HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing the beautiful city of Cartagena
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Finding out the cost of my postage
WORD OF THE DAY: Sloth
Good morning Cartagena!!! No set plans this morning and then the city tour booked for 2pm this afternoon. Sharon and I wanted to finally get to a post office so we could send some stuff home this morning, but that is pretty much all we had on the agenda. Breakfast was included at the hotel and we rocked down at 9.25am to find out that it finished at 9am, we thought it finished at 10am, but we were in luck and they still served us with a coffee, scrambled eggs, a pancake and a piece of bread. It wasn’t the greatest but it was enough for us to get through till lunch.
We asked our mate Billy where we could find the post office and he said he would take us so we wouldn’t get lost. It is really nice of him, but then you get into the situation on how much you tip him for taking us. This tipping thing can get awkward at times, but I think I am into the swing of things. You never expect people to do things for free; time is money, no matter what country you are in. Whether you are a guide, a car park attendant, a driver. I feel bad when people don’t tip and coming from an Australian it is a different kind of culture but a necessary one in some countries as it is the way they survive. People remember you as well, so for the small cost of a few bucks and some courtesy, you just never know when you will see or need them again. As the trip draws to an end people are talking about tipping and I just tell them what most of my tours have been and its 2-3AUD a day. I know when you have been on a 156 day tour this adds up, but whether it is 3 days or 100 days, the same rule applies and I definitely think the boys have earnt their money. Just putting up with me for 156 days is worth the cash for me. I will be taking off the month I was in Ethiopia though, there no use going too crazy right!
So with Billy leading the way he took us to what looked like a stationary shop with lots of boxes and electronic scales out the front. It certainly wasn’t a post office, but after he left, and we did tip him 5000 (3AUD), we found out it was a courier company. We have been in Colombia for a week now and we haven’t seen one single post office, driving through towns and cities I have seen a single one, so maybe this is the way to get packages out of the country? Anyway the owner of the business was there with his English speaking son and a co-worker and thank goodness the sin was there as we told him what we needed, boxes, tape and of course the cost. I was prepared for around the 150AUD mark, as we had been told that postage was expensive was expensive, probably because it is all courier it would be, so when my package was weighed it was 8.9kg and Sharon’s was 9.6kg, I knew we would be in for a bit. My cost came to 470,091 pesos, which converted was 268AUD. Expensive I know, but I really needed to off load all my stuff and just have it out the way. It will be a massive relief to have it on its way and it is funny to think if it was going normal post that I may even beat the package home! The guys were so helpful and they said that they will ring around for some other prices to make sure that theirs was the cheapest, as they use UPS, so they were going to contact DHL and another company for us as well. They must get a commission no matter which way we go, so as they taped up our boxes we told them that we would come back in the morning and see what they found out for us. They really were helpful and more than happy to leave our boxes there for the night.
I have also been trying to finalize my divorce by submitting it via an online portal. I always get to the last section and the payment button is ghosted and won’t let me go any further. So after 4 attempts I emailed drew and gave him the login details to see if he could tell what the problem was. He came back and said I need to scan the affidavit that I had signed in Buenos Aires in January and then it should work. I was thinking at the time where the hell am I going to see a scanner, but this stationary shop had a scanner and I had the affidavit with me, so I got it scanned and saved onto my USB stick, so hopefully now I will be able to complete the damn submission and get the final step in process. The whole courier thing took around 1.5 hours, things seem to take time here in Colombia, so we just had lunch at the restaurant out the front of the hotel and then a small rest in the room before Gray knocked on our door at 1.40pm telling us the tour bus was here and it was early. So with a mad dash and a quick toilet stop we headed out for the afternoon city tour.
The tour was in what I would call an open trolley car, locally they are known as a Chiva Bus. They are open aired, colorful buses that travel through the city loaded with people. They looked cool and also would keep us cooler than being shut up in a coach and also give you better photo opportunities with no glass and reflection to get in your way. We were the only people on the trolley so far, so we all spread out so that we could all have an end thinking that there wouldn’t be too many more people to join us. How wrong we were and this is the thing I hate the most about these cities tours, anywhere in the world they are all the same that we spent the next 45 minutes driving around hotels picking people up and the trolley was getting more and more full to a point that after the last pick-up there was no possible way you could fit another person on the bench seats with 6 people on each one already. It just puts me in a bad mood when they funk around, but at 2.30pm we were finally on our way to see what Cartenga had to offer.
It was a bi-lingual tour with Spanish the primary language and then a watered down version in English. I do have to say, it felt like we were getting the same information most of the time with the translation and I don’t envy these guys guiding a tour in 2 languages, it’s like taking the tour twice over for him!!! Our first stop was a panoramic view of the modern city skyline. It is a pretty impressive photo and we also saw in the port waters a Catholic statue of the Virgin of Carmen which is said to help protect sailors traveling the ocean. Colombia is among several countries in South America with Catholicism being the predominate faith. Driving through the ‘Arsenal’ area it reminded me of the Gold Coast with the tall newer buildings of the city. The "new city" shows the growth of Cartagena, with buildings huddled together supporting many families with dwellings and businesses. The city of Cartagena was built with narrow streets and tall buildings very deliberately to protect their people from the sometimes scorching heat and allow the cooler breeze to flow throughout the city. Even in the hottest temperatures, at least one sidewalk of every street is in the shade.
Our next stop was the ‘Old Shoe’ Monument. There were like 4 other Chiva buses that all arrived at the same time and to get a photo with a pair of brass shoes was near impossible. Anyone would have thought it was a popstar or something!!! Mark managed to get off 2 pictures with me in them and only 3 other people!!! Before its current location behind San Felipe Castle, the monument, a piece made by Tito Lombana, was placed near Getsemaní neighborhood from where it was moved because of the construction of Heredia Bridge. The monument is homage to the poet from Cartagena Luis Carlos López. It comes from a poem by ironic, satirical, witty local poet "Tuerto" López, that refers to the love of the poet for his old town as the attachment one may feel towards his or her own worn out shoes. It was the usual trap with drink sellers, fruit sellers, a few souvenir stalls and jewellery hawkers and I don’t usually get sucked in by these guys, but they had a lot of ‘Colombian’ silver on trays and it looked so pretty and shiny and after I bought a silver necklace for 10,000 (5.71AUD) I was a prime target for the other sellers and before I got back on the bus, I was in possession of 3 necklaces and 3 pairs of earrings. There was one more guy that was trying to sell me a bangle and it was no, no no gracias all the way back to the bus, I was ON the bus, and he continued to try and sell me this beautiful bangle, he asked for 35,000, I offered 10,000 and he took it and threw in the matching ring for 5,000 pesos. So all up my total spend was 25AUD for 8 pieces of what was supposedly ‘Colombian’ silver. My ears would soon let me know, if I put anything in them that is not 100% silver I get sore ears by the end of the day, so I will give a pair of earrings a test run tomorrow. But it was all so shiny and beautiful in my defence.
Out next stop was the Santa Cruz Popa Monastery which is the highest point of the city and it was an amazing view as we wound our way up the small and windy roads to the top. As soon as we had pulled up in the carpark Kate spied a Sloth being held by its owner. Now we know that it isn’t responsible tourism to get photos taken with captive animals but this was a SLOTH and we just couldn’t let the opportunity pass. We were asked to not stop and head straight into the Monastery and we would be given free time after the tour. Built on the foundation of a razed Indian temple, the Convento de la Popa is a 400-year-old monastery situated at the top of this five-hundred foot hill, offering extraordinary views of both the old and new city of Cartagena below. Built in the early 17th century, (under the direction of Fray Alonso de la Cruz), the monastery remains inhabited by monks, and was used at various times in its history as a fort because of its excellent location. The monastery is seen from any unobstructed location in the city of Cartagena. Inside the interior of Convento de la Popa, there is a colonial museum and a chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Mullein, who is the patron saint of Cartagena people. Additionally, a statue of the Virgin of Candelaria, credited with delivering the city from the ravages of disease and pirates, is seen at the main alter. Pilgrimages are held on February second with candle bearing processions winding their way to the monastery in honor of the Virgin's feast day. The history of de la Popa and the monastery's meaning to Colombians has spread throughout the world to many religious sectors. The views were magnificent from up here, just stunning and we got some great photos. On our way out we did get our photo with the Sloth (1.70AUD) and it was worth every penny. The sloth was an amazing creature, so light and very very chilled, considering he was getting passed from person to person.
Sloths are related to armadillos and anteaters, which sport a similar set of specialized claws. Sloths are arboreal (tree dwelling) residents of the jungles of Central and South America, and are known for being slow-moving. As much as two-thirds of a well-fed sloth's body-weight consists of the contents of its stomach, and the digestive process can take a month or more to complete. Even so, leaves provide little energy, and sloths deal with this by a range of economy measures: they have very low metabolic rates (less than half of that expected for a mammal of their size), and maintain low body temperatures when active (30–34 °C), and still lower temperatures when resting. Their specialized hands and feet have long, curved claws to allow them to hang upside-down from branches without effort. While they sometimes sit on top of branches, they usually eat, sleep, and even give birth hanging from limbs. They sometimes remain hanging from branches after death. On the ground the maximum speed of the three-toed sloth is 2 m per minute.
Our second last stop for the afternoon was the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas Fort. It is a fortress located in the city of Cartagena. The castle is located on the Hill of San Lázaro in a strategic location, dominating approaches to the city by land or sea. It was built by the Spanish during the colonial era. Construction began in the year 1536, and it was originally known as the Castillo de San Lázaro, It was expanded in 1657. It was built in a triangular shape on top of the hill, with eight guns and a garrison of 20 soldiers and 4 gunners. It was named was given in honor of Philip IV of Spain. Another expansion was made to the fortress in 1763 by Antonio de Arévalo. In the 1697 raid on Cartagena, during the War of the Grand Alliance, the castle fell to the French privateer Baron de Pointis. The castle was repaired by José de Herrera y Sotomayor in 1739. British Admiral Edward Vernon attacked the fortress in the 1741 Battle of Cartagena de Indias, an important conflict of the War of Jenkins' Ear. Vernon's forces were repelled by the Spanish admiral Blas de Lezo.
The fortification consists of a series of walls, wide at the base and narrow toward the parapet, forming a formidable pattern of bunkers. The batteries and parapets protect one another, so making it practically impossible to take a battery without taking the whole defence system. The stone blocks used to build the castle were said to be splattered with the blood of slaves. Cartagena was a port of the black slave trade. The guns of the castle commanded the whole bay, so that any suspicious vessel attempting to dock could be attacked. The castle is striking for its grand entrance and its complex maze of tunnels. It is the most formidable defensive complex of Spanish military architecture. The castle is well preserved. When it ceased to be used for military purposes, tropical vegetation covered the battlements and walls, and soil accumulated in the tunnels and trenches. In 1984, UNESCO listed the castle, with the historic center of the city of Cartagena, as a World Heritage Site. Since 1990, the castle has served as a location for social and cultural events offered by the Colombian government in honor of foreign delegations at presidential summits, ministerial meetings. We got to enter into some of the tunnels and we spent 1.5 hours walking around the fort. There were also great views from the city here and there was a massive Colombian flag flying that we were able to capture with the cityscape in the background.
It was a busy afternoon and the day was not quite finished yet. We had a 15 minute stop at a set of Artesian shops, that I am sure only stupid people buy things from here as the prices were double than what you find in a ‘normal’ souvenir shop. In saying that I did buy my hat pin from here and also some little Colombian ladies miniatures made from femo that I bought for my god-daughters. By this time it is just after 6pm and we had one more stop that was promised on the itinerary in the old town. It wasn’t too bad getting into the old city so late as all the lights for the churches and plazas were coming on so we got some great night time shots of the old city. It was then time to get back onto our Chivas for the last time and head back to the hotel. It had been a long afternoon, as it was hot and it just drains your energy but I have to say I think it was one of the best city tours that I have actually done. There is a lot to see and do in Cartagena and I think we gave it a good crack today.
Dinner was at a steak restaurant next door to the hotel and it has been the best meat I have eaten since Argentina. You had an option of ordering 300,400 or 500gm steaks, so not one to pass up a good piece of meat, I ordered the 500gm baby beef and it came with a baked potatoes and an awesome cheese filled areapa. Wash that down with a few glasses of Malbeck (at 75 million a bottle/42AUD) and a passionfruit juice with 4 nips of vodka in it mixed with great company (UK Heather, Gray and Sharon) it was a great night. Some of the group hit the town after dinner, but I wasn’t in the mood and headed back to my room to watch a late night movie. Gosh I hope I am not turning into a Nana!!!!
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