Day 25 Friday 19th October: Chance encounters ?

Chris writes:

Woke this morning at a reasonable hour and was a little startled to find someone in the same bed as me after 25 days away but was relieved when it was Maria and not John or Mike !

It was a little cloudy, still incredibly warm but now also very humid after heavy rain overnight.

Breakfast in the Sofitel Legend, Santa Clara is an experience in itself. What makes it really special though is being able to pick the coffee bean variety that you want ground and brewed for your morning cup of coffee. It is a full personal service and is faster than the average Costa Coffee outlet in the U.K and presented far better.

Recognising that I still had to keep clocking up some miles and being a fan of the hop on / hop off buses in cities around the world, Maria and I ventured to the nearby stop and hopped on. Luckily with the sun blazing down they have the foresight to include a canvas top to stop gringo’s being frazzled. (John and Mike would find that there is another reason for this roof later in the day)

Cartagena is most renowned for its walled old city, but it should also be remembered that it once was the most important town in Colombia and is now also home to nearly a million people and has therefore undergone quite some development on reclaimed coastal land over the past years.

Similar to Panama it has its own share of high rise developments for both commercial and residential use.

In many ways due to the ‘strip style development’  adjacent to golden beaches it is known as ‘Little Miami’ with  many apartments over $ 1 million, it costs about the same but has a much more pleasant feel about it.

It also houses Colombia’s major Naval Academy and is the base for some war ships and has a fairly major port activity

I neglected to mention earlier that last night, by chance, we bumped into John and Mike as they were heading off into the more livelier part of Cartagena to experience the night life and significantly increase the average age in one of the more livelier night club bars.

I began to question that this was ‘by chance’ because as we hopped off the tour bus at our stop this morning they hopped on and even sat in our vacated seats – spooky !

I am beginning to wonder if they have secretly fitted me with a tracking device in case I get lost over the next 7 weeks?

By now due to heat and sitting in traffic for 1.5 hours in bright sunshine, it was time to find some refreshments and Maria and I headed to the one of the local Artisan markets hoping to find that one of the ‘skilled trades’ being practiced was the art of running a small bar.

The trouble with all of these types of market that we have seen in Central America and now in South America is they are all overstocked in the goods they sell and, they all sell the same “trash & trinkets”.

I am sure that I could extend my consulting business here and teach Stock control, costs and just in time practices and free up millions of Columbia pesos (which actually isn’t very much at 4,000 to £ and make them all happier and wealthier.

To my great relief we did find a bar, decorated in Spanish Colonial style celebrating the art of bull fighting where some of the winners or maybe the losers  were on display.

We continued our stroll around the old town , a fascinating mix of shops, bars, restaurants and street vendors all trying to take money from you. One was successful, as we sought shelter there just as a massive storm struck the town which turned roads into rivers etc.

Now John and Mike were thankful for the sun top on their bus which also serves as a storm shelter.

We headed back to the hotel in a lull during the storm,  where I dived into Maria’s case and looked at all the goodies that she had bought for me for the remainder of the trip and swap them to take home some unwanted weight.

It was interesting that I was beginning to exchange shorts for jeans, reef shoes for trainers, T-shirts for warmer jumpers, all a reminder that in a few days time we start the long journey south into less warm climates.

However, until then I still have a couple of days left with Maria probably without seeing Mike or John as they head to Bogotá tomorrow, unless of course, they have a surveillance camera on me somehow.