I had no idea where I was going in Cartagena. I asked my taxi driver to take me to Calle Media Luna, which seemed to be a popular area near the old part of the city. The taxi driver dropped me off on the side of the street near several hostels and hotels at 10am. I wandered into Mamallena’s Hostel and inquired about a room. The room wouldn’t be ready until noon, but the price was right and it seemed like a happening place. I put my bags in a storage room, and helped myself to the free breakfast and coffee.
Cartagena is a bustling port city on the northern, Caribbean coast of Colombia. It is only the fifth largest city in Colombia, but the most popular for foreigners as it is known as a wild party destination. On the north side of the port lies the ‘Old City’ featuring traditional Spanish colonial architecture and the fortified ‘Walled City’. To the south of the port lies the skyscrapers and development of the ‘New City’ on the Bocagrande peninsula. The entire city has an energetic, fast moving feel to it, often set to spicy Caribbean rhythms of traditional Colombian bands playing on street corners. Interestingly, Cartagena is a major haven where slaves from the US fled after they were freed.
I was sitting in the courtyard, catching up on the news from the past week when Wes, Nicole, and Cassie from my boat stumbled in. This happened to be the hostel they had previously booked. They had to wait for their rooms as well, so we all decided to go for a walk around town.
We walked around for about 40-minutes, but the midday heat made it a super laborious task. We retreated into an Indian restaurant for micheladas (beer with lime juice and salt) and lunch.
We returned to the hostel about 1pm and settled into our rooms. The air conditioning inside my room was a gift from God. I stood directly under the vent for a few minutes before rinsing off in the shower, then stood under it again while still wet. I climbed into bed for a much-needed nap, which was also heaven sent.
I woke around 6pm and ran into Wes in the courtyard. He and Nicole had found out about a popular booze bus tour of the city. Naturally, they invited the entire group from the boat and everyone was going. I wanted to dry out for a couple of days, but there ain’t no rest for the wicked. The group met in the bar of Mamallena’s at 6:30pm and headed to the meeting place for the tour buses at 7pm.
At the meeting place, our group of eleven was filed into the last two rows of an already full tricked-out school bus that had been gutted and filled with rows of bench seating. The bus had a four-piece band (accordion, steel-drum, wooden fish, guitar) aboard playing traditional Colombian music. We paid 30,000 pesos (~$10) each for the tour, and the guys operating it gave each row a bucket of ice, two-litre of Coke, and bottle of rum.
The bus took off and cruised around at seemingly breakneck speed for a vehicle of its size, while a guy on a microphone at the front acted as MC. The MC had each row of the bus compete in various activities, such as dance offs and twerking, of course. The cheers of the bus determined the winners whom were awarded with, well, more rum.
Amidst, the rum and dancing, the bus passed several historical points of interest and the MC would briefly give a description of the site and its significance the city and/or Colombia. Then the hedonism would resume.
Along the way, we stopped several times and disembarked the bus for a short stay at a bar or other place of interest. One such place was the walls of the ‘Walled City’. Cartagena was the principal location where the Spanish empire stored the loot pillaged from South America before shipping it back to Spain. Therefore, the Spanish built a giant fort and massive, thick walls (think Great wall of China) made of concrete and coral stone around the city to protect it from pirates and other potential invaders. The walls are so robust that they’re still standing today, almost unchanged from the 1600’s, and will probably be standing for easily another 1000 years.
Everyone from our bus and four or five other buses gathered on the top of the walls for an improvised party. The Colombian bands from the different buses assembled together and played for a dancing crowd while food and beer vendors supplied refreshments.
We then gathered back on the bus and cruised around more until finally stopping at a club. The boat crew bought a bottle at the club, and quickly polished it off. After about an hour of the club scene, I couldn’t take breathing in the fake smoke billowing from the dancefloor any longer and headed out front. As I stepped outside, a firework display over the new part of the city on the point to the south greeted me. Wes, Nicole, and I stood out there enjoying the show for about 15-minutes. A local explained that it was probably for a wedding. “Wow, quite an impressive firework show for a wedding,” us gringos thought, but, after being in Colombia for some time, realized it was a common occurrence.
After the club, the bus took us back to the starting point. The boat crew, pleasantly drunk at this point, wandered around looking for a bar. Ashley had bought some cocaine, and stopped at in a nook on the side of the street to do a bump. I told him it was stupid, but he didn’t seem to care. Thirty seconds later, out of nowhere, two motorbikes with police rolled up and busted him. The group and I watched from down the block, and concluded he was fucked. Three minutes later, he came running up giggling, and told how he just had to pay 100k Pesos (~$35) as a bribe and was let go. He even managed to get to keep his coke.
The group wandered across Plaza de la Trinidad where about a 100 people were hanging out, drinking beers, getting high, and playing guitar. We bought beers and sat at tables on the sidewalk in front of a bar facing the park, watching the people mill about and various street performers do their things.
At midnight, the bar closed and the police cleared out the park, so the group headed back to the bar at Mamallena’s. Eventually that bar closed at 2am, but the group still wanted to keep it going. All the bars along Calle Media Luna close at 2am, so we exited Mamallena’s into a chaotic post bar street scene. In the chaos, I started chatting with a girl, turned around, and had completely lost the boat crew. Somehow, I wound up talking to Glen from the UK, who’d been staying in Cartagena for a month. He said he was going to the late-night bars, and told me if my group was going out, they’d probably be at one of the bars he was heading to. I tagged along with Glen, and he told me all about his adventures in the city and pointed some places out to me on the way to the bars.
We headed into the Walled City, and stopped at a few bars on Torre del Reloj plaza. The boat crew was nowhere to be found, so I hung out with Glen all night. Most of the bars on the plaza were club type places with loud music and smoke machines, so we mostly hung out on balconies taking in the scene of the open-air brothel in the plaza below. The hookers would wave and blow kisses up to us on the balcony, and Glen and I would laugh and congratulate ourselves for obviously being so attractive.
Glen was a super interesting dude, and a fellow ayahuascero, so we got along really well and had great conversation about life and the human experience. I finally headed home, quite drunk, at about 4:30am. Not bad for my first night in Colombia.
The next day I woke up briefly to have the free breakfast in the hostel, but then resumed sleeping. At about 3pm, I finally rose and took a cold shower to get me going. I ventured out into Cartagena, and found my way to the Walled City. I spent the late afternoon walking around in the old town, which is a quite lovely place: two flats with flower adorned balconies line narrow cobblestone streets filled with shops and vendors, retaining a very 1800’s feel.
I sat in an idyllic plaza outside an old church featuring a Fernando Botero, Colombia’s most famous artist, sculpture titled ‘La Gorda Gertruda’. Dozens of people sat at tables as the sun set enjoying coffees, beers, and ice cream set to the charming music of small mariachi bands. It was an enchanting experience sitting in the plaza for an hour, and wished I could live in a place with such a nice gathering place.
I returned to the hostel in the evening and found Cassie in the courtyard, and she invited me out for sushi with the rest of the group. I obliged, even though I was still feeling quite withered from the previous night and kind of just wanted to have dinner and crawl into bed. I found out it was Nicole’s birthday, so I’m glad I went out for the celebration. We started at a trendy sushi restaurant inside the Walled City, then moved on to the ‘KGB Bar.’
The KGB Bar is quite a trip. It’s a bar with the walls lined with memorabilia from the USSR. TVs inside the bar show old Soviet propaganda programs on repeat. Wes and I had a good laugh when he took a photo, posted it on Facebook and immediately got a bunch of comments due to all the Russia hysteria taking place in the US. I had two beers then decided to call it a night. Several people from the boat group were leaving Cartagena the following day, so I wished them the best and said goodbye.
The next day I packed up and decided to move to a quieter hostel after breakfast. I needed some solid rest after a week of partying between the boat and my introduction to Cartagena. I stumbled upon Las Indias hostel about a block away, which seemed like it was almost empty, had nice beds, and gloriously strong AC. Perfect. I dropped my bags and took a little nap.
In the afternoon, I set out to find San Alberto Café, a fancy café inside the old city. I spent a couple of hours there reading and enjoying two cups of fine Colombian brew. On the way home, I stopped at a frutería and picked up a bunch of fruit and veggies with resolve to get back to a healthful lifestyle, pronto.
In the evening, I went back to the Indian restaurant for dinner to have a spicy lamb dish and a couple mango lassi’s before I returned to the hostel to read for a bit, and happily got to sleep at about 10pm.
Then next morning, I woke early and headed to the Parque Centenario for some yoga. There’s usually a lot of foot traffic, drug dealers, and prostitutes milling about the center of the park during the afternoon, so not the best place to practice yoga, but it was morning and I managed to find a semi-secluded spot under some trees. About halfway through my practice, a young Colombian of about 23 approached me. I assumed he was going to try and sell me something, but instead he inquired about yoga. I humored his inquiries for a minute, but then shrugged him off as I wanted to finish up.
Afterwards, I ran a couple quick errands, and then returned to the hostel to make breakfast and take a cold shower before settling in for a Sunday poker session. I spent all day in my bed like an invalid as only the bedrooms of the hostel had AC, but this was good for my intention to get some rest, and I won a bit of money on the day to make it worthwhile.
The next day, I did my morning rituals. At the park, the same guy from the prior morning walked up and engaged me in the middle of my yoga practice. At first, I was a bit annoyed—I’m trying to focus inward here, bro! He had a big smile and made it clear in a mix of Spanish and decent English that he wanted to learn. “Hmm, the second time in two weeks after a similar event in Panama… I must be attracting the spiritually curious,” I mused to myself. I obliged, and he joined for the final 20 minutes of my yoga practice. Then he stayed to meditate for another 20 minutes.
Afterwards, I sat in the park and talked with my new buddy, Arnold, for about 45 minutes. He was from Choco on the coast of Colombia, but had been living in Cartagena for seven months. He liked to spend a lot of time by himself in nature and meditate. We made plans to hang out later that evening, and I spent the afternoon lunching and writing in a café.
In the evening, I met up with Arnold at the park. We grabbed a couple of beers from a shop, and he took me for a personal tour of the city. We stopped at Plaza de la Trinidad for a few. Arnold picked up some grass while I grabbed a few more beers. Then we went to his favorite street food vendor to get a couple of “hamberguesas completas” which were hamburgers on big Hawaiian style buns with pork belly, chorizo, and a spicy cheese sauce. We put all the loot in his backpack and headed to the first of his four favorite ‘Parches,’ or quiet places he goes to sit and think, around the city.
We ended up at a secluded spot atop the Wall looking across the bay at Forte del San Sebastian and the skyline of the point further south. We smoked up, and then nommed down on our burgers and beers. He pointed out the neighborhoods of the city and told me all about them and the types of people who lived in each. Then we just sat there looking out over the water for a while, “Gracias por la vida.”
Afterwards, he took me to the second of his favorite parches. On the way, we were heading down a a narrow, desolate street inside the Walled City, when a couple motorbikes approached from behind. A police patrol pulled in front of us and stopped us. Arnold rolled his eyes. The police spent 10 minutes searching and questioning us, looking for drugs. Arnold actually did have the weed on him, but they didn’t manage to find it. When they couldn’t find anything, they kept asking us where the cocaine was, and were visibly upset they weren’t able to bust us. Arnold explained to them we were friends and he was showing me around, but they didn’t buy it and kept pestering us.
Eventually, they let us go on our way. Arnold explained that whenever the police see a gringo with a Colombian, they assume a drug deal is taking place and see it as an easy opportunity to extract a bribe. We headed to his second spot at El Monumento a los Oceanos, a little pier and dock jutting into the Caribbean. We sat for a while and listened to the waves crash while having another beer. We then headed to his third spot, Parque de la Marina, and again chilled for a bit. He was happy to show me all these places of quietude amid a city otherwise known for loco partying.
Finally, we headed back into the frenetic streets of old town. Arnold took me back to Plaza de la Trinidad explaining that we’d be in time for the ‘show’. When we arrived, there was a crowd gathered around a group of six guys with a big boombox breakdancing on several sheets of cardboard laid out on the concrete. It seemed like something one might see in Brooklyn in the 80’s. Super fly.
We sat on the curb with beers and hung out with a group of four German girls enjoying the scene. Street performers did their acts in the center of the plaza, and musicians came by to serenade us. Arnold told me about the area of Baru and Playa Blanca which were a couple of hours south. He told me I had to go while I was in Cartagena. We arranged to take a trip the following day, and I headed home for the night.
The next morning, Arnold showed up at my hostel at 9am. I was still sleeping when he arrived, but quickly washed up and packed a backpack and we set out for the day. He took me to a breakfast restaurant and ordered me a Colombian breakfast of sausage and chile scrambled eggs with sides of avocado and marmalade toast. Then we caught a chicken bus that took us south for an hour to the small town of Pasacaballos.
From there, Arnold hired two motorcycle taxis to take us the rest of the way. Arnold and I sat in the rear of two dirt bikes, and our drivers chartered us for 20-minutes over highway and then rocky terrain to arrive at Playa Blanca.
Playa Blanca is a long, white sand beach on a peninsula extending into the Caribbean. Beautiful, but extremely touristy. The type of beach where the entire beachfront is lined by bars, restaurants, and hostels. I was hoping for a quieter beach setting, but luckily Arnold had another parche. We hiked to the far north end of the beach, then through a forest to arrive at a small clearing on a bay on the opposite side of the peninsula. We got high, and then I led him through a short yoga practice. Then we each meditated for about 20 minutes. Arnold was a worthy student.
After we had our minds right, it was time for the beach scene. We got a couple beers and lounged in beach chairs in front of a random restaurant while periodically taking swims in the clear blue Caribbean. We passed the entire day lounging with a variety of goofy drinks—piña coladas, mango daiquiris, and sex on the beaches—like a cliché tourist, but the drinks were damn good in the heat.
As the sun was setting, we headed back to the entrance of the beach. I was amazed that by about 5:30pm, the entire beach was nearly abandoned in contrast to the party scene when we arrived at 11am. We must’ve been about the last of the daily tourists to leave the beach, because the parking lot was empty and there was only one mototaxista. We had to wait around for about 10 minutes for another mototaxi to show up.
We loaded on our respective dirt bikes, and my driver took off. The moment we arrived on the pavement from the dirt path, he immediately revved the dirt bike up to top speed, and maintained top speed for nearly the entire ride. It was an old dirt bike, and the headlight didn’t even work.
Five minutes into the ride, I was scared shitless. I wondered if my driver was drunk, but I had looked in his eyes before getting aboard and he looked fine. I started thinking about how my travel insurance had lapsed. Then I realized I didn’t even have a helmet this time (on the ride to the beach I had a quality helmet). If he crashed, I was toast. Actually, *we* were toast. That thought calmed me down. “He has just as much invested in this trip as I do,” I thought. “He knows what he’s doing, he does this every day,” I told myself. I breathed into my stomach to slow my heartrate, and after a couple minutes my anxiety and fear passed. The last ten minutes of the ride were then enjoyable, as I marveled at the speed and skill of the driver as he whipped past others on the highway. Thankfully, I made it back to Pasacaballos in one piece.
Arnold and I bought some coconuts to rehydrate and coconut ‘dulces’ (baked sweets) for the bus ride back to Cartagena. We wound up taking the wrong bus, or missed our stop, Arnold wasn’t sure, but eventually found another bus and our way back to Calle Media Luna after about an hour and forty minutes.
On the way back to my hostel, Arnold offered an interesting observation. He had never hung out with a gringo before, and after hanging out with me all day and the previous night, he was shocked at how his countrymen treated gringos. He had never seen someone offered drugs, gouged on prices, or receive various sales pitches as many times as had happened to me over the last 24 hours. “All they see is your white face,” he lamented. He went so far to call it racism. I explained that after traveling for many months I was well-aware of the situation, and was used to it. I even explained that money was something I could offer during my travels, and that I didn’t mind paying a little more as it would go into the pockets of normal, working people (I usually only willingly overpay at vendors and small mom and pop type businesses). He still thought it was bullshit, and wished I was treated better. I thought it was fascinating that he’d never fully realized what a gringo deals with in a place like Cartagena.
We arrived at my hostel, and Arnold asked if I wanted to go out. “Fuck no!” I told him. I was exhausted from all the sun and cocktails. I said goodnight, and made dinner and lounged for a couple hours before passing out.
I spent the next day relaxing and planning the next step of my journey. I decided to forgo Santa Marta, a popular backpacker destination in northern Colombia, as it is another Caribbean beach destination and, frankly, I was sick of the beach and heat. I decided to head to the mountains of Medellin next, and booked an overnight bus leaving the following night.
The next day, I spent wandering and café hopping in the Walled City.
In the evening, I grabbed some street food and headed back to my hostel to order an Uber to the bus station at 9pm for my 11:30pm bus. The main bus terminal is almost an hour outside of Cartagena, so I arrived at about 10:15pm.
The taxi drivers eyed me strangely as I walked inside with my bags. The terminal seemed oddly empty. I went to the window to claim the ticket I had ordered online. The lady in the booth told me the last bus to Medellin had departed already. I told her she must be mistaken, and showed her the confirmation on my phone. She looked at me like I was slow, “Si, señor. El último bus salío a las nueve y media,” and emphatically pointed to the time on my confirmation. The departure was printed in military time: ‘21:30.’ The feeling of horror hit me in the chest. Somehow, I made the ghastly mistake of reading the time as 11:30, and did in fact miss my bus. Fuck! I felt like a moron, but this was the first major travel gaff I’d made so far, so I wasn’t too distressed.
I sullenly hauled my bags back outside the terminal where the taxistas were expectantly waiting for me, and I went back to Las Indias hostel. Luckily, they had an open bed for me and I stayed one more night.
The next day was a repeat of the previous day. Basically, passing the day rather idly while waiting for my overnight bus trip. I did spend the afternoon at a noteworthy ‘labratorio de café,’ Café del Mural. The owner took pleasure in describing and showing me the different types of coffee he has specially roasted for his business. I ended up buying a bag of the ‘sweet’ roast, which lived up to the owners touting.
In the evening, I was sure to arrive at the bus terminal early and made my bus without a hitch. I stared out the windows for an hour before dozing off as the bus lumbered towards the heart of Colombia, Medellin.