Cartagena
11 March 2008 | Old Town
Randy
We spent our last day in Cartagena exploring old town again but we also visited three places that we didn't want to miss. The first was Fort San Felipe. This fort is a huge stone structure just outside of old town. It is the largest defensive complex built by the Spanish in the new world and there are miles of tunnels under the fort, many that you can explore. You get great views of the entire area from the battlements.
We also stopped by the Naval Museum. While interesting I wouldn't shot myself if I missed it next time. The architecture of the building is impressive though. Almost every where you go in Cartagena the building inspire reverie.
Our last stop was the Gold Museum. The Gold Museum was fun and had lots of gold artifacts from pre Colombian Colombia (?). My favorite part was the tangential film they show about the flood plains of the Rio Magdalena and other major rivers in Colombia and how the ancient peoples mastered the swelling rivers during rainy season with complex canals allowing agriculture to go on unhindered.
We ate dinner back at Club Nautico while we waited for Manfred to stop by with our clearance out (zarpe). We now had Margaret and Em on our crew list. I filled out forms while the girls went to the grocery store. My only request was fresh milk so that we could have lattes in the morning. They got it but it came in a bag. I had seen plastic jugs, paper cartons and even boxes but this was my first bag of milk.
After wrapping up with Manfred we made our way back to the big boat and began stowing things for sea.