Cartagena

After waking up late on Thursday, April 5th, around noon I finally got to the Santa Marta bus terminal. Fortunately, a bus for Cartagena was about to leave in 20 minutes and it only cost $24,000 COP, which is less than I thought it would cost. Unfortunately, the windows on this bus were covered in some kind of decal such that one's view to the outside was almost completely obscured– only a narrow strip of glass at the bottom of the window was unobstructed. For some reason covering windows, windshields, and other view ports of vehicles with decals, curtains, paint, or other opaque materials is very popular in Colombia. In my opinion the best thing about bus rides– and the only reason I can tolerate them, is to be able to watch the scenery outside. On this bus if I contorted myself enough I could see a small patch of pavement beneath the window. This bus ride was only about 5 hours, though, which is much shorter than some of the other rides I'd been on.

Some hours later we arrived at the bus terminal in Cartagena– which is about an hour outside the city center by taxi. I got out of the taxi near a hostel that had been recommended to me, but it was completely booked; there wasn't a bed available. This is something that I had never heard of happening at hostels before. I asked if there were any other hostels in the area. I visited several only to discover they were also booked solid! I finally found an extortionately priced hotel nearby but before resigning myself to stay there, I used their internet to look for any other hostels anywhere in Cartagena, or even surrounding towns with availability for that night. But there was nothing. It never occurred to me to make reservations before hand, but Cartagena is indeed the most popular tourist destination in Colombia, and Semana Santa must be one of the busiest times of year for tourism. I reluctantly agreed to stay at the extortionately priced hotel.

It occurred to me later that using CouchSurfing could have provided another way to avoid the problem I encountered– since then I have been using it.

That night I tried to make the most of the situation– I walked around the old city and had some street food, including patacones and Jugo de Lulo (juice of this fruit.) I went to bed early with two plans in mind for the morning: I would see El Museo Naval del Caribe (Caribbean Navel Museum) and El Palacio de la Inquisición (Palace of the Inquisition) and at 9:30 I would call the hostels to see if any guests had left. I told myself that if a hostel was available at a reasonable price, I would stay another night in Cartagena, but if my only option was the extortionately priced hotel, I would get on a bus for Medellín.

The next morning I discovered that at least breakfast was included in the hotel's extortionate price. I ate with a New Yorker who was on a two-week vacation from his finance job. He was very friendly and we enjoyed chit-chatting. After all the effort I had made to try to distinguish myself from the other Gringos in Colombia, in a lot of ways his style of travel wasn't all that different from mine.

Then I went to the museums I wanted to see and discovered that they were both closed for El Viernes Santo (Good Friday.) The guard of El Palacio de la Inquisición was friendly and proudly demonstrated the few words of English he knew. I told him in Spanish how glad I was that I had come to Cartagena on a holiday when everything was closed, because it gave me the opportunity to see these interesting processions that congested all the streets:

At 9:30 and again at 10:00 I called several hostels to see if any guests had left, but they were still full. I would leave later that day for Medellín. So I spent the morning walking around the old city of Cartagena.

I walked all the way around the old wall.

There seem to be little fossils in the stone they used to build the wall.

Here's some information about the wall.

Here's the wall again.

This guy was frying up some huge patacones and putting cheese on them. I ate several. 

I regretted having done such a poor job of seeing Cartagena– especially after my fiend who used to teach there had given me such good tips on what to see and do. But I have an unswerving tendency to accidentally do everything the most backwards way possible.

Then I got on a busitica that goes from the center of Santa Marta to the bus terminal, which takes about an hour. I fell asleep on this busitica and when I was prodded awake, we had passed the bus terminal and I had to walk about a mile through an unsavory neighborhood to get to there; I didn't know at the time that this would be a recurring theme.

The bus to Medellín left Cartagena at 3:00 pm. I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take, but I estimated 17 hours. Every few hours we would stop at some tiny village and the bus conductor would turn on the lights, wake everyone up, and make sure everyone who needed to exit or enter the bus  did so. At around 4:30 the next morning I noticed what appeared to be Medellín out the window. I had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the last several hours, but I remember this part clearly: we drove in a circle around the Medellín bus terminal, but did not stop– instead we drove back up into the surrounding mountains. At this point I assumed there must have been some other stop the bus driver had forgotten to make and that we would soon make our official stop at the Medellín bus terminal. Afterall, if they had made that much to-do about stopping at all those tiny villages throughout the night, I couldn't possibly miss the stop at a big city like Medellín. So I drifted back to sleep.

The next thing I knew, the bus conductor was prodding me awake to ask me where I was going. I told him Medellín. He said we passed Medellín two hours ago, and now the bus is headed for Bogotá. He insisted that he woke everyone up at Medellín and three passengers exited. He even woke up some passengers sitting next to me to try to make them vouch for his story. They just starred at him bleary-eyed. I tried to find out when the next stop was, or how I might get to Medellín. A few minutes later he spotted a bus from the same bus company driving in the opposite direction. He flagged it down, asked if they were headed to Medellín, and instructed me to climb aboard. Two and a half hours later I made it back.