Colombia – Cartagena de Indias on the Caribbean Coast

The old Spanish Colonial town of Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, is absolutely beautiful, surrounded by a 13km ancient wall. Contained within the walls there are a host of gorgeous churches and Colonial buildings, some dating back to the early 16th Century. It’s now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and well worth a visit of 4 days to wander around its narrow cobbled streets and alleyways. What better way to get our bearings than on a Segway tour…

We were very lucky that there were just the two of us plus our guide, Cesar, on the one and a half hour tour and so we didn’t have to waste any time training, as we are by now very experienced Segway riders. Everyone tells you that Cartagena is extremely hot, but until you experience it for yourself, you can’t quite imagine how unbearable the heat is – the humidity hovers at around 80-90% day and night. It’s worse still inside the old town walls, because it acts like a sort of pressure cooker of heat and moisture. Still, we loved our Segway tour and got to see all the main sights within the old town, then spent a further couple of very sweaty hours wandering around on our own until we felt like we were going to melt into the pavement, so we returned to the air conditioned sanctuary of our hotel outside the old town in Bocagrande, which had a pool. What bliss.

We thought we might go and visit Santa Marta, 3 hours east of Cartagena, but by this stage in the trip, we were feeling pretty exhausted and the energy-sapping heat just made it seem all too difficult for us to make it into a very long day trip, so we just stayed in Cartagena. Throw in a couple of days of “Delhi belly” too, after a dodgy Indian curry, and you can imagine why we didn’t see or do as much as we thought we would in Cartagena! It was never less than 33 degrees and our weather app kept showing “feels like 40 degrees” with relentless humidity, so we developed a three-toed sloth kind of walking speed and dived into any air conditioned shop available along the way, just to cool off a bit.

So looking forward to our 6 days of rest and relaxation on San Andrés island – just what we need at the end of our pretty exhausting trip, before heading back to Winter in Nelson.