Cartagena, the Jewel of the Caribbean

A little background for everyone....Cartagena is located on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean and was the main port that the Spaniards used to ship their gold, cocoa and other goods back to the old world. As you can imagine it was pretty popular with the pirates and after a number of attacks they decided to fortify the city and it has remained unchanged since then. If youve ever wanted to get off one of the boats on Pirates of the Caribbean and go exploring this is your place, except the pirates are actually Colombians. Ive also noticed a major change in the way people look. They are much darker than the people in Bogota and their version of Spanish is impossible to understand. The words run together, they drop letters at will and talk way too fast for this gringo!

Ive been here for a couple of days now and I don´t want to leave. I was met at the airport by Robert and his driver Juan Carlos. Robert is the 21 year old nephew of one of my old colleagues at Agilent and he has been great so far. He can speak both languages flawlessly and its so nice to have a local show you around. He assured me that the costensas are much more laid back than people from Bogota and as long as I wasn't walking around with all my bling safety would not be an issue on the north coast.

So what have we been up to??? Lounging on the beach during the day and heading into the old city at night to rumbla (basically get stupid on run, aquardient, and frias). Its amazing how much better my Spanish gets after a few drinks! One night we were drinking some rum in the old town and I picked his brain on everything Colombian. It was interesting to hear his side on the past 40 years in Colombia. Its very confusing to understand all the different groups and how they relate to one another but it sounds like the current president been able to disarm some of the paramilitary groups and as a result Colombia has become much safer over the past 8 years.

So what about the food? Unfortunately Robert only eats one meal a day (major problem for me since this is probably my favorite part of traveling) so Ive had to plead with him to get two meals a day. We had arrepas one night which are little corn pancakes filled with all kinds of goodness. I had one filled with four different types of meat and was licking my fingers all the way to old town. You can order a specially seasoned rice with your main dish called cocoa rice. I'm not sure how they season it but it has pepper and something sweet and it`s bomb!!! Soups are extremely popular and this being the coast we had a green fish soup filled with potatoes and different kinds of fish on the beach the other day. Robert introduced me to Aquaradient on last night and I woke up naked j/k. Its a cheaper liquor made with anise (I don´t know what that is either) that is sweet and will have you seeing double before you know it. I also got a taste of that Colombian cafe Ive been searching for. There are vendors constantly walking the streets yelling "tinto" selling 15 cent steaming hot shots of sweetened espresso. I swear I put back at least 5 a day.

We are going to lay low tonight because the past two days have been crazy. We are planning to head out to some of the local islands one day and I still want to walk around the old town and take tons of pictures. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to upload pictures and videos but will post some when I figure it out.