After our amazing trip home from San Blas we headed back to the hostel and had one more day in Panama City to chill. With the words of Cathline Turner (from Romancing the Stone if you don´t know) ringing in my ears I was finally off to Cartagena and Colomnbia. That word had struck fear in me for years and the fact the people with Irish passports weren´t even aloud into the country for a while until about 18 months ago (the story goes that some IRA guys came over and were training the guerillas the government didn´t like that and stopped Irish people from coming into the country). We had heard good thing about Colombia from everyone that we had met so we picked up our gay and decided to go. I rang mum to tell here where we were and before she had time to worry about Colombia I had skillfully distraced her with the afore mentioned Romancing the Stone reference. We said our good byes to the Germans and to Central America and borded our tiny plane. We were hoping to travel to Colombia via boat but it was really expensive and in all honesty we didn´t really look for one. So off we were on the plane.
We arrived in Cartagena and it´s beautiful, we stayed just outside the walled city, which was really cool. We did have out first money mix up though, it is so hard to get your head around a new currency every few weeks. Just as you are getting used to one then you are on to the next one. We went to what we thought was a reasonable priced restaurant and after we paid we (well really Stu, don´t ask me about the money here) realised that we had the exchange rate wrong. Everything was double the price we had thought.( doh that damn taxi ride into town was a rip off to start with and we´d given the guy a tip!!) Oh well as I say it was the first time so I think that was pretty good going.
The next day we went to see this huge fort just down the road
from us it was really cool it had different tunnels that were used for escaping in times of war and to get supplies into the fort. You could just imagine it being used, the archers on the turrets and boiling oil being poured down the shoots over the door. They also had the biggest flag I have ever seen. They do love their big flags over here.
I had done some research about Colombia before we left, which is very unlike us, we normally arrive somewhere not knowing anything about the country and just wing it on what we are told by other travellers (and relying on Helen´s blog for tips too) but this time it was different we were going to know what we were doing. I had read about another Volcano that I knew we had to go to. We have decided that the only volcanos that we will go to are ones that have activites on them, bugger just walking up the for walking sake. So we had poking lava with a stick, bording down and now we had a MUD BATH.
There is a volcano outside Cartagena that instead of Lava spues mud, according to the Tayronas, the ancient Indian tribe that once inhabited Colombia's coast, the Totumo volcano once spewed fire from its inner devil's lair; however, the local priest, being quite good at fending off the devil doused the screaming fire with holy water and thus drowning Satan in a pile of thick mud. This myth continues with the origins of the mud, adding that the ancient spirits of the ancestral world heaved forth from the depths of the ground to smother the devil in his unworthy actions. To me it was just a big hole with smelly mud in it. So here we go. The great thing was instead of doing a tour Stu, myself and 2 scotts that we met got a taxi to the volcano so there was only us there thankfully as it is not too big and I have heard of there being up to 20 people in the tours.
We arrived in Cartagena and it´s beautiful, we stayed just outside the walled city, which was really cool. We did have out first money mix up though, it is so hard to get your head around a new currency every few weeks. Just as you are getting used to one then you are on to the next one. We went to what we thought was a reasonable priced restaurant and after we paid we (well really Stu, don´t ask me about the money here) realised that we had the exchange rate wrong. Everything was double the price we had thought.( doh that damn taxi ride into town was a rip off to start with and we´d given the guy a tip!!) Oh well as I say it was the first time so I think that was pretty good going.
The next day we went to see this huge fort just down the road
from us it was really cool it had different tunnels that were used for escaping in times of war and to get supplies into the fort. You could just imagine it being used, the archers on the turrets and boiling oil being poured down the shoots over the door. They also had the biggest flag I have ever seen. They do love their big flags over here.I had done some research about Colombia before we left, which is very unlike us, we normally arrive somewhere not knowing anything about the country and just wing it on what we are told by other travellers (and relying on Helen´s blog for tips too) but this time it was different we were going to know what we were doing. I had read about another Volcano that I knew we had to go to. We have decided that the only volcanos that we will go to are ones that have activites on them, bugger just walking up the for walking sake. So we had poking lava with a stick, bording down and now we had a MUD BATH.
There is a volcano outside Cartagena that instead of Lava spues mud, according to the Tayronas, the ancient Indian tribe that once inhabited Colombia's coast, the Totumo volcano once spewed fire from its inner devil's lair; however, the local priest, being quite good at fending off the devil doused the screaming fire with holy water and thus drowning Satan in a pile of thick mud. This myth continues with the origins of the mud, adding that the ancient spirits of the ancestral world heaved forth from the depths of the ground to smother the devil in his unworthy actions. To me it was just a big hole with smelly mud in it. So here we go. The great thing was instead of doing a tour Stu, myself and 2 scotts that we met got a taxi to the volcano so there was only us there thankfully as it is not too big and I have heard of there being up to 20 people in the tours.
So here we go into the mud. It is luke warm and squidgy 
when you first climb down the ladder and it gets between your toes. I can still feel it now. Immediatly we were grabbed by some Colmbians (hopefully that wasn´t a euphemism that Stu was taking about) to massage us. We got flipped over and rubbed and lay out in the mud. Stu felt a bit uncomfortable so he repetedly asked his guy to stop but he just kepted on rubbin!! So we broke free of our enthustic massures and just lolled round in the mud. It was so weird you just can´t sink I managed to clime up onto Stu but the viscousity was just too much. The only time that someone went under was when Craig threw his girfriend in the air and she got a mouth full of the stuff- nice. Then it was out of the mud and into a slightly less muddy lake to "wash" desperatly holding on to my bottoms as they were so full of mud that they were weighing me down and falling off. Again we had to fend off the enthustic washing ladies at the waters edge. Later I hear someone was told that the lake was described as a christal clear lake, yea right. When you get out of the Volcano you kinda squigy yourself off which sound and looks and sound like cows having a poo and still you are covered. With the amount of mud that I still had on me it would take a jet hose to get it all off this knee deep muddy water. So back into the taxi when we where we were chased by our friendly massures for a tip. No way were were paying to get felt up by Colombians (Stu had that chance in Panama City) so we sped away telling them that we didn´t ask for it.
when you first climb down the ladder and it gets between your toes. I can still feel it now. Immediatly we were grabbed by some Colmbians (hopefully that wasn´t a euphemism that Stu was taking about) to massage us. We got flipped over and rubbed and lay out in the mud. Stu felt a bit uncomfortable so he repetedly asked his guy to stop but he just kepted on rubbin!! So we broke free of our enthustic massures and just lolled round in the mud. It was so weird you just can´t sink I managed to clime up onto Stu but the viscousity was just too much. The only time that someone went under was when Craig threw his girfriend in the air and she got a mouth full of the stuff- nice. Then it was out of the mud and into a slightly less muddy lake to "wash" desperatly holding on to my bottoms as they were so full of mud that they were weighing me down and falling off. Again we had to fend off the enthustic washing ladies at the waters edge. Later I hear someone was told that the lake was described as a christal clear lake, yea right. When you get out of the Volcano you kinda squigy yourself off which sound and looks and sound like cows having a poo and still you are covered. With the amount of mud that I still had on me it would take a jet hose to get it all off this knee deep muddy water. So back into the taxi when we where we were chased by our friendly massures for a tip. No way were were paying to get felt up by Colombians (Stu had that chance in Panama City) so we sped away telling them that we didn´t ask for it. And that was really all we did in Cartagena, one more volcano story.
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