What do we do today?

We woke up late and barely managed to come out of the hostel by 10:30 am. We wanted to have a quick breakfast so we could go to the dock to see if we could find a boat to Isla Rosario. The battle-hardy souls were fine with the breakfast at the streetcorner kiosk selling scrambled eggs and some meat snacks. 😉 Maria was not too impressed with the hygiene of the kiosk guy so we stopped on the way at a better food place for her breakfast. Here they had a lot of variety in juices so we tried juices of 2 new local fruits Borojo and Churuba. Churuba turned out to be the local version of Tumbo which we had tried in Bolivia. Its called Banana Passionfruit in English.
After our breakfast, we went to the harbor. Here, we discovered that there were no independent fishermen or multitude of tour operators that we could pitch against each other for a better deal. There were about 8 kiosks just outside the entrance to boat harbor and these were the only places where we could book tours to the distant islands or beaches. All of them offered all the tours to all the islands near Cartagena at similar prices. There could be a slight variation in the price if we booked more than one tour or if we opted for a slow boat or a speedboat. On top of that, everyone leaving the harbour was expected to pay a huge port fee of 16500 COP per head. So, no escaping the expenses if we wanted to do the tours.
The trouble was that all of them left the harbour before 9 in the morning and it was 11:30 by the time we had reached there. So, we booked the tour to Isla Rosario, with one of the operator for the next day at a price of 35000 + 16500 (port tax) COP per head.
The next issue we had to solve was what to do for the rest of the day. I suggested we go to the mud volcano some 60 kms away. From my earlier research on this area, I remembered that it was not a whole day activity and if we were quick enough, we might be able to make it during the rest of the day.
We asked the lady at the counter where we had booked our next day's trip. She was able to arrange a tour within about an hour from her place for 45000 COP per person which was the normal cost of this tour. We booked it straightaway and waited for the van to come and pick us up there. It was nearing lunchtime now so while I sat outside the kiosk waiting for the van, Maria and Hristo went to a mall nearby and bought some food stuff.Read more