5th April

10 24.394 N
75 32.692 W

Weather; overcast, wind n/a, waves n/a

So here we are back again, it's Easter Monday but its not celebrated here in Columbia, they have a public holiday for Maundy Thursday - I thought that only the UK really knew about that, being as it is the day when the Queen hands out her "Maundy Money" to the poor but it was never taken as a public holiday in the UK as far as I can recall. Columbia doesn't miss out on the 4-day public holiday though as they have from Thursday to Monday off! Interestingly the shops here don't have hot cross buns, Easter eggs, Chocolate bunnies or Peeps for sale, Gerry is in deep depression as he is the ultimate chocoholic and this has to be the worst place that he could be stuck at Easter time, so each time you take a bite of your Easter treats give him a thought and snigger! FYI I did make a small batch of six hot cross buns and a fruit loaf out of the remainder of the mixture, so we didn't miss out entirely and to be honest they were a whole heap better than any I have ever bought from the grocery store!
I left off yesterday after telling you about the canvas saga, today's up date is a whole lot nicer for the main. Of course all of the other " boring " things that we need to do to keep the boat running have been on going, we've done laundry - because we have to (well to be honest the clothes are looking more like rags every day and I'm not sure that the laundering is really making them any better, there will be a huge bin full of clothes when we finally get home), we have been grocery shopping again on several occasions - because we have to, we haven't been too clever with it though as we tend to take off mid-morning so by the time we get to the store and finish our shopping its getting on to lunch time so we walk the long way back and stop at a burger and pizza place that we discovered. After we have had lunch there we stagger further in the heat of the day to the corner where there is an ice cream parlour, we have to stop there and have a sit down to get our breath back so we indulge in an ice cream at the same time. All of the weight we lose by walking in the heat and carrying backpacks and bags of shopping is regained by the burger and ice cream - it balances out nicely! On the odd days when we only need a couple of things Gerry takes off by himself and goes to the 24hr, mini market which is near the ice cream parlour - I don't think he stops for ice cream on those days but I can't be certain! The other boring stuff like cleaning, dusting polishing etc. have been on going - I really don't know where all the dust comes from, I think it breeds in the hidden spaces of the boat. The only place that hasn't had a good clean is the deck, we are saving that up for a last-minute scrub before we leave here as the dust and dirt from the road traffic is unbelievable and I can understand why the 3 crew members on the boat next to us are out there every day washing down and polishing the stink boat so that the owner never sees it dirty (they do a great job and keep it immaculate).
Finally we have taken a couple of days to go out and do some sight-seeing stuff as Gerry couldn't find a single job that needed his attention. Our original plan was to hop on the tourist bus which is supposed to stop outside the marina once every 40 minutes or so, in all the time we have been here I've only seen it once and Gerry has seen it twice. We went to the stop sign and were accosted by taxi drivers wanting fares and with no tourist bus in sight we asked the fare to the old city thinking that we would start there and do the self-guided walking tour. It was cheap so we hopped in the taxi and started out. We hadn't been gone for 2 minutes when Gerry asked the driver how much it would cost for the whole day, he came back with a very reasonable price of less than US$17 and a plan of the tourist spots to take us to see, Gerry jumped at the plan, I don't think he fancied doing a walking tour of the old city somehow or maybe he was just being considerate of my knee problem - we'll give him the benefit of the doubt! Instead of heading towards the old city our driver took us up the mountain to the Convent of Santa Cruz de la Popa which sits high above Cartagena at the top of Mount Popa. This historic convent dates back to the very early 1600's and in its early build was made to resemble a galley, you would need a very good imagination to tell that today as there have been various additions and renovations since then. Due to its location the views of Cartagena from the convent are spectacular and probably the best from anywhere in the region. There was of course a fee to go into the grounds but we thought it was worth doing just for the photo opportunities. Unfortunately a lot of the buildings were closed off to tourists but we still got to see the 2 chapels, the cloisters and the religious museum - it was all very interesting. Apparently the feast of the Virgen de la Candelaria de la Popa is celebrated every February to this day and pilgrims make the trek up the mountain to the convent - that's some walk and along the way there are very many dangers, tourists are advised to go by car due to the number of barrios and would be robbers that reside on the way up the mountain. We passed a whole heap of barrios and I was reminded of similar shacks that we had seen in Brazil many moons ago - there is a distinct line here between the haves and the have nots - you only have to compare these barrios with the stink boats in the marina to realise the truth of this. Any way back to the convent, which I have to say was on my list of places to visit as we didn't get to see it last time we were in Cartagena so I was happy, the down side of it was that there were "tourist junk sellers" in the car park who hassle you as you get there and as you leave, no I didn't give in and buy the rubbish they were selling! Back in the car and down the mountain and we headed towards the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a fort located on the Hill of San Lazaro which was built in the 1500s by the Spanish. It was built in a triangular shape to dominate the approaches to the city by land or sea. When we were here last time we did the tour of the fort - it was interesting, lots of walking, hot with little to no shade and not so very different from every other fort that we have ever been in so we decided that as we had already been in here once we didn't need to do the tour of it again but did a drive by and photo stop or two as we didn't have photos from last time.
I asked the driver to stop at the Old Boots sculpture though which was close by - we had seen this sculpture from the fort last time (at a great distance) but we never went to see it close up, I didn't want to miss it this time around. We pulled up at the appropriate place, jumped out of the car, avoided the "tourist crap" sellers and made our way to see the sculpture, which was surprisingly free of people so we took our photos just before the next lot of tourists arrived and headed off. This sculpture was made to commemorate a local poet Luis Carlos Lopez who spent most of his life in Cartagena and wrote the poem A Mi Ciudad Nativa (to my native city) a copy of which is etched in a slab next to the boots. At various times over the years the boots have been cleaned and shone, we saw them in their dirty well-worn state as the photos that I will post will show.
From the Old Boots we headed towards the old city walls and began driving up and down the various streets with our driver pointing out various places and sights along the way, we had seen all of this last time but wanted an overview of the place as we were going to do a walk around to check it out the next day. We did notice that the place seemed generally in a more run-down condition than we had seen on our previous visit and that there were lots of the old private houses that were either boarded up or undergoing construction work to turn them into hotels. The flower filled balconies which we were so enamoured with on our last visit seemed to have become fewer and farther between which was very sad to see. As we drove around I expressed an interest in the door knockers of the old city, knowing that they had historic roots in the type of trade that the owner of the building was engaged in, our driver obligingly pointed out many of them as we drove very slowly past so that I could take photos. The main ones that we saw fell into the four following groups -
The lion meant that the building belonged to the military or church,
The lizard meant that the owner was part of or descended from the royal family.
The fish or sea creature meant that the owner was a sea merchant or had a trade related to the sea.
The hand or hands meant the owner was of a religious family or clergy.
Whilst we saw a few other deviations from these groups I could find no explanations as to their roots, maybe they were creative deviations. They were certainly interesting and many were quite elaborate and beautiful. The other thing to note here is that the doors to the buildings tend to be huge with a smaller inset door, the reason for this apparently is that the huge doorway was/is used to allow horse and carriages/ moving trucks through whilst everyday movement of pedestrians and small traffic use the small doorway. These doors keep the inner courtyards cool and private by reducing the amount of sun beating down on them whilst allowing cool air to penetrate and preventing prying eyes observing the goings on inside the property. Many of the hotels that have opened up have open access to their courtyards and these are almost always set out as courtyard cafes or bars spectacularly full of green vegetation, water features and lots of bougainvillea in a riot of glorious colours and they are always cool to sit in. Eventually we had driven around the entire old city, it was time to stop and have some lunch. We let our taxi driver choose where we were going to eat, thinking that he might have a place that he knew well, anyway he deposited us at a cafeŽ and parked the taxi before joining us at which point he told us that he hadn't been to this particular place before - so much for insider knowledge! The three of us all ordered what the menu described as a "sea rice soup" - it was anyone's guess what we would be getting. As it turned out it was a huge bowl of sloppy risotto packed full of every sort of sea food imaginable and rice - it was delicious and we all ate our fill, after which we decided it was time for a siesta and we had the taxi driver drop us back to the marina where we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on the boat. We managed to do a catch up this last week and had 2 meals out with the Cuzzie Bros along with a couple who "live" here on their boat, Jess and Kenny. I say "Live" here under caution, they arrived here on their boat about 10 years ago and haven't left - what they are doing isn't quite legal, they just move from anchorage to anchorage around the place and keep a low profile from what we could gather, I can't say that I blame them it's a good spot to live and quite cheap. The Cuzzie Bros intended to leave for Panama on Monday but it was Wednesday before they finally hauled their anchor up and left, we will be seeing them again in Panama as they are having some work done so will still be there when we arrive. Anyway I think that's enough for part 2 of the catch-up, I've uploaded a few photos to the gallery for you to keep yourselves amused with and before anyone comments on the spelling of some of them - I already know, I hadn't checked the spellings before trying to upload them and the up-load process takes so long that there was no way I was going back to correct the spellings , the ones in the blog are the correct spellings for the various places! I will finish the catch-up tomorrow.