25 Days of Summer: The Caribbean Coast Part I

The Caribbean.

Our brief stay in Medellin ended exactly the way it began: with a middle of the night dash across town on our bikes, with only an approximate idea of where we were going.  At this stage of our trip we can't be bothered with maps, and after a quick scan of the hostel map we took the hell-for-leather approach to late night urban cycling and arrived at the bus station puffed, about half an hour later. The station was on 3 levels, we arrived at the top and our bus was leaving at the bottom and no, there was no ramps or other convenient vertical transportation options so we just rolled the bikes down three flights of stairs in the main concourse which startled other passengers but we had our eyes on the prize - a bus to the coast!

We arrived the next morning in Cartegena and were immediately hit with a blast of tropical heat, as the temperatures here hover around 30 degrees all year and all day. As usual the bus terminal was miles away, we had no map and there had been very heavy rain overnight, turning the roads into mudbaths. And we were wearing mountain clothes including polar fleece pants. So we got lost, twice, and turned a 4km ride into a 16km ordeal. At one point we seemed to be cycling through a fish market. With no accommodation booked we rode up to the best looking one in the guidebook where we were turned away as they were full. We we standing on the street dripping with sweat and muddy road water when behind us we heard "cyclistas! hola! como estas?" as another cyclist came running towards us. She had spent a year and a half cycling up from Ushuaia so was possibly the only cyclist in the Americas who was even slower than us. She was planning on catching a sailboat across to Panama and then continuing up to Alaska. We think shes crazy, but she put us onto some other places to stay just around the corner, which had air conditioning in our room (yess). She probably thought we were crazy, covered in mud wearing polar fleece when it was so hot.

After a cold shower and a quick change into shorts we headed off for a day of strolling the historic old town, famous for being the post that the Spanish shipped all their gold from South America back to Spain, and for being attacked by pirates. It is almost completely as it was 500 years ago and has been completely restored so every street looks like a postcard. The following day we visited a mud volcano, which is a natural volcano that spurts mud instead of lava and is meant to have theraputic properties, but was mostly just fun. It's amazing how bouyant you are in mud, we couldn't touch the bottom no matter how hard we tried. The locals were naturally in on the act, giving massages, taking photos and giving washdowns in the lagoon afterwards whether you wanted it or not (including the unexpected removal of swimwear) and then charged you for it. Protests of "but I can wash myself!" fell on deaf ears.

Cartegena, old town.

That night Ben offered to take Anna out for a fancy dinner in the old town to celebrate making it to the top of South America. We dressed up in our nicest clothes, Anna in a dress she brought in Santiago and Ben in his monochrome navy travel pants and travel shirt. It was too hot for Ben to be wearing pants, plus he had to wear his travel shoes to complete the look so was a ball of sweat by the time we had walked 20 metres from the hostal. Wanting change from 100,000 pesos limited our dining options to a stylish pizza joint on an historic plaza. Unfortunately the only table left was right next to the pizza oven so things were warm (read: we might as well have been in the oven, it was so hot). After our dinner we desperately needed some air and Ben suggested a romantic horse and carridge ride, as it seemed to be the thing to do here. After picking what we hoped was a nice carridge and making a bad attempt at bargining a price we were off at high speed. We spent the first half of our ride trying to take photos but nothing was turning out crisp (due to the reckless speed of our driver and bumpiness of the cobblestones) and after we both had a go and got into a grump because it wasn't working we decided to put it away and just enjoy the ride. This, of course was just part of Bens plan as just as our carridge was lurching into another high speed turn on the cobblestones he bravely attempted to get down on one knee and proposed. Anna marvelled at his James-Bond-like ability to kneel in a high speed carridge and quickly said yes before he fell out. We were both super excited an missed the rest of the ride but we're sure it was nice.

Us, post question asking.

We celebrated afterwards with champagne and dessert at a much fancier place than the pizza joint. Ben wisely hadn't brought a ring, reasoning that the "3 months salary rule" meant that as he currently had no salary no ring was required. And because he probably would have brought the wrong one, and because he'd probably be ripped off, and because we´d be stressed about losing it the whole time. (A good move as it turns out as we would certainly have got it stolen in Tanganga)

Celebrations.

After sending off brief 3 line emails to our families the next morning we promptly caught a boat to Playa Blanca (where there was no internet) for 3 days. We camped in the beach there, ate fish caught in the ocean offshore, snorkled and got very sunburnt. Anna wasn't impressed by the local crab population that emerged each night, making sitting outside stressful. Particularly memorable were the giant dinner-plate sized climbing crabs, which climbed poles around the hammocks and tents.

Playa Blanca: Sun, sand, snorkling and gaint crab sightings.