Tag: Photos

Cartagena’s Tourist Area

The guidebooks call it “The Old City,” or “The Walled City,” and the locals merely call it “El Centro” but either way they’re talking about a beautiful place to visit. Cartagena’s tourist area is a compelling mess of narrow streets filled with colorful buildings, art, crafts and people. Visitors to the city flock here for many reasons.

The Walled City of Cartagena

 The exterior of the old city is marked by an old stone wall, which makes for a great walk overlooking the sea at dusk when the blazing sun isn’t burning you to a crisp. The wall runs for 11km and encompasses the port and the old city, including Getsemani.

Horse drawn carriages mix with taxis in the roads, and tourists work around vendors on the sidewalks. Stroll around and see beautiful old buildings, modern art sculptures, craft stalls and lovely plazas.

Cartagena Teatro
Teatro in Old City Cartagena
Get Lost in the Streets

I visited the old town multiple times over the course of my stay in this city, and “lost” every time, but I always saw something new and lovely. For me, getting lost in the streets of Cartagena’s tourist area is a day well spent. I loved wandering the streets taking countless photos of the gorgeous surroundings.

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Last Few Days of Volunteering: Ending on a high note

After four weeks, my time volunteering is over. The last few days of volunteering have definitely not been boring! The kids don’t even know it’s my last week, but they still made my life interesting and fun.

Things that happened this week:

  • A little girl threw up all over herself and the little boy sitting next to her – fortunately they were outside. They do have a shower here to wash them when these things happen! I didn’t know! The little boy was sitting there with puke on him for a few minutes when I finally took him and washed it off his legs. No one noticed lol. The little girl was still seated for lunch. She didn’t eat.
  • A little boy peed himself and continued to sit in it looking at himself until someone noticed and took him to the shower. He did the same thing the next day only he was standing outside. Just stood looking at the wet ground until someone took him away. He did it again today. Is this a hat trick?
  • A little girl tried to bite me.
  • Massive food fights in the cafeteria (I cheated though because that happens every day)
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The Beautiful Islas De San Bernardo

The beautiful Islas De San Bernardo, combined with the Islas Rosario (where I dove outside of Cartagena), make up one of Colombia’s national parks. There are 9 coastal coral islands in San Bernardo and I was going to stay on one of them, Isla Mucura.

These southernmost islands are much less busy than the Rosario islands, which makes sense since Cartagena is much busier than Tolu.

Getting There

The manager of the hotel I was booked into arranged for my passage on the launch on Saturday morning between 8:30-9am. We left at 9:15. But not before everyone had to walk into the ocean and climb a ladder to get onto the boat! Not kidding, even the old folks climbed this ladder. And they were quite agile!

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