Cartagena and Playa Blanca castaways

Hey there you lot! How are you all? Glad to hear that you've had some of the hottest September and October days ever recorded. You deserve that after the wretched summer we had!

We've made it up to the Caribbean coast (warning potentially sick inducingly perfect paradise photos coming up) and so far it's lived up to it's name. Sticky blue sky days, warm breezy nights, colourful colonial buildings, white sand beaches, turquoise sea, lots of seafood, coconuts, hammocks, calypso music...

We came to Cartagena about five nights ago now on the night bus from Medellin. We spent our first two nights in Gesamani which is part of the old town but a lot more ramshackled and crazy. I think we managed to find the hottest hostels on earth to stay in as even the fans didn't cool us and it was actually cooler outside! That coupled with our wanderings always leading us to dirty, stinky parts of town, and that the place was a ghost town because it was a Sunday led to a bumpy introduction to Cartagena. So we decided to go and spend a night or two on Playa Blanca, and get away from the hustley bustleyness of city life that we have been experiencing a lot so far in Colombia.

So far my experience of Colombia has mostly not been what I was expecting at all. It seems like they've had such a violent recent history and now everything is starting to even out which is obviously really good for the country and necessary but at the same time it has given a quite sanitised feeling in most places, as a visitor. However on the one hand it's quite exciting as it seems like we are catching parts of the country before they get really touristy, in a resort kind of way which we feel lucky to be doing. But we have seen a lot of cities and it was starting to get to us. Obviously (as you can read) the Pacific coast was amazing and so was Salento but all the other places we have been so far have been large towns or cities, and an effort to get around.

Our experiences after our first two days in Cartagena made us wonder what the fuss was all about as we weren't really liking it (being so citied out). So we went to stay on a beautiful Caribbean islandy place Playa Blanca. Deciding that we wanted to stay on the beach meant that we had to find our own way there, not on one of tourist machine boats which get to spend only two hours there for tonnes of money. So we got a taxi and ventured down to where the locals get boats over there from at the back of this crazy, filthy, labyrinthine outdoor market. It literally felt like we had jumped into a combination of Isengaard, Labyrinth and The Black Crystal. Absolutely fascinating place! We stayed there for two and half hours waiting for the boat to fill up and what an experience. We saw so many characters and I took hundreds of photos. When the three boats were full we raced the other two out of the bay and around the headland. It was a jolty and exciting ride. We arrived and wandered the beach to find some hammocks.

Just as it's name suggests Playa Blanca is a white sand beach and turquoise sea. Your typical paradise! I felt like we had stepped into a postcard. We slept in hammocks and ate tasty food and swam in the sea, wandered the beach and didn't wash for three days, it felt like we were cast aways! We did some unbelievable snorkelling too. I saw corals of blue, yellow, red, orange, and colourful fish, some as big as my hand! I also saw a puffer fish and a leopard skin sea snake! I swear I also saw Dory (?) from Nemo. It felt like I had slipped into a Disney film! We stayed at quite a place also. Sleeping under a big thatched open sided hut in a hammock right next to the sea.

At night I saw a really long meteor and the stars were all so unfamiliar I started making up my own constellations. The clouds during the day were unbelievable as well, really beautiful. Our place was run by a properly crazy lady. She talked to herself and rambled on at you for ages about strange things and made us all laugh. We couldn't work out whether she was drunk or mad or a bit of both. Still, she was amusing and despite making filthy jokes, she was quite sweet really.They cooked us a meal on the first night and Samly's introduction to Caribbean coast fish was a bumpy one!

After that though we found a hut restaurant owned by a lovely lady who cooked us amazingly tasty food and Sam ate lobster and fried fish and I had really tasty and fresh vegetable meals - her soup was so tasty!

After three days we really didn't want to leave but we had met some lovely people who told us about lots of beautiful sounding places to seek out, and the salt was pulling on our skin so after lunch on our third day we jumped on one of the tour boats taking the daily tourist machine back to Cartagena, and I felt a smile all over. I turned to look at the beach as we left and saw a rainbow right over where we had been staying. I could feel myself starting to relax into this being away life!

We returned to Cartagena and decided to stay in the beautiful part of the Old Town called El Centro. It is an interesting and mercifully breezy part of town, with all the colonial buildings of different colours and the wooden balconies jutting out. We though it would be more expensive to stay here but we ended up paying almost the same as Gesamani on our first night but we have a huge room with a balcony that overlooks the university square (lots going on and to look at) and it has air con! It seems like the city has a completely different personality now. I really like it. It is getting nearer the weekend and my mindset has changed after being castaway somewhat so maybe that's had an effect. I think overall though we will stay away from big places from now on.

As the city had started to talk to us and we have such a lovely place to stay, we have decided to stay in Cartagena for one more night. Samly's reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and it's set all around this region. A few Colombians have come up and said 'one of his best'. I'm really looking forwards to reading it after him and knowing the places where the story is set. Tomorrow we will be getting the bus to Santa Marta and then straight out to either Tanganga to get to Tyrona and then further to the Sierra Nervada or Minca further back into the mountains.

Hope my words find you well and happy,
sending you Caribbean kisses and hugs as ever,
clara y samuel xxx