Well! Immediately after landing in the tropical heat, our first impressions were not exactly favourable. If anyone is planning a trip to Cartagena, keep your wits about you at the taxi rank! Sure, there is an “authorised” taxi rank and a ticket machine where you key in your location and it gives you a ticket with a price that you give to the taxi driver. This all seems like a great idea, only the official taxi driver immediately refused our ticket and said it was the wrong price.

In walks another taxi driver, who also looks to be official (they’re all wearing yellow ish t-shirts) speaking fluent English. Has fast conversation with the other taxi driver, I can’t catch any of it as the accent up here is very different to Bogotá. New taxi man says, “Look these guys say it’s the wrong price but they’re wrong, it is the right price. I’ll take you.” At this point we still think he’s official as he seems to know the other taxi drivers. We start to follow. He’s chatting nine to the dozen asking lots of questions and we, quite frankly, are tired and bamboozled. It’s starting to feel iffy. He then says “Hey I give you my number, if you want later I can show you the best places to go out, we can party.” Etc. Definitely not kosher. The final nail in the sketchy coffin was when, instead of a regular yellow taxi, his mate pulls around in a regular car. Absolutely not, hombre. We stay polite and thank him, but say we need to gather our thoughts. He’s not pushy but is like “Look I will drive you myself but you wanna get ripped off by a yellow taxi be my guest.” We go and hide and book an Uber. The moral of the story? Book an Uber in the first instance, it’ll be more expensive but less risk of scam.

Driving in Cartagena is, if possible, more mental than Bogotá. We saw a woman on a moped go into the back of a taxi (she seemed to have hurt her wrist when she dropped the moped but was otherwise fine), our taxi definitely made contact with other vehicles, and there were people everywhere. Once again, the fact that it was a Saturday had eluded us. The chaos was turned up to eleven. This is a tourist town and a party town. Our hotel was in Getsemaní, one of the historic areas, so as you might imagine, the streets are not conducive to cars and people. If you’re coming to Cartagena, do not arrive on a Saturday night.

We eventually made it to the hotel which was very cute and quaint. Easy checkin and shown to our room which was blissfully air-conditioned. We collapsed onto the bed after our ordeal and went to sleep.

The next morning we had breakfast up on the roof terrace; a sort of “get what you’re given” affair with eggs, fruit, bread, butter and jam. Also some delicious juice and coffee. The heat was already intense at 7:30am. Me being me, I had already begun to spot local wildlife. Some great birds called grackles and a gecko or two.

After breakfast we headed into the historic old town to have a gander. It was very pretty! However I will say the vendors here are more plentiful than Bogotá. I wouldn’t exactly say persistent, generally speaking a “No, gracias.” was enough and they’d move on. But the sheer volume of them! Clearly you gotta hustle in this town.

Having walked around in the heat, we got ourselves some electrolyte drinks (my coconut one tasted like sun cream, unfortunately), we decided to go into a couple of museums to cool off. The first which was ostensibly the colonial museum of Cartagena, was free as it was Sunday. Glad it was as I would have been mildly vexed had we paid for it! Pretty sparse. There was also a “Museo del Oro” here, which I think may have been an offshoot of the Bogotá one. This one was much better and, key, cooler. Small but very interesting as it’s all about pre-colonial history and craft. Much more my jam! There were some interesting films about native musical instruments, hat making, and filigree work and the layout of the exhibition was really good.

We went back to Getsemaní and had a great lunch at a more healthy food place called Bololó. I had a veggie bowl which sparked much joy.

Vegetable craving sated, we cooled off at the hotel, showered and planned. Now had I been more on the ball in previous days I would have looked into day trips to the Rosario Islands which are, apparently beautiful and worth a trip. However, having left it too late, I decided that panic booking last minute was not the one. I would say to anyone planning to come here though to do some research and book in advance! Plans made, we headed to a supermarket for beers and snacks, spotting our first iguana on the way who immediately dashed into a pipe. If the Bogotá supermarket we visited was a Waitrose, this was a Tesco. Some decent value items.

We chilled on the roof terrace with our beers and slightly disappointing local crisps (not as flavourful or weird as we were hoping) and I had THE BEST time birdwatching. Had my camera, my Merlin app all loaded up with Colombian birds… it was wonderful for this little bird nerd. I think Alex had a nice time too.

We set out for dinner but the place we had chosen for its high reviews and cheap prices no longer existed. Only a drinks station outside. This was baffling and threw us rather; the most recent review was only from three days prior! This does seem to happen to us (more Alex) alarmingly often. Find a good place on Google maps, lots of good reviews, says it’s open, we turn up and it is in fact, very shut or no longer exists.

Although not as mad as Saturday night, it was still pretty busy and loud – every single bar, restaurant, street vendor, you name it, had a big speaker blasting out various different reggaeton songs on full volume. We are sensitive souls and got very overwhelmed, so panicked and went into a pizza restaurant which was… fine. Think pre-made Dr Oedtker pizza bases with perfectly acceptable toppings.

Outside, a new speaker was set up by someone we couldn’t see who started to blare techno. To be honest it was a welcome relief from reggaeton. Then a street performance of “Thriller” complete with zombies crawling on the floor began. Thankfully it had finished and moved on by the time we left the restaurant. We had one cheap mojito that wasn’t half bad from a street vendor and sat in the direct blast zone of a massive speaker. We drank quickly and left, ears bleeding, to recover in our bedroom. I’ve never been so excited to put in earplugs.

Day 2

Woke up to our first big insect: a dead-ish cockroach in our bedroom.

We had a later breakfast and although our initial plan had included doing a laundry, we discovered that our next hotel had laundry services included so sacked it off. After some faffery and application of suncream we went out exploring again. In a local park we saw iguanas a plenty and many people telling us there were sloths, which there probably were but these people wanted paying for pointing them out to you.

We explored streets we hadn’t yet, were gently accosted by many a hawker, and got incredibly sweaty in the balmy 36° heat. As someone who doesn’t often get particularly sweaty, I was surprised to find out that I can, in fact, sweat from my forearms.

We had a light lunch in a great taco place and cooled down with a beer for Alex and a delicious margarita for me.

After this we gave up on wandering… or rather I did! It was becoming too hot and busy and I was finding the hawkers oppressive. I was starting to see all the American Black Vultures that were hovering about ominously as a visual metaphor for the vendors.

We returned via the Colombian Tesco for more beers and then back to the room for a cooling shower and air con.

Around 4pm we went to the San Felipe de Barajas Fort. The walk there took us along a hideously busy intersection which was apparently a pedestrian crossing but without any actual crossing. It was a “step out and pray” situation. We also may have inhaled a year’s worth of carbon monoxide from the fumes in the few minutes we stood there. The fort was a v nice fort, clearly built to withstand many attacks from beastly brits and foul frenchies. Which it did, indeed, withstand.

We walked back and thence through town to the sea wall for some nice sunset photos and on our way back through the iguana park I noticed a group of tourists all standing looking up and pointing cameras up. As I suspected, they had located a sloth! Possibly with the help of a chancer looking for a payment but HA I cheated the system by being observant.

On the sea wall we got some lovely sunset, even the other people around us were annoying. A French girl push right up next to me with her siblings despite there being ample room and let her gross hair blow all over me. Grumble grumble. As the sun dipped below the horizon there were some fantastic clouds though, and subsequently a little bit of atmospheric lightning.

Dinner was lovely. It was a relatively quiet restaurant (we got there as it opened) and I had the fish of the day which was sea bass with mashed cassava and a salad. Very fresh and delicious! There seemed to be a battle for the playlist as it pivoted incongruously between golden era American swing, to 80s pop classics and techno.

We walked home and all the poor horses in the horse-drawn carriages made me feel sad. Definitely not well cared for. I cried when someone threw a glass bottle at grown directly under a horse, presumably to get it to bolt and piss off the driver. The horse didn’t react much and the driver seemed to think it was funny rather than being outraged. Not a nice end to the evening!

We went home, packed up and went to bed, ready for our morning flight. I definitely enjoyed my time here but 48 hours in Cartagena is more than enough for us non-party-people!