Cartagena Walkabouts

The street where we have an apartment with no water. Much calmer than Getsemaní.

Visitors dragging bags down the street; just like Key West. These two weren’t talking or admiring the architecture in the heat. 

I was. 

Layne always checks street vendors. 

You order your food by type of meat, in this instance we asked for pork chops. However the first course is soup, always soup. 

This lunch was interesting thanks to the surprise addition of lentils. Never seen those before on a plate like this. 

I finally figured out the purpose of these  ankle breaking cement posts: 

If you look closely below you’ll see more nasty looking posts but in the distance there is a cement bench. 

My mentality is if it’s broken fix it or remove the offending remains but apparently not here. 

This is a non functioning relic of another era, just hanging around waiting for pay phones to come back into fashion I guess. 

Motorcycles are everywhere all the time. They come at you from all angles all the time. There is a helmet law in Colombia but taxi passengers must be exempt as you can see. I’d never ride a moto taxi here no matter how brave you think I am. 

For the busy office worker or waiter there is pay parking available for your steed. 

Layne took Rusty for walk but he got impatient coming back to me and chewed through his leash to make the point. He hadn’t done that for years. Until we get GANNET2 back with his spare he’s stuck with this bright green thing -made of rubber of all things. 

Perhaps our expectations of Cartagena were too high. We agree it’s okay, full of useful stores and pretty streets but it’s not as mind blowing as we expected. I liked Santa Marta more, a less crazy town and little Mompox the nowhere town forgotten by time was excellent if you don’t count the appalling heat. 

Cartagena is now checked off more or less. 

And in some other unrelated but great news I’m getting my E-reader back. I accidentally left it at the hotel when we went to see the pink flamingos and I was resigned to making a six hour trip out of our way to pick it up on our way to Medellin. But lo and behold Sue and Hugh wanted to see the flamingos too and they stopped by to help us out and picked it up for me. 

I’ve been without a week and it feels like forever. It’s lightweight and easy to read and the battery lasts forever. I had to go back to reading on my phone where the Internet interrupts and the page is so small. I am so spoiled. Looking forward to meeting them in Medellin!