Walking Around Cartagena

We got up around 7. I slept awesome.

We went for the free breakfast (toast, cereal, jam, coffee and juice), then went to pay for the same room for tonight, but it was already reserved. They told me all they had was 6-bed dorms available for the night.

I talked to dad and instead trying to find another place, we'd just take the dorm.

We then walked to Hostal Mamallema, which is the main hostel that books most of the sailboat trips to Panama. We gave them copies of our passports and asked a few questions. We'll need at least one million pesos to pay for the boat. We also booked a room for the night of the 21st, as we'll need to be in that area for the captains meeting the evening before the boat leaves.

We went to an ATM and withdrew 700,000 pesos each, then wandered around the old city for a bit, then back to our hostel at 11:00am to make our room change to the dorm. At the same time, I reserved the twin room for the following two nights, and had to pay for it.

We then went to work figuring out how many pesos we had and how much more we'd need. Both of us are confused because we had just withdrawn 700,000 pesos, but we didn't have nearly that much on us. Dad was convinced the ATM shortchanged us and was swearing about it, but I knew there must be another explanation. Fortunately I kept my ATM slip this time (something I rarely do), and sure enough it only dispensed 400,000 to us. Mystery solved! This banks ATM only allow a maximum withdrawal, and it varies between banks. This one didn't give any indication that it was not giving us the full 700,000.

I showered (it's so humid you sweat like crazy) then hung around the hostel for a bit. Around 2, we headed out in search of food. I turned down the idea of the fried chicken place again, and suggested pizza. Off we went in search of a pizza place. It seems that most shops and restaurants here don't open until mid afternoon, so they'd never that much going on in the morning.

We found a pizza place and each has a carne pizza (all meat), which was quite delicious.

We wondered around some more, had some ice cream, took out more money, then back to the hostel. We're both close to having the money we need for the boat trip. We'll need to make one more stop tomorrow at a bank machine, then we should be good. We did find a bank that does not charge any fees, which is awesome. Citibank, on the other hand, charged us over $5 US!

We lounged around for a couple of hours.

Around 8 on the evening, we went for another walk to experience the nightlife of Cartagena. We stopped at a plaza where a group of musicians and dancers were performing some Caribbean music and dance.

They came around with a hat looking for tips afterwards, I was glad to give them a bit, as it was awesome.

As we were leaving the square, we ran into Ashley, an American girl we had met at breakfast. She's in year two of traveling, and traveling alone, so we invited her to join us on our meanderings.

We headed back to the waterfront with the ships so I could take some pictures (I didn't have my good camera last night). The were a couple of weddings in a couple of the churches that we ran into. We stopped at an outdoor restaurant and had (expensive) mojitos. The same dance troupe we saw earlier made their way here and performed again.

Then we headed to a restaurant called Creped and Waffles, as Ashley hadn't eaten anything yet. I guess it's a chain, and they hire only woman who are heads of their households (i.e. mostly single mothers) and give them a good paying job and it's quite a success story.

It was getting late after that, so we headed back to the hostel, I think around 10:30 or 11:00pm.

The hostel was busy with partying backpackers and the bar was going. Our room was close to the bar, so it was noisy, but didn't bother me to much and feel asleep.