Leaving Cartagena

We just checked out of our room in Cartagena and have fully enjoyed our stay here.

The kayak trip that we mentioned earlier was supposed to be about a 2.5 hour trip that we managed to finish in just over an hour. Guess it’s a lot faster when there are only 2 people on the trip and we don’t tend to take many breaks. We spent most of the time paddling through mangrove trees. They formed a really nice tunnel that we rowed through and caught glimpses of crabs and fish. The mangrove are able to survive in the salt water so all the roots grow from the branches of the trees, those are what created our tunnel.
We when out of the Chivas bus that night and this was very interesting. The Chiva is a really old bus with rows of seats and no doors. They are painted with every color of the rainbow, very bright and festive. We were lucky enough to get close to some people that spoke English and this made the trip much more interesting. After about an hour of driving around and filling the bus up they started passing the drinks back. This consisted of each row getting a bucket of ice, a couple bottles of coke (Pepsi) and a bottle of rum. We then took a driving tour of the city while the band in the back of the bus played funky music.
On Wednesday we went out to on of the many islands that are around Cartagena. The island that we chose was Pirate Island I believe. Here we went on a snorkel trip and saw lots of neat fish and coral. Nothing much bigger than your basic tropical 18 inch fish but still fun. The lunch they served on the island most people would have loved. It was a full fish (head and tail) that was BBQ. Rick and I were lucky enough to be warned about the food before and were able to order chicken. We also missed out since one guest brought a large supply of fresh lobster but since neither of us eat seafood we passed on that. We spent a very relaxing afternoon hanging out in the little sand that was there and enjoying the amazing view of the ocean.
Unfortunately today is our last day here. We catch our flight at 5pm to return to Bogotá. Thank you Ricardo and Angela for making our stay here possible and very enjoyable.

Now we are off to Crepes and Waffles to have some amazing ice cream. YUMMY!!!
Rick and Jeanne