Mud Baths in a Volcano, and an Expensive Trip to a Poor Island

This past week we pretty much finished up all the tourist-like activities we had planned for Cartagena. On Thursday we visited the nearby mud bath at the Volcan de Totumo, and this weekend we spent a night at a nearby island.

First, the volcano.
Despite being warned against taking an arranged tour to this volcano, because we have effectively run out of free days (due to our langauge school committments) we did not have enough time to make the longer, independent journey to the volcano. We opted to go with a trip organized through our school, and while this did take some adventure out of the process, things ended up going pretty well, and we managed to avoid any huge crowds. When we arrived at the volcano we were met by a few stray dogs, and eager locals who helped everyone climb the rickety wooden stairs to the lip of the volcano, and into the mud-filled crater. As we decended into the mud pit, we were immediately assisted into the bath by local men whose professions consist of ¨massaging¨ tourists. As we couldn´t move around initially due to the weird boyancy of the mud, the men laid us flat on our backs, and moved us around the pit as if they were arranging dominoes. Once in the pit, they began with a vigorous rubbing of the legs, and pretty much everything else. At various points in the process, I ended up with mud in my eyes, in my ears, in my mouth, and the man giving my massage was quick to get the mud out of these places... which felt very odd. Luckily most of our group chose not to linger in the mud for very long, so after about 10 minutes we were able to freely play and move around, as there was only a couple of us left. When we finished with the mud pit, we were sheperded to the nearby river/ inter-coastal waterway where women assisted in the cleaning off process. Our friends warned us that they are not concerned about visitors´modesty there, and our experience was no exception. I sat in about 2 feet of water as the women threw bucket after bucket of water on my head. She then shooshed me off to the side where upon wiping the water from my eyes, I discovered I was without swimming suit, and in the company of several other very confused and naked tourists. On the bright side, and unlike the other two (adult) girls next to me, my father had not joined me on the trip. Pretty much, the experience felt like I was a baby animal being cleaned against my will by a domineering mother.

Next, Isla De Tierra Bomba.
While there is one set of islands nearby, Islas de Rosario, that are the main tourist attraction, we´ve heard so many stories about awful crowds, aggressive vendors and miserable boat rides that we decided instead to visit an island very close to Cartagena and stay the night in a small hotel on the beach. While the hotel was pleasant enough, walking around the island I quickly realized that this was a very poor community and that everything sold there was three to four times it´s price on the mainland. To make things a little akward, we were the only two people at the hotel and the lack of any other guests, made me feel like I was in the perfect setting for a horror movie about a lone couple staying in the wrong hotel in the middle of nowhere.... except we were in the tropics, not West Texas. On the bright side, we were able to befriend a psychotic little perro, who ended up waking us up at 2 AM with her freaked out barking.

 And then some:
After leaving the island Sunday morning, we enjoyed a final farewell to our beloved Hilton, where we returned the towel that we "borrowed" on our first weekend here in Cartagena. Following the Hilton, we enjoyed camarones, and made an exciting discovery about a crappy park in the middle of Cartagena. To our surprise, the park is not only home to stray dogs, homeless Cartagenians, and piles upon piles of trash, but it also happens to provide just the kind of dismal habitat needed to sustain enormous lizards. And by enormous- I´m talking 4 plus feet (iguanas maybe?). And there weren´t just a couple, there were actually many, many giant lizards. Once we spotted our first, we kept seeing them all over the park, climbing the trees which to our surprise are also home to a bunch of tiny monkeys. I guess we managed to miss the monkeys and enormous lizards the first few times around because the park gates are only open on two sides providing a walkway down the center, but all of the lizards hang out along the perimeter, as do the monkeys. So now, [m] will no doubt be thrilled by my desire to walk through the freaky park on our way home from school.

Ash Wednesday Field Trip!

We noticed people walking around this morning with crucifixes drawn on their foreheads in ash, and despite the fact that neither of us are giving up anything for Lent, we figured it was as good a day as any to visit the Convento De La Popa on top of the largest hill in Cartagena. It was a great view, and had a nice peaceful courtyard with rocking chairs.

Tomorrow, it´s off to the mud volcano, this weekend the island, and next friday we leave our comfortable homestay to begin traveling for real.

 

Corn Starch and Foam in Barranquilla

So we decided to check out the Carnival at Barranquilla this weekend after some accquaintances from school took it upon themselves to arrange an affordable van service to Barranquilla for a day trip. While weren´t going out of our way make it to Carnival, since all we had to do was show up, hand them the money and get in the van, we figured it was worth doing. After all, it is considered by many to be the second largest Carnival celebration in South America. While Saturday is the main parade, and in some ways the kickoff to three days of music, dancing and partying, we found a relatively safe, controlled atmosphere, which kind of felt like a modest parade anywhere in the states, just with a little more alcohol and a lot more spirit. 

While we expected to encounter water balloons and squirt guns aimed at us, instead we discovered that in Barranquilla, they accost one another (and particularly tourists) with small boxes of corn starch and aerosol foam guns, which sting considerably when directed in your eyes. Generally as the day progresses, and the alcohol consumption increases, this playful behavior in the streets becomes slightly more malicious and agressive, but is always done in good fun.

Highlights of the day in Baranquilla include: respite from the incredible mid-day heat in the supermarket Exito (think Fred Meyer of the Caribbean); a brief moment of ¨Gringos loco¨ vengeance on the Costa Rican frat boys who seemed particularly intent on  coating us with water, cornstarch, and soap foam; and the memorable experience that the boys all took part in when they paid a man 500 pesos to piss in a bucket. My impression of the parade was pretty much the same as [m]´s, in that it seemed like a poor-man´s mardis gras. The floats mainly consisted of semi trucks hauling sound equipment, with a lot of local dancers and school bands in between. Apart from the parade, it was nice to interact with the group from our school. A couple of the guys we went with will continue on for the next few weeks- and one gave me a tip on where to get a manicure and pedicure for a few bucks a pop..... very exciting. When our mini-bus finally showed up (two hours late and after much confusion), we were all very happy to get back to Cartagena and get the cornstarch out of our hair. 

First Week in Cartagena

Last Friday when we first arrived in Colombia, I remember walking through town that evening completely overwhelmed by everything around us and feeling totally intimidated by this new world in which we had arrived. Both Kadie and I have never travelled in South America, or anywhere which can be described as "developing," "south" etc., so as a result we were uncomfortable and felt somewhat imtimidated by the language barrier. Now, a week later, things have changed pretty positively. We´re comfortable doing most things we need to around town and while our spanish is elementary at best, we can manage to communicate with a basic level of language and politeness. We´re doing pretty well with buying food, talking with cab drivers, reading menus and the regular day to day interactions. Language school has helped, and our host family has had a wonderful amount of patience speaking with us and encouraging us to improve.

Our language school has been going well, however, we were scolded by our dance teacher and told that if we don´t practice outside of class then she´ll cut off the lessons until we can demonstrate improvement. The volunteering is challenging, as the kids don´t speak much english, and we don´t speak much spanish. Unfortunately, space and time is limited with them, so basically we show up, try to chat with them, maybe play dominos or marbles, and 1-2 hours later we leave. While I think the kids do enjoy having company, they get gringos coming through all the time speaking broken spanish to them, being here one week and gone the next. With this in mind, it´s really difficult to figure out a way to actually give something to these kids and not just use them as excuses for us to practice our spanish skills. It´s an ongoing project, and while one of the volunteers has already quit out of feeling useless, I´m pretty sure we´re going to stick around, and hopefully by the time we leave at the end of this month, we´ll have been able to build some type of simple relationship or connection that both us and the kids will appreciate.  

Otherwise, living in Cartagena is pretty similar to any place, just with a lot more sweat, better juices, and a ton of activity, music, food and dancing in the street all the time. After a somewhat hectic first week, we were looking forward to taking it easy this weekend so we spent our Saturday morning doing typical tourist things like visiting the Castillo de San Fellipe, and the modest Modern Art Museum. After a typical Costano Colombian lunch (fried fish, rice, beans, plantains, soup and juice) we put on our nice clothes and once again snuck into the Hilton for a few hours of beach, sun, pool and reading. Being that neither of us is really excited about massive parties, we´ve decided not to try and deal with the melee at the Barranquilla Carnival  next weekend, and instead we´ll likely go out to a nearby island and spend a night at one of the calm hotels on the beach. Hammocks, fried fish, air conditioning, and a few Aguila´s (think Colombian Budweiser) and we´ll undoubtedly have a fine weekend.
 

A Relaxing End to the Weekend

We finished off our first weekend in Cartagena (and our last weekend with access to hot water for showers) with a trek out to the tip of the penninsula, Boca Grande. As a number of larger ¨fancier¨ hotels are located out there, we were expecting big beaches and a decidedly different atmosphere than the mainland. The hotel district is actually fairly delapitated, with most of the resorts having that awkward un-updated 20 to 30 years old look. The beaches were tiny, as most of the areas surrounding Cartagena are very rocky with small lagoons built to allow some beach front area. We spent a little bit of time on one of the beaches, but found that we were prime targets for constant sales attempts by the hundreds of beach vendors walking up and down the strip. The Carribean women selling what I think was sun tan lotion massages were particularly persistent as our white flesh stood out like a beacon among the natives. 

After leaving the beach we found our way to the Hilton, and after wandering through the hallways, we ended up in a rarely used walkway between the tennis courts, the pool, and a large American style restroom including showers. We decided to take advantage of our luck and our ethnicity, and ended the afternoon outting with a dip in the pool. [m] was the only person over the age of about 7 to take advantage of the water slide to the surprise of one father waiting for his child at the bottom, and we made a point to snatch an abandoned hotel towel on our way out so as to better fit in the next time around.

This week we began our language studies and I have been pleased to find a well-structured environment where the lessons are planned out, and include homework. I´m hopeful that we´ll both have a tolerable amount of Spanish skills by the time we begin the more mobile portion of our trip. We´ve also taken advantage of the bi-weekly salsa lessons offered at the school (the instructor actually yells at us if we miss a beat- which is often), and we had out first volunteer day at an all boys orphanage on the outskirts of town. I´m working on memorizing a few children related phrases so I´ll actually have a couple of sentences to say to them when we go back tomorrow.
That´s all for now-