Touching South America

Set foot in Cartegena (Cart-uh-Hay-nuh, with the H being a hard h as in Achtung or charoses), Colombia today, for my 5^th continent and 41^st country with a geocache find. Africa and Antarctica are still on my bucket list.  

Nearly all 42 of us joined together for a hop on-hop off bus tour of Cartegena that started with a walking tour in Old Town. Miguel, our guide, was full of enthusiasm and was game to try geocaching even though the result turned out to be not finding the cache (aka a DNF). Before we got off the bus he let us know that the route would be flat with cobblestones and important things such as how to politely decline the numerous people who would try to sell us things (“no, gracias”) and how to get permission for a photo of a woman wearing traditional Colombian dress. He took us through the Old Town which is “old” only by “new world” standards and gave us a taste of Colombian history – turns out exactly 5 Colombians died in the Spanish Inquisition and Columbus was never here. The “cobblestones” were no problem, but there were “divots” where section of street or sidewalk were just missing and could cause serious leg injuries if one didn’t watch one’s step.

The tour was ok. It was unusual to have lots of it pre-recorded which made it rather bland but also ensured everyone got the same basic info. The architecture seemed to be a mix of very Caribbean (bright colors, goldenrod was the most common, my favorite was a lavender building with a purple balcony) and Spanish mission (what appeared at first glance to be adobe was actually coral with some sort of mud “grout”). Most buildings seemed to be 1-3 stories, and they were close together or touching the next building. One of the first places we visited was a triangular courtyard referred to as a square – calling the question of whether a 3-sided space can accurately be a “square” if it serves as a meeting place.

There was a very interesting art installation of waist high rusted metal “statues” – the first had a barber’s chair and presumably a barber, the next was someone at a sewing machine, then a 2-player game of checkers, a cobbler or shoe shiner who didn’t have a customer, then a 4-person game of dominoes, a vendor wheeling a wagon of merchandise (with a downward facing horseshoe on the front of the wagon), and finally a coffee vendor. After returning to the ship I learned that the artwork is by Edgardo Carmon, a mechanical engineer with a long career in machine design and steel-building construction who uses sheet metal and found objects in his art...and that there are other areas of the city with more of his work. 

Apparently, it’s de rigeur to take tourists to spaces labelled museo (museum) that seemed to my untrained eye to be more like storefronts. The first was a museo de chocolate – to which I had no objection, especially as there were opportunities to taste as well as purchase. Never one to miss an opportunity to taste good chocolate, I participated enthusiastically though my only purchase was strawberry sorbet which was almost as good as my homemade Hood strawberry sorbet and certainly hit the spot was the temperature was close to 30C (86F) with over 80% humidity.

This was followed by more walking and history, and a visit to Bolivar Park which had a nice statue, a quote from Martin Luther King translated into Spanish, and a traditional cache that we couldn’t find despite a thorough search. We meandered by an earth cache of a church that had a statue of a pope outside of it, then walked through a retail-focused area to our second museo, a museo de Esmeralda, aka emerald museum. I might have been more impressed had there been a single location with this particular signage and logo, but I saw a few; on the other hand, the air conditioning there was quite nice and most appreciated. It goes without saying that I did not consider a purchase there. 

From the emerald museum we detoured back to near the earthcache for an “event”. Five of us, including Alison and Derek, left fairly quickly to Hop On to the top deck of a double-decker bus for the rest of our tour. It’s an interesting city, with many white skyscrapers, tiny beaches (presumably the tide was in), lots of human-made breakers to reduce the impact of the waves from the Caribbean Sea, and the usual things one sees in cities. 

Cartegena, or at least the part we saw, has lots of bougainvillea, various types of palm trees, trees whose leaves reminded me of the magnolia in my childhood next-door neighbor’s yard, and some mangroves  or similar vegetation; other local trees tended either to have long spiky leaves or hand-sized round leaves. Many trees were quite tall, and the top deck of the bus routinely hit them. There were lots of policia wearing a variety of uniforms, and I spotted several different ambulance companies some of which seemed to be affiliated with a specific hospital. There was plenty of evidence of poverty, especially in Old Town – beggars, people selling hats/sunglasses/t-shirts for no doubt micro-wages. Not surprisingly, the tourist areas we were in had lots of tourism-focused businesses. 

The Hop On Hop Off bus brought us back to  a “make the tourists think they have actually visited Colombia” space with some birds (peacocks, parrots, and others), anteaters, and the obligatory souvenir shop. There was also a place to purchase food and drink, and I enjoyed a delicious iced passionfruit juice before returning to the ship for a shower and lunch. 

Unfortunately, The whole short walk was déjà vu for elements of what I disliked about my cruise to Alaska – the let’s create a fake “experience” to give people the illusion that they are actually "citizens of the world" and have experienced far more than they have actually been exposed to. Of note, this ship is the same company as the Alaska cruise I took several years ago (and a different brand than my 2019 landsharkz cruises were); the passenger demographic is a bit different and while there aren’t really any single deal-breaker issues there are many small (mostly fixable) things that many of us have identified could improve the experience tremendously.

All in all, today was a fine “taste” of South America and one that leaves me wanting more, though it’s probably other countries that call to me more than Colombia does.