Cartagena

From the chilled hills in which Bogota sits, we rode a plane to the coast, landing in the oppressive Caribbean air of Cartagena. The thick atmosphere had a negative effect on our ability to get out of bed, and we didn’t make it up before lunchtime once…

More Colombian Christmas decoration madness

We spent most of our waking hours deflecting offers from a flurry of cocaine dealers, playing poker, all the while sweating out large proportions of body mass. Christmas day started at some point in the afternoon, we had lunch in a seafood restaurant, which confused the English among us but was nice and familiar to the Australians, and then retired to the hotel to drink rum in pirate proportions and take refuge beneath ceiling fans.

This pattern continued for a few days, with occasional late afternoon outings to the beach (or, in one bizarre case, McDonalds) and the odd visit to one of Cartagena’s many overpriced eateries. Cartagena is not a particularly attractive city, but the incredibly humid atmosphere makes it hard to maintain a normal sleeping pattern, and when you wake up everyday at around one, it is hard to organise anything at all, so by default, we stayed in the city for much longer than anyone normally would.