Day three of Cartagena and the rains came down

I had arranged to meet my Cartagenan friend M' this morning and once she arrived we went to grab some breakfast at a delighful little place just down the road from the hotel. It was arty, mordern and had both comfy chairs and a book exchange section, plus the breakfast with eggs, fresh warm bread, a hot chocolate and orange juice which was so good I knew that I would have to try and find it again soon.

After grabbing some beakfast the rain started up lightly and over the course of the day it got heavier and heavier.

M' and I went up to the old Spanish port castle, which was super, the entrance fee was almost nothing at all, and if it wasn't for the rain I could easily have stayed up there for ages just taking in the sights and smells. The place is remarkably well preserved and apart from the cannons being rusted solid the place has a timeless romance and feel to it, and even without any previous historical knowledge or education it would not be hard to imagine the place at its height, filled with spanish soldiers, gunpowder and indiginous slaves and traders milling around.

The castle itself is high on a hill, overlooking Cartagena centre, the river estuary and has a few tunnels that run deep underground and beneath the very river itself, that you can visit and travel along, but being that far down and with the rain already beating down hard venturing deep into the earth didn't have enough appeal to lure down for long before I wanted to go somewhere dry.

We made our way back to my hotel and as we went the rain started to come down even heavier until the lows of the roads around the city centre flooded and it became hard to move about unemcumbered, and certainly any photos I would take would have just a horrid dark grey skyline and close up buildings ill lit themselves.

We tried to speak a little in both Spanish and English, but soon I had exhausted my vocabulary yet again after the frequently asked questions had all been asked, and soon I was either repeating myself or dropping back into English and hoping that she could understand if i kept it simple enough.

Around dinner time we figured on being lazy and ordering in a chinese or an Italian, but we couldn't find any restaruants that were open and would deliver in the current storm raging outside, so in the end we chose a pizza place very close to us, yet still it took them over an hour as they were initally waiting for the rain to stop before we chased them for it and explained that the rain was not only not going to stop but also was not our problem and was the reason why we was using them and not someone else.

By the time the pizza arrived the rain was so loud that we could hear it with the door closed and over the noise of the rooms aircon unit and the television and I almost felt sorry for the delivery woman, that was until I saw the price of the pizza and at around 40 mil pesos for a medim pizza and a couple of bottles of coke I lost all sympathy and for a second hoped I was back in the UK or in the US, where is the pizza is late beyond a certian time you would be entitled to accept it for free.

With very few films on at the cinema I checked the weather forcast on my laptop and was saddened to know that it would be even worse weather tomorrow, but at least on Thursday the weather should remain dry enough to do a proper daytime visit of the city centre, its museums and take some outdoor photos, as the folks back home love to see photos of me.

Despite being almost caged indoors all day, the rooms facitlies was comfortable and with the good company of M' I had a nice evening and went to bed at a normal time, hoping to wake to a dry morning and trying to remember how to get back to the restaurant where we had breakfast this morning.