Cartagena - day one, a tour of ancient buildings. Plus the beach, of course!

So, we are now in the morning of 16th December! I think this is the first time I have celebrated Christmas in anything other than a cold climate. Last year, I was in Ukraine and that was cold for sure! So, in the heat of Cartagena - much warmer than Pereira - I found it strange to see Christmas decorations and to hear carols in the music in supermarkets. We took a taxi and Nini had the idea of paying the driver to take us to one or two locations. Sure, we could have taken the tourist bus which would have been cheaper but we only had two days. Nini said that she was more interested in buildings than the beach.

The photo shows the area called Bocagrande which is where our hotel was situated.

We went first of all to La Popa which appears rather like a monastery on the top of a hill (I took the photo from La Popa). In fact it was a centre for worship of the Devil!



After la Popa, our taxi took us to las Fortificaciones de Cartagena, a fort designed to repel the evil British who arrived in a large fleet in the 16th Century. I'm not sure of my facts here so I will update this post from Wikipedia!! There is an absolute rabbit's warren of tunnels inside the fortificaciones, it is a good thing that we had a guide otherwise we would stll be there. I wrote this on Monday 19th, the day after we got back. After we left our taxi, we went to a centre commercial (shopping mall) for some lunch and then went back to the hotel. I wanted to swim in the hotel pool and Nini came too, but just watched my sinuous (or is is sensuous?) stroke from a lounger. We soon got bored and decided to go to the beach which is where we spent the rest of the day. Nini had a massage but I won't publish the photos here to save her blushes.

Lots of photos of Nini but I'm not in love, honest! For sure she is physically attractive to me but she is my friend, so I have to put aside any impure thoughts. I would not have come here if I had not met her in the first place. So I have her to thank for that. I am sure my main attraction is money; trips to places which otherwise she could only dream about. But it is more than that, I am part of her family now. They seem to like me, her mum, her sister Luisa. Nini has a strong, proud personality which is not always easy to handle but I have enormous respect for her.

On our way back from the beach, we met a girl outside a travel agent with a brochure of exactly what I had planned for the next day. I had simply in my mind, "the islands". What the excursion included was a bus to Playa Blanca to the south of Cartagena, a boat to the island of Sta Marta where there is an oceanarium. And then we booked a night on a disco-bus.

After a shower in the hotel, we went out for a meal, an Italian restaurant, very expensive with awful wine. And in the next post I write about our two excursions...