Cartagena and the carribean coast

An overnight bus saw us in Cartagena with the carribean coast and heat. The bus was quite comfortable and almost like business class on an aeroplane reclining seats and leg rests. Once we reached the bus station, we had to take another smaller mini bus in to town as the main bus terminal was about 10km out of town. It got pretty crowded and with our packs sitting our laps, pretty soon neither Blake, Melinda or I had any idea when to get off. We'd all assumed someone else was navigating! So we got off somewhere and caught a taxi to the hostel we'd picked.

We arrived at the hostel that Martin and Fred said they would try first and it was full. We asked her if Fred and Martin were there and she said 'sorry chicos'. I noticed a few people were calling us 'chicos' which means 'guys' in Spanish. All I could think of was 'Chico babies', some lollies (sweets) we have at home like jelly babies...

Any how, we went around the corner to the hostel she recommended (and had rang for us) and as we checked in we saw Martin and Fred's name on the register! So we asked and the guy said that they had just checked out!! So we had no idea what they were up to so we dumped our gear and headed out in to town to explore.

Cartagena was the main port where all the gold and other riches of South America was sent to Europe on Spanish ships. This made it quite vulnerable to attack by pirates and so the whole place is a series of fortresses. Even the English had a crack at Cartagena and Sir Francis Drake managed to extract a hefty fee to leave them alone. Funnily enough the Spanish refer to him as a terrible pirate and the English seem to revere him. We saw a maritime museum and a castle as well as some lounging about in the shade to escape the heat.

The castle we went to was quite impressive and afterwards, we (Melinda, Blake and I) decided we would walk back to our hostel. On the way back we saw a bloke running towards us holding something in one hand and a knife in the other. We were walking over a bridge and he was heading for under the bridge. We soon saw a crowd come around the corner with bats and assorted weaponry! They were yelling at the bloke with the knife who seemed to be taunting them and daring them to follow him under the bridge!!! They obviously knew something we didn't as the weren't keen on following him. Anyway we didn't bother hanging around to find out what happened next and pressed on back in to town.

So with a final night out on the town, we were resigned to the fact that our time in South America was running out fast and we had to press on to Venezuela the next day.