Cartagena

We finished packing in the morning and then drove to a DHL shop to send some stuff directly back to Germany. It was pretty complicated as she wanted a detailed list of the contents and their value 😵 So we spent almost an hour also trying to explain that it's personal belongings. So it's now on its way hopefully, at least I already received the email with the tracking 😁 As this was handled we stopped by a car wash to give Ruedi a proper nice foam bath that was long overdue and well deserved. Then it was time to drive the last leg of our journey with Ruedi to the Overlander Embassy 😭😭😭 It feels very weird that we need to leave him behind and he will be thoroughly missed but it's the right choice after the issues we've had. And we're super happy that he made more than 30.000 km which seemed at times impossible...

There we sorted the last things and did some paperwork for us and Alejandro. He also reassured me that it won't be an issue at the airport with the stamp. As everything was in order we decided to book the flight to Cartagena for the evening. Then we had time to prepare for the flight as there were some online forms to fill out to enter Colombia. After saying goodbye to Alejandro and his crew and especially to Ruedi we took a taxi to the airport. Even though we were 6 hours early we got hungry and we wanted to get rid of the luggage. There were no food options outside of the security check, so we already checked our bags and then was the critical moment when I needed to go through customs 🤐 When they scanned the passport I was sure that he would ask for Ruedi... But he just swiped quickly through the pages (probably didn't even come to the part with the note about the arrival), gave it back and wished me safe travels 😌 That was a huge relief 😮‍💨 I had already pictured Julia flying to Cartagena by herself while I'm kept in a cell at the airport 😅

We had been hungry for a while and in the newly built terminal from where we'll be departing was no restaurant at all 🙈 We were about to buy some snacks from a vending machine when we asked an employee who told us to walk until the end of the other terminal 😅 And luckily there were some food stands. We spent the time until departure relaxing, reviewing pictures and watching series... A little bit late we started boarding and had an issue because the assigned seats didn't exist in the plane 🤷‍♂️ So they printed new boarding passes during the boarding and we were on the short 45 minutes hop over to South America ☺️

Colombia greeted us friendly with a nice customs officer singing quietly to herself while reviewing our passports. We grabbed our bag, ordered an Uber and within less than an hour from landing we arrived at our hostel. There we checked in and had two local beers (Aguilar) on the cosy little rooftop terrace. It was a long day and we've got a lot of plans also for tomorrow...Read more