparaged the Colombian government, complaining that since an injury put him out of work, he had gotten no help from them at all. He had even less sympathy for the rebels. When we parted by the clock tower, he sounded embarrassed:  "Vivo muy lejos de aqui, very far...can you give me bus fare maybe, so I can get to where I can get a ride with a truck?" We don't give money to beggars or urchins, who ask but give nothing, but we had had a great conversation, learned a little about local politics, and it was fair, we felt, to give something in exchange. So we gave the old gnome a few thousand pesos, and waved goodbye as we headed back to the marina, back home to our boat.

 Snowflake decorations by the old cathedral near Plaza Bolivar