Culminating Colombia (2023 and S.America) in Cartagena

After a spectacular bit of R&R near Tayrona Park thanks to the Collins clan, our time in Colombia is coming to an end for all of us. After an early start and a bus that’s (only) one hour late in leaving, and two and a half hours in arriving, we’re back in Cartagena where we’ll sadly part ways. James has found us an amazing apartment, with sea-view balcony sporting a hammock, and huge master bedroom.

The block also has its own pool, two Jacuzzis, steam-room, sauna and gym! Jackpot! It’s our last bit of ‘holiday’ with Lottie before we go back to ‘back-packing’.

We grab some beers, an arepa stuffed with butter and cheese, and enjoy the sunset sitting on the beach and having a paddle in the warm Caribbean sea.

It’s Lottie’s last night in Cartagena, and James and I’s last night with her, so we decide to stick with what we know and enjoy another wonderful dinner at La Mulata. My belly seems to finally be over the latest bug and so I’m really happy to be able to enjoy real food again! We enjoy some happy hour cocktails at a bar down the road before calling it a night.

The next day we’re up relatively early to squeeze a last bit of Cartagena in for Lottie. James and Lottie go for a wander around the Walled City and Getsemani.

I run some errands, that include going to yet another Claro store to try and register my phone so it doesn’t get blocked (and be told once more I have to go somewhere else), and shopping for a replacement bikini. Despite usually hating shopping in the UK, wandering around the air-conditioned shopping mall, doing something so mundane as shopping, actually feels nice. A bit like I’m a normal human being again and not just a grotty, penny-counting, backpacker. I end up treating myself to two bikinis as I justify I’ll be using them a lot in the coming months of Central America and SE Asia (sorry savings!).

I also notice that I’m feeling a lot less on-edge and anxious than I was before walking around this city, especially on my own, and realise just how anxious I was when we were here last. It seems our experience in Medellin and the many, many warnings on Reddit and travel blogs had really seeped into my psyche, to an extent I couldn’t recognise until it had gone. With my unclouded mind, I mentally skip my way through town to meet Lottie and James for lunch, truly enjoying the sights, sounds, colours and culture on the way for the first time free of worry. No-one even cat-calls or tries to sell me anything! Bliss.

James and Lottie have had less of a liberating experience, as they finally experienced the constant mithering (‘bothering’/’hassling’ for the southeners!) from the local hawkers we’d been warned about. “Sombrero/agua/cerveza/taxi amigo/taxi/agua/cerveza” every few seconds! Nothing a pizza and some iced tea can’t fix though, so with some food in our bellies, we make our final trip back through town with Lottie to the flat of dreams to say goodbye. Lottie is kind enough to let us offload some of our winter gear into any spare bit of space we can find in her backpack, as we see her off to get a flight back to Bogota, where she’ll start her return to the UK. The flat we’re staying in is near the airport, and I realise we should be able to see her plane take off. We sit nervously on the balcony watching and waiting, and then wave her off as we see the plane fly out into the sky above. It’s been so great having Lottie with us for these past two weeks and has really made this Christmas stint so special for us both.

We have one more night in the flat of dreams, which we enjoy by checking out all the facilities, finishing watching The Muppets Christmas Carol, eating popcorn and carrots, and playing the Andover Fist Christmas Quiz on YouTube (highly recommend, a new one released every month). James wins by one point, as is tradition. Oddly enough, the quiz sets off our homesickness as we are reminded of all things Christmas at home, there really is nothing like it (no matter how many tinsel snowmen you may adorn a place with in 32 degree heat!).

The next day we move to our third Airbnb of Cartagena, but we’re lucky enough to be able to keep using the facilities until our 3pm check-in at the next place. We snag some loungers, and eke out the last of the terrace sunshine, as the blustering wind cools us down so we don’t feel the 40 degree real feel heat around us. A few more swims and Jacuzzis and sauna sessions and sadly, we have to say goodbye to ‘holiday’ accommodation and return back to ‘backpacking’ accommodation.

After an erratic (even by Colombian standards) taxi ride, we’re welcomed to our new Airbnb by Alejandro. We’ll be here now until we leave Colombia on the 3rd, and because of New Year’s Eve, we’ve had to go with a room in a property instead of having a place to ourselves (turns out Cartagena is the place to be for NYE, we had no idea). However, rather than share the flat with a host, it’s actually comprised of three separate Airbnb’d rooms, so it’s more like a hostel without a host. We get ourselves settled, and hit the local supermarket to stock up on food, as we try and mitigate the hit of the overpriced room, by eating in for every meal. Cupboards stocked, dinner made, bags unpacked, I’m out like a light.

The next few days involve another Claro store (where I’m finally successful), checking out the exlusive Boca Grande beach (that really had nothing to brag about other than the huge buildings and hotels that line it), enjoying wandering the streets of the Walled City and Getsemani, eating in, chilling out in hammocks, cooling off in cold showers and the aircon, researching and planning for Central America.

New Year’s Eve itself is spent enjoying a beer at a microbrewery before meeting up with Polly and Simon who we did The Lost City Trek with. We wander Getsemani, enjoying the bustling (but not crowded) streets, cocktail vendors on the streets, and tunes played out by a street-DJ. Despite concerns of crowding and chaos, it’s actually fine. We find a spot to sit down by the church as we sip cocktails, before making our way up to the coastal wall to see in the countdown.

We decide to go via the main square to see what’s happening, and are bemused to find the plaza full of people sitting at plastic tables and chairs, with bottles of booze and street food between them. This sounds like a fun affair, but honestly, most people look bored out of their minds! After seeing all the goings on at Christmas, and finding it impossible to find accommodation, we imagined the streets alive with music, dancing and crowds. What we found was actually a lot of people looking bored and fed up to have to spend their evening with their families, counting down the minutes until they would be allowed home.

We meander our way through the sea of boredom and plastic, and find a nice little spot on the wall to sit and continue chatting as we await the inevitable midnight fireworks. Around us are more families and plastic furniture. A hand-held firework shooter seems the hit of the night, as people all around shoot off their own fireworks around us in the lead-up, including a woman holding a toddler on her hip with one arm, and the firework shooter in the other. We all laugh at how, conversely, it’s been ingrained in us since kids to not even hold a sparkler without a glove, to see Colombians wave around these projectiles without a care in the world.

We all shout out our own countdown, as the sky illuminates around us. There’s a good 10 minutes of effects that go off along the coastal road, not in sync or the same, so we get to see a good few shows at once from where we’re sitting. It’s been really great sharing the evening with Polly and Simon, again having some extra company to make the moment more special. We part ways as we head back to our respective accommodations, and we make our way through the plaza again, where nothing has changed, except some clubs are now luring people in. You’d have no idea the clocks had even turned midnight by this lot! But we’ve had a wonderful evening, far better than we expected, and can’t believe the incredible year we’ve had in 2023.

Our last days in Cartagena and Colombia are spent doing much of the same before, as housemates come and go, and we sort out a few last bits and pieces and finalise plans for the next leg, Central America.

A highlight is finding ample wildlife in the nearby park that we’ve walk through possible 10 times. Thanks to some helpful street vendors we see a sleeping sloth, an iguana, and tiny monkeys. The iguana seems to want the tiny monkey, but has no chance of out-maneuvering the agile mono. It reminds me of watching the magpies taunt the local cat outside the window of our flat in London! Thanks to a group of tourists all looking up with their cameras, we see a sloth hanging precariously off a tree, then making its way across branches and trees pretty rapidly. We see more monkeys and another iguana and can’t believe we didn’t realise how much wildlife was just hanging around here all this time!

Despite a good effort in trying to find a different, good, fish restaurant that was reasonably priced, we come up with nothing and end up back at La Mulata for our third time!

For whatever reason, the streets of Cartagena now are full and alive and busy with people. Perhaps everyone spends NYE bored with families and then parties hard the days before and after. I join James with his favourite Mojarra fish, as we count our coins and notes to spend our last Colombian Pesos before leaving. We leave from where we started, and no regrets for spending our money in this wonderful establishment three times.

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Adventure – trying to register my phone with Claro 3 days before we leave, finding somewhere to eat on New Year’s Day

Entertainment – feeling finally at ease with Colombia and walking around, wandering around the fancy shopping mall pretending like we had money for a few minutes, being able to eat and drink again, aircon turning our rooms into fridges, James suggesting we buy a carrot cake (I’ve converted him to a cake fan! Sorry Dave!), finding out you can make toasties without a toastie maker (game changer!)

Trauma – the heat