1 – Feliz invierno. 12/21/2015

Greetings from Cartagena, Colombia – December 21 2015 

A bit belated… but here is my first travelogue from Colombia… We arrived yesterday (from SFO to Bogota to Cartagena)

It’s about 3:30 pm on Monday, December 21 (Mike’s birthday)… and we just got back from a 5-mile walk through the old town… not a hike.. but a walk.. seeing lots of streets and plazas and shops.. but more on that in a bit.

We arrived in Cartagena after a somewhat grueling set of three flights.. SF to Houston; Houston to Bogota (three hours late leaving Houston… boarded plane, plane left gate, plane turned around for some kind of mechanical issue that needed to be checked, deplaned at gate, three hours later re-boarded same plane); then Bogota to Cartagena. Once in Cartagena, we decided to hop in a taxi (needed to screen for “official” taxi) to get to hotel.. Taxi from airport was incredibly cheap.. about $3.00… Money here is crazy as there are either 3,300 COP (Colombian pesos to the dollar or 2,400 — depending on how you exchange money.. with credit cards getting the best rate of exchange over cash!!!) Exchanged money at the airport before getting into taxi so that we could pay…

Once in taxi, Mike said he didn’t see his “electronics pouch”… where he keeps cords for his computer, phone, ipad, camera, etc… including his thumb drive. We figured it was just stuck in his suitcase, but alas.. Mike is now operating in the 19th Century…  He can use my iphone charger and ipad charger, but he’s on his own for the rest.. meaning — no connectivity.. So we figure that he had the pouch out during the flight.. he says it was on the floor by his seat… We were in first class, so the seats become beds.. and he thinks that as the seat pushed down or up it swept his pouch with it, which he figures is “under” his seat… Made calls to United, but not holding out much hope. So that was his entry to Cartagena. His office is ordering new stuff, but not worth sending. Will try to find an electronics store..

Got to the hotel at about 1:00 pm yesterday and while we waited for our room to be ready, we decided to have lunch in the hotel’s courtyard restaurant. (We’re at the Charleston Santa Teresa Hotel inside the old colonial city).. Ceviche — naturally — and some interesting Caribbean ribs with local spices and grilled octopus (fish is everywhere and for most restaurants that’s the fare.. which is fine with us).  The hotel is pleasant (overpriced, I think, but the holiday season is Cartagena’s big thing… so all hotels are booked and priced much higher than at other times of the year.

It’s an extremely pleasant place to stay with a rooftop (6th floor) pool (of course I don’t have a bathing suit) and a great interior courtyard. It’s got a wild history. You have to remember that the city was the major port for Colombia… and it has iconic walls that have been well preserved — the walls were built to prevent attacks by pirates, who passed by on their way to the wealthy Incan empire. The whole “old city” is a UNESCO heritage site (a well-deserved acclaim).

But as the story goes… At the beginning of the 17th century, a woman from Cartagena decided to have a convent built within the walled city.. so that she could spend the final years of here life with the Carmelite nuns. But years later, after the “new republic” was established, the nuns were forced to abandon the convent, which then found new life as a prison, an all girls school, a pasta factory, and police headquarters… Then in the 1980s .. it was renovated and eventually turned into the hotel it now is…

OK… moving on… we settled into the hotel… showered and Mike crashed after realizing that we had been on the go for about 30 hours.. I decided to set up my office away from home (my standard procedure).. only to find that my Windows side of my MacBook (through Parallels) had totally crashed somehow between Houston and Cartagena… so after reaching out to IT folks.. and setting an appointment for them to see my machine virtually and figure out the problem… I decide to take a walk for an hour or so and then have my “IT virtual meeting”..

The town is delightful.. narrow streets, reconstructed and rehabilitated buildings that line every street.. mostly commercial on first floors and residential on the second. Street vendors galore.. Then I retraced my steps and was on the phone for about two hours with IT… and then they continued to figure out the mystery.. which could have been resolved very quickly had I been at the office, but took umpteen hours given that I hadn’t brought an external drive (terabyte size) with me (thought about it, generally do… but then figured it was a waste..). They needed to copy a 550gb file.. and I only had 280gb left on computer.. so they couldn’t copy and then replace.. Anyway, they figured something out, because here I am.. on the trusty computer.

Mike and I ate at a Cuban restaurant last night… La Vitrola… had ceviche (naturally).. accompanied by mojitos (Fern) and Capairina (Mike).. then followed with a seafood pasta (Mike’s Paleo diet is shot to hell here!) followed by a white fish .. all quite good and with great Chilean wine.. Strolled back to the hotel.. nightcap of course.. and then hit the hay..

Started out this morning in a little coffee shop (Prispi) — for those of you from Oakland.. sort of the Caffe 817 of Cartagena.. high tables, tiny, hip Colombians.. order at the counter and then pray for a table… Then we walked the city… about 5 miles.. and part of it in search of a little cafe I found yesterday that has all sorts of Russian memorabilia.. including the front doors painted with Lenin bigger than life.. I had taken some photos so I figured if we showed the photos, shop keepers or police could direct us.. (It was a pretty unusual site)… We stopped no fewer than 12 cops — each was sure they knew exactly where it was (after looking at my photos)… and each took us in completely opposite directions.. After an hour of this, we stopped into another place with a great courtyard (rather than the rinky dink, funky Lenin place) and had a quiet lunch (Pestagua).

Colombia is slow moving.. takes everyone a lot of time to get things done. By the way, when I exchanged money at the airport it took about 15 minutes (with a fairly patient line of people waiting to also exchange money)… They needed to do fingerprints twice! So I suppose I’m now inside the Colombian system… and I had to sign three documents.. before I got my money. Mike on the other hand, just went to the ATM and his money spit out quickly (although they have a covering on the keypad where you put your code, so if you don’t have the digit pad memorized you’re in trouble)…  Cops, and gun-carrying security guards are everywhere in this old section (where tourists are frequent)… and every ATM seems to have it’s own guard. A little like Honduras and Ecuador (especially Quito)…

The old city is bordered with a major street and on the other side, life is quite different — average Cartagenans shopping and working. We ventured over and will spend more time on that side tomorrow, especially when we head to the Mercado Bazurti (which every person at the hotel has warned us against visiting… but we love those kinds of places.. a huge market that sells everything with thousands of fruit and vegetable stands and every kind of food item one needs for daily life.. and then sort of flea market-y… Should be fun… We’ll stroll that part of town..

Today is Mike’s birthday so we are headed to dinner (fashionably at 10 pm) at Restaurante Don Juan… Will report tomorrow.

OK.. you’re caught up on our day… More tomorrow.

 PS — Apologize for the length… Shorter tomorrow..