Cartagena, Columbia

Friday, December 13, 2013
Cartagena, Grand Cayman, Colombia
Today we had breakfast delivered by room service. What a luxury. We took a five hour tour of the Old and New town. From the ship the city looked very modern with many tall skyscrapers of condos. What a surprise.

We explored the old fort but were unable to find neither 'the stone' nor any trace at all of Michael Douglas or Kathleen Turner who did the movie here. It was very hot, almost exhausting. This fort, San Felipe Fortress, dates from the sixteenth century and was rebuilt and enlarged in the seventeenth century as it's importance and number of attackers grew. No airs to climb, but rather very wide inclines go up the steep walls so that cannon etc. could be brought up and down from the fortress as needed.

The 'old city' is rimmed by an eight mile wall which provided basic protection for the city in the olden days. We visited the Las Bovedas arts and crafts center which is made up of a long row of twenty three large shops side by side. Once upon a time these were the twenty three dungeons that would house prisoners. Further along was the Inquisition Palace where we saw the judgement rooms and the tools of torture used by the jailers. The inquisition lasted from when the Spanish started it until Colombia's independence in 1810. All,the same rules applied such as guilt if your weight to height ratio was off balance, you could not survive being drowned or burned, and were anonymously reported to have uttered an inappropriate comment about the church or ruling class. Nobody in the system was ever found to be innocent!

We visited San Pedro Claver's Sanctuary and church, built for and in honour of a missionary who bought slaves off the ships and gave them to families to live outside the normal slavery system. Of course, he was loved by many who benefited from his work.

We were taken to a shopping plaza that had two stores selling emeralds and one selling coffee, and little else except a guy who held a three toed sloth that you could hold and take a picture of for two dollars. He latter seemed the only worthwhile thing, but we did not participate. Too bad an hour and a half of a four and a half hour tour was dedicated to the opportunity to shop, and most of it was junk.

We walked around the old town seeing many shops and restaurants. It is similar to old New Orleans in that all the second floors had balconies over the street for chatting across and cooling off. It was very pretty and remarkably clean and free of garbage, dilapidated homes and graffiti. The drive around the new town also showed us a city that takes pride in its appearance.

Back to the ship exhausted to a line-up of about two hundred people in the sun waiting to go through the slow security system. There were over twenty busses all on early morning excursions of about four hours. Our bus driver, may he be eternally blessed, kept us in the air conditioned bus til the line was very short.

We enjoyed the ship for the rest of the day.

Photos & Videos

Comments

2025-02-12

Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank