Stressful Cartagena

If you want a hip and different destination for your next vacation take a look at Cartagena. It’s a major port city on the Caribbean coast in the north of Colombia packed with history and hipsters and boutique hotels and hipsters and all sorts of restaurants. Including pet friendly street side fish restaurants.

This little place, Sierpe, was recommended by our Canadian overlanding friends who preceded us across the Darien Gap in their Land Rover. 

Right now the city sucks wind as a major water break deep underground in crumbly soil has shut down water to most of the city. Sounds like a joke, right? Not a bit of it!

They think they’ve fixed the last problem and they say water service should be restored everywhere quite soon. Our apartment was affected by this drama but when Layne called the owner she said casually”Oh there’s no water in the city at the moment….” Without ever thinking to warn us. You can imagine how great that felt with our clothes sipping with sweat and the water shelves in the supermarket close to empty…

If you do decide to fly to Cartagena for a vacation you might want to leave your expectations at home! It’s a busy city with a zillion motorbikes and wild traffic. Uber is cheap and you can even get pet friendly Ubers here. The poor ride moto- taxis which frighten the shit out of me: 

There are so many motorcycles beggars pick up a few coins from polishing motorcycles stopped at lights. Me, in my air conditioned Uber…wondering what the empty future holds for this street kid. Travel makes me squirm some days. 

I had an accident in our rental car and only because I was stupid; I backed out of an awkward corner without asking Layne to spot for me. It was my fault looking for pedestrians and missing the big white car behind me! 

I gave the other guy $25 for his ding and he was delighted and after that I was on the hunt for an auto body shop. We extended the rental policy for a day after Omar said he could fix it the same day for $78. Try doing that in the States! We just wanted to avoid the bureaucracy of reporting the problem and our total cost was likely less than the deductible. 

Sure enough Omar had it done and I gave him an unsolicited $12:50 for his trouble and he lit up…then I drove it to the airport to return it. All done from 8:30am till 4pm, no appointment and big smiles all round. Try that at home, I couldn’t get into a grumpy Stock Island body shop for an estimate sooner than a month.

Dealing with all this crap, going to get GANNET2 out of the container first; then timing my appearances at the port, at Customs, at the body shop, at the car rental company and…Then moving apartments temporarily to the upscale Getsemaní neighborhood that has water, all of it made for a long day and many Uber rides. 

Hugh and Sue recommended Sierpe to Layne and like them we enjoyed the crab dip and Layne the retired teacher enjoyed helping the waiter to expand his meager grasp of English. The language of travelers is not very spoken in Colombia so some Spanish is helpful. Shrimp croquettes, equally good:

We walked home through massive weeknight crowds and Rusty to his credit did great navigating the legs and the murderous cars themselves navigating streets with no patience for pedestrians. 

Wednesday is GANNET2  day after our shipping agent screwed up my insurance and made it valid for a day late start date. One more failure to pay attention to details in her part. Oh well. One of the French guys just lost his passport so neither of the cars in the other container can leave the port until he gets a replacement. 

Time for a photo dump I suppose.  First the Castillo de San Felipe, similar in all respects to the forts in San Juan and Saint Augustine: 

It stank as bad as it looked and the dogs of course make me wish I could take them all home. 

Fashionable Getsemaní by night. 

Buying artwork for GANNET2 from Jason: 

Too crowded for me:

Morning: 

Coffee in Colombia is sold on the streets from thermos flasks, black and very sweet in small plastic cups. 

Old and new: 

Port Of Cartagena

The only good thing about retrieving GANNET2 from the container was the ease of removal. 

It was a tight fit, such that the young man whose job it was to remove the front straps and chocks had to climb up a ladder onto the roof of GANNET2 and slide carefully to the front. 

Getting the  rear chocks and straps out was tough enough.

You will also notice there is a full sized metal plate that butts perfectly against the lower edge of the container. 

As long as I followed the hand signals and backed gently it was fine. I got out and was relieved to find no damage anywhere.

Layne had thought to hang Damp Rid bags and they collected tons of moisture so that had been a good idea. There was no musty smell in our home at all. 

Everything was as we had left it down to the odd extra dog hair donated by the Chief Security Officer. 

I cannnot describe the required process to get our vehicles released from the bonded area of the port, as I shall try to illustrate. Our shipping agent did it all behind the scenes and out of sight and we just went where we told when we were told. It was decidedly weird.  This is what we found on arrival for instance: keep out! Serious stuff. 

Our vehicles were in Colombia but at the sane time they weren’t. The seal had to be broken in our presence and only then could we look at our cars and as mine was at the back I got to crawl in right away! 

All this took place on Monday. Our containers arrived in port Thursday evening. Our shipping agent Ana Rodriguez had a notarized power of attorney to act on our behalf dealing with customs and she started the paperwork on Friday to allow the vehicles to be removed from the containers, which are much in demand these days. 

I immediately started to inflate the tires which is a slow steady process with our DeWalt, as I didn’t want to drive on almost flat tires. The yellow tape on the hood is some port authority code describing which container our vehicles are bonded from. 

The rules to enter the port are laborious and strict. Long sleeves, long pants closed toed shoes ( in 95 degrees and 100% humidity!) a high viz vest and hard hat provided by Ana’s office and a special pass visible at all times. Thus:

Also the day you drive out you must have contractor alcohol on their breathalyzer I’m told thus no drinking the night before. I didn’t care but my French fellow travelers were shocked by that news.

The paper trail was made more mysterious by the shortcomings of our shipping agent who I’m sorry to say has no communication skills or training in customer service. The worst of it is you are helpless and her lack of attention to detail makes the process much more stressful. I never felt I was in the hands of a trained professional. She misspelt names, sent us to incorrect or incomplete addresses and never kept us apprised of progress or what was to come next. It gave me a foul mood a headache. 

To her credit she got the job done and pretty quickly too. I could have taken GANNET2 out of the port on Tuesday but my insurance policy didn’t come through because she said her agents couldn’t find the brand: RAM. I sent her an ad for the main Jeep/Dodge/Ram dealer in Colombia so I think my van is now branded a Dodge which they do have in their files. But you can’t get instant coverage here. The policy takes two days to go in effect! 

Also the work of the customs (DIAN) inspector gets emailed to Bogota -seriously- for approval before we could get our temporary import permits. The main office doesn’t trust the main port to do it right I guess. This sort of bureaucracy you never see in the US do next time you think you are suffering at the DMV just remember Colombia..!

So there it is. Done in some confused manner and now hopefully we wait till Wednesday. Then we park GANNET2 in a city lot until Sergio arrives from Panama Friday lunchtime. Then we install the rooftop a/c and by the weekend I hope we are on our way. Somewhere.