a travelers dream

cartegena has been a travelers dream.
a place not so overrun by tourists that it has lost its natural flavor. a place cheap enough to live the high life. a place that has extra cheap options for when you have run out of money trying to live the high life. a beautiful colonial city with brightly painted houses, newly cobbled cobblestone streets and outdoor cafes and bars open 24 hours a day. a place where everything makes sense.

there are some places you can go where things dont make sense. for example, cuenca is a colonial town, but you kind of have to use your imagination a bit to think about what it may have looked like in its heyday. montañita has nice juice stands all around the town, but you kind of get the impression that these are there because there is some vague idea going around town that tourists like fruit and juices and thats why they are there. in cartegena, you can be sitting around one of the many outdoor cafes that serve real coffee not nescafe and see women walk by carrying baskets of fruit on their head, watermelons, papayas, canteloupes, pineapples, etc. advertising that they make fruit salad, not just for tourists, but because people like eating fruit salad. there are juice stands that line the avenue overlooking the bay that make extra large fruit juices for everyone, but if you go there, you will likely be the only tourist at the stand, everyone else being on their way to work or out with their family. while drinking a 32 ounce pineapple/carrot juice this morning a family sat down with us, the juice seller obviously knew the kids and managed to get the little baby girl to laugh after a number of attempts at pinching her cheek. for those family members who didnt want juice, the juice stand also fried fishes and they ate that for breakfast instead.

there is never a reason to go inside in cartegena. all the food you could ever want is outside. morning coffee? outdoor cafe, or, there are guys - about 2 per block - that walk around with plastic cups and thermoses full of real brewed coffee. why is real brewed coffee such a treasure in this land of plentiful coffee? well, because it is impossible to get. it is underappreciated in ecuador and peru and shipped off to the united states almost 100% juice? i mentioned above. snack? you cant walk three feet in cartegena without running into a fruit stand that sells mangoes the size of heads, avocados the size of bowling balls and coconuts cut open so you can drink the juice. plus some other fruits you have never seen or heard of before. they have their own regional sweets that everyone eats. most of which are coconut based mixed with other fruits or flavors, such as dulce de leche and things like that. lunch and dinner are equally easy to find on the streets. there are barbeque stands everywhere selling chicken, sausages and some other more organy parts of animals smoking all day long. also, there are rows and rows of stands selling sea food, cups of shrimp, mussels, oysters in a ketchupy sauce. the restuarants that are affordable (there are many expensive and fancy restaurants and places here - anna and i actually got turned away from a museum for wearing shorts (though i cant imagine that anyone would want to wear pants here in the land of the 90 degree cold season) and this after months of being treated not only as though we might have money in our pockets but that we may in fact be made of money) are nothing special, though you can get modongo for pretty cheap, so then all the more reason to spend the entire day outside.

there is a whole lot of construction going on here. in fact, it is quite an accomplishment to get from one side of the street to another. every day, or seemingly by the hour, construction sites move and routes you have taken and gotten used to will be cut off. no matter though, people routinely walk through and over barriers, motorcyclists lift tape and ride underneath them. i dont mind the costruction so much. it shows that the city cares about itslef and the parts that are done are pretty. the sidewalks will soon be all brick, and the streets will all be paved - no problem. this work goes on all day and all night as there is no reason to stop or go inside.

tomorrow we are headed to an island nearby to spend a couple of nights on an undensely populated beach. we will be sleeping in hammocks and paying about $3 per night for shelter. not that we willbe inside, but we will have a cover in case it starts raining. yesterday we went to the city beach that is about a mile walk from where we are staying. the beach was nice. it was made up of many u shaped coves separated from each other by rocks. the water was nearly as hot as bath water and though our particular cove was not as crystal blue as others (perhaps this was why we were afforded a certain amount of solitude), it was not too filthy especially for a city beach that was not really reserved or controlled by hotels. there was some toilet paper type stuff there, but it washed away in time. across the street there was a restaurant that served fried fish with coconut rice and tostones (which are called patacones here for whatever reason). you go there and the lady shows you a cooler full of fresh fishes of differing sizes. i swear i saw a barracuda. it was too expensive though. anna and i got the cheapest smallest fish that was not very small at all. we sat and ate and tore off every remaining ounce of meat that fish had. be it from the tail, the head, the body, whatever. there were only bones left. then, we washed outselves off in the ocean and resumed sitting, reading, looking out over the caribbean sea and generally feeling fortunate and that if people dont want to visit colombia because of things they have heard then thats their bad. yes, we were asked by some man at the airport to deliver a package to some part of colombia for him, but we didnt do it, so all is well. all is perfect and so much so that it is confusing.