Saturday 4th July 2015
Woke up late around 10.30am. Met Clare and Ryan around 11.30am at the Palace of Inquisition. We did a guided visit. It was the palace where the witches used to be trialed and killed, starting in 1610 when it was built. The torture instruments were pretty yuk! Picture of the main court from some stairs.
This is a maquette of how Cartagena used to look at the time.
This is Ignacio Munoz Jaraba, the guy who stopped the Inquisition and trials of the witches and fought for the independence of Cartagena.
Out in the Parque Bolivar, a bit after the visit.
Street vendors
Selling, in the shade of the church
And more and more vendors, in the beautiful street setting, Calle Hon San Pedro.
Colombia hat anyone? T-shirt? Sunglasses?
We had some nice lunch in a place called La Brioche with air con. And then continued walking. Here is the plaza Tore del Reloj, deserted in the hot hour of the day. It feels like 34-38 degrees today, so sticky!
Whoohoo, guess what we did after? We walked to the orange area on the map, ouh la la. And it was alright. It is actually called Getsemani. A bit less pretty, a bit more people hanging around in the streets but was fine. Didn´t feel in danger. I was happy to be with Clare and Ryan though as I just would not have dared go alone not knowing the area. But it was alright.
Here is the Theatre Colon.
A funny statue
The street
A bridge going to another part of Cartagena, big skyscrappers
Some cool wall art
In front the castle that we decided to go visit the next day maybe
Hairdresser and friends in the street
Busy street
Another busy street
The buildings
Vendors under the arcades
At that stage, Clare and Ryan left to go relax and enjoy the pool at their hotel for the day before the last day of their 3 weeks holiday in Colombia, which I totally understand! And I went towards the Tourism Office to ask where I could find an internet cafe to start blogging. I crossed this plaza which was still deserted as the weather was still really hot.
At the Tourism Office there was this map giving a better idea of the different areas of Cartagena centre
Full Cartagena size
On my way to the internet cafe, I saw a Desigual shop, this awesome brand from Spain which is spreading everywhere in Europe at the moment but that I haven’t seen in Australia yet. It was crazy to see it there. Sounds like there is a really rich population too in Cartagena that can afford the 100 dollars dress! I love their clothes but they are very expensive!
After catching up on emails, surfing a bit and blogging, I was kicked out of the cafe, bought some food to cook in the evening in the hotel kitchen and went around at sunset time. There was this girl with the guitar posing for the photographer in the counter light.
And I saw my first sunset on the sea since a long time, as Australia sunset on the east coast is always on the land!
Saying that, the sun actually disappeared before it reached the water!
In the very low light of just sunset time, there were those wonderful scenes I grabbed in black and white. This guy was waiting for a couple doing some pre-wedding photography.
He was part of a bigger setting in front of the Teatro Heredia.
I fell in love with this white wall which was a perfect frame for some cool picture to come in, but didn’t really get the right setting though. This looks like a movie scene, waiting for a carriage to go by, some interesting characters, some drama maybe. Loved this place!
As it was getting dark, I went back to the hotel and cooked some basic tomato salad and rice with tuna for a cheap traveller meal after the big splashing we did for dinner on the first day, which was awesome and where we treated ourselves a lot!
And then I discovered that behind the reception there was a living room, with three computers. And I could happily blog about Cartagena. Which I happily did all evening, yeah. Getting back into the blogging mode. Although I doubt that I will find that much time in the near future to blog so much, apart from tomorrow maybe. As I am not carrying a netbook and an x-drive as I used to do in my South-East Asia trip, I am still figuring out how I am going to back up photos. Uploading them on dropbox is an option, but very very slow. I bought lots of micro SD cards and willing to use them to transfer my cards to them once full and then do 2 copies, one I ship home, one I keep until the one I shipped home arrives. Let´s see how this system works. The toughest is to sort out every day the photos to not finish with countless shots to sort out at the end!
Tomorrow another day in Cartagena, then off to Santa Marta!
Pom explores 