My parents had also booked themselves a "premium room" with its own terrace and pool. There was one afternoon when the main pool was full of adults quietly relaxing, so we were glad for my parents little pool to dunk the kids in.
We got to Cartagena right around lunch time, so priority number one was finding food. The hotel recommended a couple restaurants down the street with air conditioning, and we ended up at one called Maria. The decor was really interesting. We especially liked the pineapple chandeliers.
Most of the menu was seafood and fish, which we were fine with. We manged to find some steak for Vivian and mango juice and french fries for Elena. With our bellies full, we went back to the hotel to enjoy the pool for a little bit before our evening activity, a carriage ride through the old city.
I had read some things about the horses being mistreated, so I was a bit nervous, but the travel agency we booked through, Guianza Express, seems to have gotten carriage drivers who take good care of their horses, because they looked very healthy. It turned out to be a great way to see the city. We had two carriages and a tour guide. They picked us up at 5:30, just as the sun began to set. The girls were thrilled.
We went slowly enough to take in the city, but fast enough to have a bit of a breeze which made it so pleasant. As far as I can tell, every street in the old part of the city is beautiful. It was hard to get pictures with the movement and the darkness, but we got a couple.
We finished off the evening with dinner in the hotel's restaurant, Alma. We discovered that they served enormous gin and tonics and delicious grilled octopus.
The next morning we went back to Alma for the breakfast buffet. We had established "our table" on the patio, next to a sofa for the girls to lounge on when they were done eating. The service, both in the hotel and the restaurant, was fantastic. They were ready to help us with anything we needed, and everyone was great with the girls.
After breakfast, we met up with our guide from the night before, Daniel, and our driver for the day, Wilmer, to take a tour of the city. We started by driving to Convento de la Popa, which is up above the city and gives you a great view of both the old and the new.
The convent itself was lovely too.
There's an annual pilgrimage to bring La Virgen de la Candelaria up the hill. She gets a new handmade dress every year too.
Our next stop was San Felipe fort. It was quite hot, and a bit of a steep climb to the top, so Mom opted to stay in the van with the girls while Jeff, Dad, Judy, the guide, and I climbed to the top.
There was another great view from up there.
Our guide took us exploring through the tunnels and gave us a brief history of the major battles fought in Cartagena.
Then we had time to take some pictures of the canons and the bell that sounded to warn of attack.
We made our way back down to find two very happy girls whose safta had bought them ice cream. Our last stop of the day was at an emerald museum and store. We had a separate guide for that part. She showed us the different types of rocks that are found while mining for emeralds. Elena was fascinated.
We could also see the jewelers at work.
Then she took us upstairs to the museum where we learned about where in Colombia emeralds are mined,
the history of emeralds including how Cleopatra introduced them,
and how ancient civilizations threw them and other precious materials into deep volcanic lakes as part of their worship practice. This is where the legend of El Dorado comes from.
We finished by seeing a series of interesting emerald formations and learning about the different shades emeralds can come in.
Of course, after all that, we had to buy some emeralds of our own. My mom got a beautiful ring with three emeralds. The 40th anniversary is supposed to be rubies, but we figured, might as well go with what you've got. Emeralds are supposed to be for the 55th anniversary, so my parents are just planning ahead. My mom also got my sister and I lovely rings with single emeralds. Ours were in silver, so they weren't very expensive. I'm happy now because I have my jade from Thailand on one hand and my emerald from Colombia on the other.
The shopping took a while, so a shout out to the patient supporting players.
After that, everyone was ready for lunch. Our guide took us to a great restaurant called Monte Sacra for lunch which, ironically, was above another emerald museum.
We decided that it was one of the best meals we had our whole trip in Cartagena. Mom was especially pleased with her fish.
I had an absolutely delicious "white fish" smothered in a cream sauce with shrimp and mushrooms, yum!
After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a rest and a swim before our evening adventure, a sunset cruise followed by dinner on the water. The hotel organized it for us, and they had originally offered us a three hour cruise, but once I realized the size of the Cartagena bay, I asked them to change it to two hours, which still involved some leisurely floating around. We all really enjoyed it though. The sunset was lovely and the breeze on the water was perfect.
The girls started to fade a little towards the end.
But Vivian perked right up when Captain Alfredo invited her to sit on the bow.
We all got a kick out of arriving at a restaurant by boat. The food wasn't as good as what we had for lunch, but we love eating on the water, so everyone enjoyed themselves.
Our Thursday adventure took us about an hour outside of Cartagena to the National Aviary. It's fairly new, really well laid out, and interesting. It helped that we had our guide Daniel with us again, and he knew a lot about the birds. Many of the birds are rescued from being kept as pets, so a lot of them just wander around the park waiting for their photo op.
We got maps at the beginning and Elena noticed that there were flamingos on the map. She held on to that map as we were walking around and kept asking when we were going to get to the flamingos. Luckily, there were other birds along the way to distract her, as well as the occasional iguana.
We were most impressed by the harpy eagle. It was huge! The picture doesn't do it justice.
It eats howler monkeys and iguanas. The aviary only has a female. They tried to bring her a male to mate with, but she killed him because he was too old. Needless to say, she is enclosed and not flying around free. You can see rabbit fur tufts on her enclosure. The keepers release live rabbits in there, so that she can hunt. She refuses to eat food that is already dead. Gotta respect that bird.
Finally, to Elena's delight, we found the flamingos!
We hung out and watched them for a while. They were pretty cool. There were a couple of times where they flew/ran as a group from one side of the lake to the other. Elena was duly impressed. Of course, being Elena, she declared that all pink birds were flamingos, including the scarlet ibis we saw later on.
We finished our visit with a short bird show. It was in Spanish and okay, but it was nowhere near as good as having our own personal guide to take us around the place.
We were all pretty out of it on the ride back to the city. We got back in time for lunch, rest, and the pool. We went to Carmen for dinner that night. It had come highly recommended, but it was one of those pretentious restaurants with fru fru food. For example, we asked for pasta with butter for the girls, and they only had pasta made from yucca. We went for it, and then they decorated the girls' plates with a bunch of little flower petals. Why would you do that?? Judy and I spent several minutes picking them all out, so that the girls could eat. We didn't tell them about the yucca, and they ate it, but Vivian sensed that something was amiss. Poor Elena though had the roughest time. She had gotten a yummy strawberry smoothie in a glass, but the glass slipped out of her hands and crashed to the floor. She was so upset, not about the lost smoothie, but about the broken glass. Thank goodness Judy managed to calm her down by showing her pictures on her phone.
We could tell it was about time to go home. On our last morning, I left Jeff and the girls hanging out in the room and went for a walk to get some pictures of the beautiful city of Cartagena.
Cartagena is hot and humid, but so beautiful it's worth suffering the heat to walk around and enjoy it.
After a quick and easy flight, we were back in our cool Bogotá. We took my family to our favorite Italian place for dinner and agreed that the trip to Cartagena had been fabulous.
