October 31, 2013

For Halloween, Kalyn, Chandler and I caught a flight to the coastal city of Cartagena instead of taking the equally priced 12 hour bus ride. Our flight was short and we were checked into our hostel and exploring by 2pm.

Cartagena feels like two different cities, everything in the old, walled city and everything else outside. We walked along the wall and had views of the ocean and huge modern buildings. Inside the walls, the buildings had a colonial Spanish style. It was quite a contrast.

Cartagena

Wall of the old city

Domed top

The walled portion of the city was full of artists and tourist traps. It was a little too late in the day for a full tour of a museum, but we took a quick peek at the Colombian Naval Museum. Everything was in Spanish and since Chan and I can’t read a word of Spanish, we just wandered around and looked at the displays. There were lots of scale models of all the Spanish forts built on the coast to protect the city from frequent invasions from pirates.

Naval museum display

Since it was Halloween, we ended the night at a bar across the street from our hostel where Kalyn and I enjoyed a drink while Chandler had a Colombian cigar.