Leaving Cartagena

Up early, as usual.

This hostel has a long open area with all the rooms on either side of it. At night, backpackers are all in the common area, making lots of noise, and all the noise comes right into the rooms. It didn't bother me or dad, though. We just slept through it.

We had breakfast, then walked over to the Blue Sailing office to give them our passports. Back to the hostel, repacked all our bags, keeping only stuff required on the boat in our small packs, as our large backpacks will be stored in the boat and not easily accessible.

We checked out, stored our stuff on the storage area at the hostel then walked over to the historic section to do some final shopping.

I felt I needed a cap on the boat to keep the sun off my head, but didn't want to buy one in the touristy area. On the way back, we walked through the locals shopping area. I stopped in a store with ball caps, asked "Cuánto cuesta?", and she told me " Cinco mil.". At first, I was thinking that's 50,000 pesos, to much (about $25), then as I was leaving, realized that that's 5,000 pesos. That's $2.50. Heck ya! I bought one.

Back to the hostel, then for cheap lunch, a "tipico comida", a typical Colombian lunch, consisting on soup, a choice of meat, salad, rice, fried plantain and a juice for 7,000 pesos, $3.50.

It was super hot the last few days, blue skies, sun beating down. At 2:00pm today, it was 32 degrees, but felt like 42 with humidity.

We hung around the hostel in the afternoon.

Around 6:30 a bunch of us from the hostel went for Indian food for supper.

We headed to the marina at 7:45, via taxi, dropped our stuff off and walked to the supermarket close to the marina for refreshments for the boat trip. I bought 12 beer, dad bought some Smirnoff Ice. Some of the other backpackers bought cases upon cases of beer. It was kind of funny.

Once everything was packed away, we had our last safety meeting, then we were on our way, probably around 10:30pm.

Cartagena looks nice from the water, lots and lots of towers all along the waterfront. It was a beautiful night, hardly any clouds and we could see the stars come out more and more as we got farther from the lights of Cartagena.

Dad and I have a private cabin with a very large double bed. There are 13 backpackers altogether and two crew members, the captain and his girlfriend.

He tried to put the sails up once we hit open water, but there was not much wind, so it was engine power the whole time.

Dad went to bed first, I think I went to bed maybe 12:30am.