Cartagena

Arriving at night in colombias biggest coast city, I checked into a hostel in the historical center, where tourists were filling up the streets and the restaurant / bar catchers were really pushy. You couldn't walk far without constantly saying "no gracias".

My main goal was to find a sailing boat wich could bring me over the San Blas Islands to Panama. I knew that online all the tours where sold out, but had hope to find some boat in the harbour wich needed a helping hand.
After talking to several agencies and people on the streets with no success, I called it a day and went to listen to some live music in the famous Havanna Cafe.
I sat down at the bar had a 19 year old rum and enjoyed the three Powerwoman singing and on the stage with their orchestra.

At some point some girls animated me to stand up and dance. I showed my best Salsa skills with my worne out flip flops, when a blonde guy came up talking to.me. it turned out he and his partner where visiting the city for a business trip. They founded a company wich helps other companies incorporate green energy strategies into their business by offering solutions for energy efficiency, clean energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction.
Pretty interesting guys and their office was where? Right, Berlin Maybachufer.

We danced more and agreed to go to the beach on and small nearby island together the next day. I went back for sleeping in my very own, comfy cabin. One room had 8 of those cabins.

I woke up in the early morning and went straight to the harbour, where one guy would take me with but on the 9th of April, wich would have been to late because the oversea trip would need 5 days and I wanted to visit Costa Rica before heading to my Teacher training on the 20th in Mexico.

I gave up, went back to the hostel where I had to leave because the nights were booked out. So I found a cheaper hostel next to havanna cafe where I checked in and booked my flight for the next day to San Jose, Costa Rica.

I had no stamp in my passport, not even from my entry to Peru, so I was kind of nervous if they would let me leave the country so easily. Vamos a ver.

First, the beach date with my two berliner friends was on. It was already noon when we met at the harbour to find a boat wich could bring us to the island. We found a guy wich demanded 150K (35€) for both ways.
He brought us to this small motorboat with two other guys on top and said 100K now and 50K on the way back. We gave him the 100K and went into the boat. It was a nice ride from a beach with many skyscrapers, so we fastly went over to the island where the drivers suddenly wanted the 50K immediately.
We discussed, denied and went on to the beach bar when the drivers got angry and started shouting at us that they're gonna call the police. We were fine with that because we didn't do anything wrong. When they realised that we didn't react to their bluff they got angrier and came with a huge stick and literally said: "Quieres que te tratemos mal?" - "Do you want us to treat you bad?"

Impressed by the stick 😆 and not to get into more trouble on the way back, we gave them 30K. That was enough for them and they left.

We arrived at this sweet beach bar when we heared that the last boat off the island was already leaving in 1.5 hours, so we did our best to enjoy our little time there. The water was bathtub warm and the sun was slowly going down and no matter what we were happy being at this lovely place.

The boat ride back with all the workers from the island was also nice when we dives into the sunset. We walked the whole way back to the central where we crossed the parts of the city where seemingly the Columbian tourists where having their holiday. It was so calm and the restaurant/bar catchers were even apologizing for stealing our time. A very different feeling.

Back at my new hostel I beated up some french guys asses at ping pong had a pizza and went to bed 😊

Next morning the excited part on the airport started...

PS: not sure if Motorola is serious about the quality of the videos.Read more