First off I'm sorry. I know I haven't written in a couple of days but I have a good excuse. Nothing really happens on sea days and instead of writing I've been busy attempting to build on my limited social circle.
Before I get to Columbia first some social life updates. The friend list is growing and I've managed to break into a trio of wonderful South African girls who are quickly becoming some of my favourite people onboard. Shameem, Rennisia, and Stacey are the newest additions to circle and are especially nice to have onboard because they're the first people that I don't' work with that I've become close with. Don't get me wrong, I love the people I work with, but I'm with them 24 hours a day. You have no idea how nice it is to have good friends outside of our Guest Services clique.
Today was a big day for me. As pathetic as it is today was the first day in my life that I stepped foot on a continent other than North America and what a place to have it happen. It was surreal looking out the office port hole as we came into town today. The downtown of the "new city" is made up of all white sky scrappers but then when you look around you just see this incredible green foliage everywhere else. Quite the contrast.
We moored at a container port and had a short walk into the cruise terminal. Upon coming out we were instantly approached by a local cab driver offering to take us around town. Right away it was clear I wasn't in Kansas any more… After some negotiation and group decisions (aka me telling them this was our best option) my group of 7 agreed to have this gentlemen and his cab company take us to food and drinks on the beach then back to the ship for $20 per person. The clincher was that he didn't want payment until we returned to the terminal. No cash up front in a country that I other wise would have been worried about someone driving us into a container and then never being seen again? Deal!
Driving through Cartagena was crazy. The type of scene I experienced was the kind of thing I've only ever seen on the Amazing Race. Cars, motorbikes, and people everywhere. Horns constantly honking and brake pads being ground down at every stop. The architecture was beautiful and getting this cab turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we got a nice tour of the entire city as we drove through the old city on our way to our beach side meal in the new city. We even passed a donkey drawn buggy on the way.
We at at this little hut on the water with a menu that was completely in spanish and no one there spoke English. Thank god two of our group knew spanish, we'd likely be getting the inside scoop on human trafficking other wise. I had a seafood medley thing that consisted of shrimp, octopus, snails and some other unknown crustacean that was actually quite good. While we were eating street vendors kept trying to get our attention in an attempt to sell us al kinds of assorted crap. We weren't exactly in a tourist locale and in fact I think we got a pretty real experience as there wasn't another white person or English speaker in sight. Needless to say we stuck out.
When it really got crazy was when we went onto the beach. All we wanted to do was go for a swim and maybe get some sun but in order to achieve this we had to negotiate the horde of locals that was no following us down the beach offering us everyone from tshirts and bracelets to sun screen and massages. Once we finally found a place would could leave our things we took shifts while we went into the AMAZING Caribbean water. It was so warm, I could have stayed out forever and although it wasn't forever I was still in the water for a god hour or so just floating around and loving my life. To make things even better and more cool it started raining part way through our swim but as it was 100F with the humidity and we were swimming it was incredibly welcome.
We headed back to the cruise terminal where we found all kinds of parrots and some other wild life waiting for us just outside. You'll see below that I can now check off having a parrot on my arm and asking a real life toucan to follow his nose and where I could find some fruit loops.
To wrap up we had some genuine Columbian coffee and made our way back onboard. Overall an incredible day and a great way to really kick start my cruise experience. I love being out of my comfort zone and with Panama tomorrow and Costa Rica on Sunday it's only getting better.
It's official, you can hate me now. :)
You DO realize that I could write a rhyming poem about you and the toucan?
ReplyDeleteDrew's middle name is Kucan.
He went to Columbia and met a toucan.
Kucan? From where does that originate?
ReplyDelete