WARNING: TO HELP OUT,
MRS A HAS WRITTEN THIS NEXT BIT, SO IT MAY BE A LITTLE TAME FOR MY READERS
Once again we were awake at the crack of dawn and in the
Ocean View cafe for our morning coffee. Unfortunately so were most of the
ship! We had arrived in Cartagena and
were excited at the prospect of what would be our first foray into South
America.
We didn't rush off the ship as we had decided to do another Clever Dick thing and do the 'hop on hop off" bus on our own. This would save us the 100% mark up which the ship tend to impose on things which normally you can walk off the ship and do for yourself. We were reliably (?) informed the bus would be just outside the port gates. Well, when we say “reliably informed” we mean via that dubious website called “What’s in Port?” which, on this occasion, proved to be wholly inaccurate. So off we went with the minimum of stuff as we were conscious that Colombia is not the safest place on earth. All credit cards bar one were left in the cabin safe and we took along just $100 in cash.
The port area as you leave the ship was probably one of the nicest we have ever visited. We were greeted by flamingos, parrots and peacocks - never seen so many - and one peacock kindly displayed his tail for us, if you’ll pardon the expression.
That was the good bit. We then made our way out of the gates to be accosted every step of the way by someone wanting us to have a taxi ride. The fact that we had clearly turned down around 20 such offers didn’t deter people from being the 21st to ask us. We declined each offer, confident we would find the bus. We did, but it was for a cruise line of which we were not a passenger.
To cut a
long story short we ended up having to swallow our pride and take the long and
busy taxi ride to the old town. Mrs A
haggled the guy from $20 down to $15 for the 15-minute ride into town. The traffic was horrendous, car horns were in
full cry, but we got to the main square in one piece. Our taxi driver was determined that he would
meet us later to bring us back, but we said it would depend how the morning went.
The old town was interesting with colonial buildings and it
would have been lovely to have had a leisurely stroll but we were constantly hassled
by street traders desperate to sell us anything from hats to sunglasses,
rosaries, fans and associated crap (think there may have been some packs of
cocaine on offer amongst all that as well).
Eventually Mrs A cracked and shouted 'I don't want anything. Leave me alone!' at one vendor who, in
surprise, replied 'I only wanted you to
have a nice day'. He clearly had a strange idea of how to give a girl a
nice day. We eventually located the hop
on, hop off bus and set off round the 'highlights'
of Cartagena, one of which was a stop outside McDonald's - lol. As the buses
weren’t allowed inside the old city, the best bit would have been a walking
tour of the old city, but that wasn’t on offer at the time when we were on
board.
Then it was back to the ship for a well deserved drink and lunch at the back of
the ship. We've done Cartagena but we can't think we'll do it again.
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