Colombia 2015 - First Day in Cartagena

We arrived in Cartagena a mere one hour after leaving Medellin and in that little bit of time, the climate changed drastically.  Michael was looking forward to the humid heat of the Caribbean Coast, but I was dreading it.  Michael assumed that because the Philippines was a humid environment, that I would be right at home in our new destination.  He fails to connect that I grew up in an arid one and prefer to feel as if I'm in an oven instead of in a portable swimming pool.

Just as in Medellin, we had to travel between the plane and airport without the comfort of a tunnel.  As soon as we descended the plane stairs, Michael beamed with pleasure at 1) being in a new place, and 2) experiencing heat.  I had prepared by wearing my one maxi dress.  Despite its strappy shoulders, and loosely-flowing skirt, this dress was made of a synthetic material that clung to me and made me feel even more sticky.

I longed to retreat to our hotel room's air-conditioned space.

Since we had no luggage to retrieve from baggage claim, we were the first ones to reach the airport's curbside.  We could not Uber because there were no available drivers nearby.  Here was another taxi experience.  We saw a line of taxis and popped into the first one.  The driver asked us our destination and after we told him, "El Centro," he left the cab.  A little confused we looked for him and found him talking to a window operator that we completely bypassed.  He was given a slip of paper that he then gave to us.  It turned out that we are supposed to visit the taxi managers who sit in what looks like a movie theater ticket window.  When you tell them the general neighborhood that you want to go to, they print a slip on which is the said destination and the corresponding price that you need to pay the driver when you get there.  When I looked at the price I was amazed and incredibly happy.  A mere $3.20 gets us from the airport to the middle of all the touristy action!

Airport Curb

The neighborhood outside the airport looked sketchy.

With it being Holy Friday, Cartagena's hotels were booked to the maximum, and we would have to return at the designated check-in time of 2pm.  It was only 8am at this point and we decided we would roam around for a few hours and return at noon to see if our room might have been put high on the priority list of cleaning.

The first place Michael wanted to take me was a cafe where he and John had dined on Michael's first journey to Colombia.  It was a restaurant located atop the fortress walls of Cartagena's original city limits that had a view of the sea.  It was not hard to find the fortress walls, but finding a way to get on top of them was more tricky.

Empty plaza

We seemed to have walked for hours, but it was only about one hour that had lapsed.  The heat was scorching even at such an early morning hour and this made the disappointment of finding the cafe closed even more terrible.  On a positive note, we noticed that the wall was composed of the most interesting components!

Sponges?

Coral impressions.  Beer bottle not included.

Great views.

Our interest quickly shifted to food and we backtracked to hotel that we had seen already had human movement and that was large enough to most likely have a restaurant inside.

Hotel Charleston Santa Teresa

When we got to the front desk, I was surprised to hear English coming form the attendant's lips!