I never use an alarm to wake up. It’s not necessary as I’ve always been a morning person and an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of guy (ok, in my 20’s I will admit to many late nights – most of them, in fact – but I was still up early). It’s a great system except when you spent the previous evening at a comfortably dingy and amazing craft brewery in Toronto with your son pounding premium IPAs then went to a crazy Gogol Bordello concert, locked in a swirling mosh pit for 90 minutes, leaping up and down, getting stepped on, sweated on, shoved, squashed, and thoroughly entertained by the frantic rhythms of Gypsy Punk, didn’t make it back home until 1am, then had to be on the road by 5am for your flight to Cartagena, Colombia. Then, you need an alarm.
We haven’t traveled since returning home last June from our epic sailing trip to the Bahamas and Ana and I had vowed not to do a winter trip this year, in the pursuit of financial jurisprudence and stewardship of the funds we will one day leave to our children if they remain kind to us and take us in once our bodies are spent and minds have turned to organic oatmeal. But one night, at home in mid-November, already in the midst of an authentic and unusually snowy and frigid Canadian winter, we were sitting in our living room and I looked over to see Ana scrolling through her phone, eyes alight.
“What are you looking at over there?” I asked
Through an aura of guilt she replied, “I found a good deal on a trip to Cartagena in February.”
“Book it.”
I could feel myself dozing off as the airplane wheeled over to the de-icing station. I was looking forward to the thin, episodic slumber offered by the claustrophobic and noisy environment of modern air travel. As I was falling asleep, a giant snore from a little kid behind me, startled me awake, and I immediately noticed the Entertainment section of the seatback screen in front of me had a link to Angry Birds. I ended up playing that for the entire flight, except for a mediocre zombie movie I fit in somewhere, and somehow didn’t even fall asleep during that.
Colombia, and in particular Cartagena, has been on our dream travel list for a very long time. Ana and I have spent many years exploring Latin America but had yet to visit five countries in South America - Ecuador, British Guyana, Venezuela, Uruguay, and Colombia. Venezuela’s a little tough at the moment, but other three are possibilities in the coming years. But for now, we’ve got a thousand things to do and see in Cartagena.
After getting settled in our room at the Hotel Almirante, we enjoyed a welcome drink at the beachside café adjoined to the hotel then went for a walk to find dinner. The area near the hotel is vibrant and busy – families on motorcycles, taxis, party busses, street vendors, 24-hour grocery stores, lights and music. We walked the main street and sat down at a restaurant that felt right and each ordered a local Colombian beer, which was cold and tasty – even Ana liked it and she drank her WHOLE BEER, all by herself. The meal was good, hamburger for Ana and grilled steak for me, both accompanied by the most classic and ubiquitous of Latin America vegetables – French fries.
After dinner we picked up a few things at the grocery store, struggling financially with the odd exchange rate of 2,700 Colombian peso to a single Canadian dollar. The food prices seemed reasonable, not particularly cheap nor expensive, and the standing inventory of plantains, coconuts, and yuca was formidable.
We returned to the hotel sometime after ten, exhausted after a long travel day and our first in this new to us country.
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