Colombia is the 4th largest country in South America. Cartagena is a large Caribbean beach resort city on it's north coast between Venezuela and Panama. The average temperature here is in the mid 80’s but average humidity is high at 90% although they rarely get hit by hurricanes. It is a popular tourist destination and the old colonial walled city and fortress was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. The wall was built by the Spanish over a 200 year time frame and completed in the mid 1700’s so as to protect the city from pirates. Spanish galleons were carrying gold and silver from mines in Peru back to Spain from Cartagena. It as also known for being one of only two ports in Caribbean authorized to trade African slaves. After 275 years of Spanish rule, in 1811 Cartagena declared its independence. Today, besides tourism Cartagena is also the busiest container port in Colombia and 3rd in grain transportation. Shopping is good in Cartagena and an almost mandatory souvenir is Colombian coffee. Colombia is also known for it gold and emeralds.
After a little room service breakfast this morning I finally decided to go down and see the ship's doctor. He told me to take 3 Advil every 8 hours and not to exercise. Duh! At 10am I went to a lecture given by Terry Breen in the theatre. Terry was a lecturer on our 2010 world cruise also. She is, put it mildly, an incredible lecturer on every area of the world. She will be doing 28 different lectures on the 72 day cruise. Today's topic was "an introduction to South America" and "the history of Cartagena". After lunch (today was "burger day" on the pool deck) we went up to the Observation Lounge so as to watch as we sailed into Cartagena Bay. We are now docked and most passengers are off on tours. We cancelled our tour which was "Bay cruise on a Spanish Galleon". We will be spending the night at dock here and will not leave until 1pm tomorrow. Depending on how I feel in the morning we may do the tour we have scheduled for then. Tonight I will go up on deck and try to get some night photos of Cartagena for you. Since we are in port tonight they are sitting up to have "Dinner under the Stars" up on the pool deck. They did this a couple of times on our 2010 world cruise also. It will be a barbeque dinner. We will be going to the dining room as usual as like air conditioning over stars. It is 88F now at 4pm. I will get some photos for you though. Our side of the ship at the dock does not have a great view. We are looking at the container ship docks. YUK! But do have some yachts and sailboats to look at too. Show tonight is a local folkloric show up on pool deck.
You will see in my photos the "new" part of Cartagena. The old city has a 10 mile long wall around it. Built by the Spanish to protect Cartagena and it's gold from the pirates. If we go on tour tomorrow may get some photos of that. I will wait until tomorrow afternoon after we leave to put my Cartagena pictures on this blog.
