After the mini-late night I barely managed to wake in time for our 8am cruise up the river and ot the beautiful and pictureque sandy white beaches and islands that Cartagena has is famous for.
I met up with my buddies A' and A' and after a bit of classic keystone cops of us all rushing back to our rooms a few times to get towels, bathing suits, money, cameras, etc, etc, we finally got it together and only a little later than plannned we foudn ourselves wandered on down to the pier.
On the way to the pier we passed a few bits and bobs worth taking a snap photo of, including a couple of beautiful ships that were either renovated originals or just very creative copies, named The Phantom and the Galeon Bucanero.
When we arrived the price was 10 mil pesos for the port fee, a further 35 mil for the cruise which included a free meal at the beach, but didnt include the 15 mil pesos required for the entry into the Aquarium.
The boat was a nice big boat that must have accomodated about 100 people easy, and it had to be big as we also were housing about that many kids / early teenagers in what appeared to be a large school outing for them, complete with music and party games held all day long on the upper deck. Games like how many hats and sing alongs were going on all the day and althogh at first I found it irritating, mainly as the only thing I wanted to do was get some more sleep, but by the end of the day I was joining in with all the fun.
The cruise was pretty comfy, although the windows had seen better days, as had the life jackets, but all in all it was a fun and exciting trip and yet again I was glad that I don't suffer from sea sickness as the ship was pitching up and down and from side to side quite a lot.
At the Aquarium we stopped off for about an hour and a half, which was just long enough to see it if you wanted to, and if not just a bit too long to jus sit around and wait, so both A's decided to go for a swim while I kept guard over the bags, which was fine as I hadn't got changed into my swimming trunks at this time and we still had yet to reach the beach proper.
A group of Colombian teenagers preferred to go diving from the boat that was morred up at the rear of the Aquarium and so I had a bit of fun taking photos and filming them dive in, only I missed the best as three of them all flipped in together at the very end, all very sudden and I had already put my camera away at that point.
I was surprised by the fact that the Aquarium was more outdoors than I expected and was more based around pens where various fish were living in, rather than tanks and partly because of this, the whole place was barely built above water and at many places the water had risen up around a foot higher than the level of the land and so you had to be wearing flipflops or nothing on your feet.
There were sharks, dolphins and sear turtles all just swiming around, so the place was very cool. Hoever I would avoid the local fish being sold outside the front from the local vendors. They get a couple of locals to appear to be tourists and pay around 10 mil pesos for a tiny plate of king prawns or mini lobsters for about 10 mil pesos thus trying to give you the appearance that that is a fair price, but when you consider how much of shellfish is shell and how tiny the plate they give you is, that is a fairly high price to pay, especially from a location where you can fish for them.
When we finally arrived at the beach, a mini docking boat came out to meet us, which was basically a flat bottomed skiff or such like and in two trips it conveyed us all over to the island for a couple of hours before the 2 hour journey back to the city centre.
On the beach there were the many sea shell vendors and such, selling necklaces and other souveneirs, but all for the same price you would pay back in the UK, which reminded me that this place was making a big profit from the rich Colombian tourists as much as from foreign tourists, as a good 80% of the cruise was national folk here to enjoy the weather and the beaches.
The beaches were amazing and we all took turns in having a dip, and the water was just a bit warmer than cold which was amazing and the other Colombians played a game of swimming out a bit and then letting the tide wash them back onto the beach, it was very fun to watch and be a part of.
There are plenty of massage women also wandering around the beach, which was both good and bad, as they were very hard sell, would often come back several times in a few minutes regardless of what you said, and frequently tried to fix a sale by just going up to people and start to massage them whether they asked for one or not, so you had to be very firm with them and if they came up and start to touch you very quickly tell them no or else you will end up being massaged and then be in the often awkward position of having to try and negociate a price post event.
I am a sucker for massages myself, so after a swim I let a couple of them have a bash for 20 mil pesos, which is only fairly cheap but not really worth it as they used a home made mixture of sea water and oil to rub into my skin, and did not clean their hands or run me down first so ended up just rubbing sand into my skin in places, so I would strongly advise against getting one unless you are prepared to go a bit away from the waters edge and ensure that you are all completely free of sand.
I got chatting to a fellow brit traveller, who had quite a few amazing stories to tell ( but as she has half a mind to write a book herself I wont steal them or mention then here ) but I will say that as she had a passion for languages and as she had lived in Venesuela for a couple of years to boot, her Spanish was not just good it was fluent and with an accent.
As we seemed to share a few common interests, and were both brits, we sort of got chatting and ended up sharing the journey back just sitting and talking, which was great as the guys were a little on the quiet side after the swim and the lazing on the beach.
Once it started to rain a bit, I dived inside the boat, but mild sea sickness kept the guys and my new chum E' from sitting down with me and so in no time at all I figured that getting a bit wet was preferrable to sitting down for a couple of hours alone, so up again I came and found E' who was at the front of the ship with the guide and a few of the locals.
Making my way to the front I found that she was engrossed in a cross ways conversation with a few of them, but as soon as they heard me speak in English too they quickly made room for me and by the end they were not only encouraging us to talk in English so that they could all hear and learn, but also trying to match make us up together, as to their way of thinking people our ages shoud not be single so they did what they could to throw us together, while we did our best to show good humour and play along a little just for fun.
E' also knows quite a bit about south american dancing and so once the music got going asked me if I could dance, which of course I can't, but while I'm sobre I can follow most beats in a simple one step, two step, so although we didnt wow the locals, we pleased them enough while we had a mini dance together right before the ship pulled in to dock and received a small smattering of applause, which was fun and then it was time to go back to the hotel.
I arranged to meet up with E' a bit later to grab something to eat while in the meantime I headed on back with A' and A' for a shower and a change of clothes, and it was only back in my room that I cursed myself for being stupid enough to continue to carry my watch mounted compass after my watch strap had broke as sometime during the day it had slipped out of my pocket and is snow surely lost for ever.
A' and A' were still feeling very hungry so they nipped out early to grab a bite to eat, while I did a few bits back in my room before meeting up with E' at the clock tower for a couple more hours and although the sky was grey, it was still very warm even at 8pm at night.
We grabbed a bite to eat and chatted for a few hours til it was time that she had to go back to her hostel, as she had an early start for Santa Marta in the morning, and so I headed on back and somehow managed to catch up again with A' and A' back in my hotel lobby before the three of us went out again to try the local discoteques that we had heard on the grapevine would not be as dead as they were last night.
On the way to our chosen venue, a local guy came up and told us that both the clubs we wanted had shut down months ago, but that he could guide us to a great new happenin club with very cute girls, and although we all smelled a scam we fugured we had little to lose so we went along, only long enough for us to reach it and hear about the 10 mil pesos cover charge, and to see enough cleavage on display in red lengerie for us to know that this wasn't the kind of place we were looking for and as they would not even let one of us inside to scope out the inside for ourselves we figured it was better to split rather than waste time and money in a place like this.
A few minutes later we found a different bar, after walking down streets with shady characters lurking about and found a great club very near our hotel that wasn't too expensive and had both locals and tourists, men and women all dancing together, which was exactly what we wanted, so we went on in and spent a good few hours before I had to leave.
On the same road as my hotel I passed a good sized sprinkling of what looked like wet 50 mil pesos notes all strewn on the ground, but considering there were a few policemen around and certainly plenty of vagrants very close by all doing nothing much about it I figured tha they had to be forged noted so just walked on by back to my hotel and then went to sleep.
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