The REAL Cartagena
08 November 2010 | Cartagena, Columbia
Ralph
Yesterday the rain finally stopped. It has been raining of and on for most of the time we have been here. We have also been busy trying to organize our boat projects. We have a guy that comes highly recommended that is going to fix our sail, make a new Bimini and re-cover our salon cushions. Today we are supposed to go and pick out fabric, but it is raining again, so we shall see if that happens. We also have been doing some boat projects. The head in our hull has been leaking and I had bought a maintenance kit while back home this summer. But I could NOT get the stupid thing apart to install the new seals. After many attempts and finding that other parts were corroding away, I decided to just replace it.
On Saturday, we got together with a Les and Sarah from Wild Matilda to exchange movies and then they invited us to go with them to the mall. We both were looking at buying an external hard drive and they knew we could get one there. The mall was only a 15 minute walk from Club Nautico and they had lots of stores, a movie theater and AIR CONDITIONING. They have a store just like Home Depot that seemed well stocked. But things are not cheap here and I don't know how the regular person affords to buy anything on their wages.
We took advantage of the nice weather yesterday and walked over to the old city. We first walked around the area that is frequented by locals - there were lots of street vendors selling fruit, veggies, fish and clothes. The market area is massive in size and I think we only saw a small portion of it. There was all kinds of food vendors as well selling empanadas, papas reanas plus a bunch of other stuff we did not recognize and did not try as we did not want to spoil our appetite for lunch. We also went into the Centro district, which is where the real old buildings are and lots of tourists. There was a cruise ship in port, so this area is overrun with tourists and the prices reflected that. This area reminded me of Old Havana or a little like New Orleans. It was very cool and we also saw just a small part of it. Hopefully the weather smartens up soon and we can make more trips into the city. There was lots of little side streets, open plaza's and parks with trees and statues. Those Spanish sure like their statues. I realy liked what I saw yesterday and look forward to spending some time exploring around. We need to go in the evening when they dancers come out and the place really comes to life.