GHOST

Al from Sunboy welcomed us into Cartagena with his big Ozzie grin and firm hand shake. We hadn't seen Sunboy since New year at Mustique. He introduced us to David, a customs agent and general fixer. Somewhat surprisingly his office; his 4 door, bright red, bling bling hubs and oversized buck seat Chrysler something was parked outside the very rundown Club Nautico marina which was being rebuilt but due to; local burocracy, a greedy mayor and an Aussie owner that disappeared into a south American jail for drug trafficking, building had been suspended! After handing our passports over to Dave, a relative stranger on the side of the road by all accounts, we headed for some coffee and internet. Soon Jay turned up in a taxi and it was great to welcome him back to GHOST for our continuing adventure to Oz. As the sun set after a couple of welcome beers on the boat we headed to the local pizza restaurant with Sunboy for some cheap but truly delicious and enormous pizza's - Kat thought these were the best since Naples. However given the relatively rough trip to Cartagena we were all pretty tired so headed back to the boat for an early night.

The following day we hit the old town to explore and tick off a few boxes from the cultural list of things to see, with a visit to the gold museum, the ramparts and generally just absorbing the vibe. The town is a real mix of towering skyscraper apartment blocks (where the wealthy in Columbia come to party in December and January) and the cosy old town with narrow cobbled streets and balconies. This place really grows on you as the prices are really cheap (once you figure out the crazy exchange rate) with a taxi to the old town costing about US$2.5 (or 5000 pesos, commonly referred to as 5 mil), and a tasty 3 course set lunch for US$7.5 (15 mil) and the people are really friendly.

I'd had been dreaming of a proper medium-rare steak for a couple of months so we headed out to a rather more expensive but well deserved steakhouse in the evening and then visited a bar up on the city walls called "Cafe del Mar" (no link to the one in Ibiza) where we met up with a friend of Jay's, Rosa, a local who was great fun. The bar was really atmospheric with chilled out music and a good supply of beers for all but Kat (still on antibiotics) and before we knew it, it was midnight!

We had decided to cut our stay in Cartagena a little shorter than planned as we were SO keen to get to the San Blas islands and have a swim as the water in Cartagena Bay was awful. So we had one more day of jobs on the boat and sorting out boring internet stuff, followed by, yes you guessed it another yummy pizza and then headed off the following morning. We are looking forward to some waterskiing (yes we got some), kitesurfing and snorkelling in the beautiful waters of the San Blas as well as visiting the kuna tribe - by far the most culturally unique and independent people so far on our trip.

For pics see: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/bradmcmaster1/Cartagena#

Brad