Cartagena de Indias & Playa Blanca

Playa Blanca was our little bit of holiday heaven. Bright turquoise sea, white semi-deserted beaches, hammocks swaying lazily in the warm breeze, soft sun gently tanning our tired bodies, and a langoriously slow trip on a small fishing boat to get there with a local guide pointing out the coral archipelego and fishing for us on the way.

Well it might have been.

There certainly was bright blue sea. Too bad it was so rough on the way back that the roof of the big tourist boat started falling apart and we were worried whether it would make it at all.

There certainly were hammocks. Too bad that the warm breeze was a strong, chilling wind that meant we had to fight with our mosquito nets to get in and had to wrap ourselves in the hammock to stay warm and hide behind things to avoid the stinging sand.

There certainly were white-sanded beaches. Too bad that a pharmaceutical company decided to rent out our bit of sand for a corporate jolly for a host of doctors who arrived in 6 motor launches to spoil our tranquility.

And there certainly was sun. There was lots of sun. And I managed to get myself a little too much of it.

Yet despite all this.... when the sun set, and the wind dropped and we walked along amongst the drift wood on our own piece of deserted beach waiting for our fish to barbeque, it was lovely and we wouldn´t have been anywhere else.

Cartagena de Indias was the main Spanish trading port, where they expanded on the natural lagoon to create a well defended entrance to a large sheltered bay. It defended itself against attacks by many pirates (including the famed English pirate Francis Drake, although I´m not sure if we´d agree with that pirate label!). Its fortress stands proud today, never taken, although they had devised an amazing series of internal corridors with which to defend themselves if necessary. They could whisper down the walls and the sound would travel along to their comrades, whilst small nooks and clever lighting enabled the locals to hide in the corridors ready to attack without being seen.

Today the colonial architecture is proudly augmented by bright flowers and creepers falling from balconies. Tourists throng the streets and sit in cafes watching the locals go by, and stroll along the walls that did such a good job of defending the city watching the sun go down.

Then they hurry back to their timeshare appartments on the Miami-like peninsula and go eat cheap food in the warm evening.

We spent a lot of time doing the above, but mostly Cartagena to us was where we discovered the joy of couchsurfing. Find out more in the next post...