cartagena

the first day in cartagena, we walked around the old city, took a historical tour (led in spanish) and took a chivas party bus at night.

the old city is beautiful with brightly colored buildings and balconies. the old city is encircled by a wall that was used to protect the city in the olden days. the tour guide was great and actually spoke slow enough for us to understand his spanish. My main takeaways about cartagena history were the following:

1. cartagena was a major african slave trade port
2. precious metals were stored in cartagena before transport back to spain
3. peter claver was a jesuit priest who came to cartagena and helped the slaves and eventually became a saint

  
a chivas party bus is essentially an old style bus with wooden benches painted in bright colors. at night the bus travels around the city with a local band as well as a bunch of colombians and tourists. they provided the ingredients for a cuba libre and people danced and sang on the bus. we eventually stopped at a club where we did salsa dancing (taught by the locals). definitely a good time!

our second day in cartagena we went to playa blanca, a beach about 45 minutes away by boat. the beach was beautiful - white sand, water that was multiple shades of blue and wonderful sunshine! we got massages on the beach and enjoyed a locally prepared seafood lunch.

our last day in cartagena we walked around the city and ran into a local artist who made custom paintings with a mirror, paint and his hands - very cool to watch and now we have souvenirs! we also went to the castillo san felipe de barajas, the fort overlooking cartagena. the fort is massive and we learned that they used the fort to see attacks from land or sea and it was built in the 1500s.