Cartagena

Cartagena is a beautiful, well-preserved old town surrounded by tall city walls. Much like other old Spanish colonial centres, it has a really European feel – both architecturally and culturally – and within the city walls, there were even horse and carts (like we saw in Seville, Spain and also in Merida, Mexico) ferrying the tourists around.

Gate to the old town

Wandering around the narrow streets

Outside of the old town it’s a different story: the chaotic suburbs descend into traffic mayhem, diesel fumes and an urban sprawl where all Cartagena’s residents live. It was quite a contrast travelling in from the noisy suburban bus station outside of town, into the colourful centre of the old town. Needless to say we stuck to the centre of town once we’d arrived!

The city walls are filled with narrow streets, colourful buildings, brightly painted street art and big shady squares. It’s incredibly hot and humid so we were grateful for the cold air conditioning in our hotel room – the first we’ve had in a while and feels like a real treat!

 

View from the city walls

The best itinerary in Cartagena is to drop all sightseeing plans and get lost wandering around the streets of the old town. We walked miles in the shady streets, popping into shops and cafes for a Colombian coffee and some air conditioning, and strolling along sections of the city walls, taking in the city views.

 

City walls and sailing boat

Strolling around the walls

All the doors in the old town are much taller than standard doors as when the city was built, people used to enter buildings on horseback, so the added height is to cater for the horse and rider.

People’s homes also used to be marked with a symbol if they were one of certain occupations – usually the door knocker is in the shape of one of the following animals to represent the following professions:

• Lion – works for the king
• Iguana – rich/noble people
• Owl – doctor
• Mermaid – Sailor
• Dolphin – Fisherman

It was fun to walk around the old town spotting the different animals, though we’ve yet to see an owl…

 

A rich person used to live here...

We stayed in Getsemani, a ten-minute walk outside the centre and a popular location for backpackers. It’s a vibrant area with lots of great bars and cafes and generally the standard of food here is really good. We found a lovely café for breakfast with three resident cats, which serves the best banana pancakes (even better than mine!)

 

Street art in Getsemani

We’ll return to Cartagena in a week or so, ready for our flight back to Cancun before we fly home, but in the meantime, we decided to explore some more of the Caribbean coast and headed north to Minca in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

 

Minca, in the mountains

We spent a couple of nights there and did a spot of hiking to nearby ‘Pozo Azul’ waterfall for a swim, but our day’s adventure got prematurely cut short when the heavens opened and we got soaked through. So much for 100% waterproof Goretex shoes if they get so full of water that you’re squelching around in them! 

Soaking wet!

After a brief stop in Minca, we’re now in Palomino and I’ll fill you in on our adventures here in the next blog post.

La Fortuna and Monteverde

On to country number eight: Costa Rica!

At the airport check in desk, the Aero Mexico staff member laughed when he looked at photo page of my passport – I asked him what was so funny (the picture isn’t THAT embarrassing!) and turns out the main character in a computer game called Starcraft is also called Sarah Kerrigan! She even looks a bit like me (maybe)!

Lead charater, Sarah Kerrigan, in computer game, 'Starcraft'

After a brief overnight stopover near the airport, we headed to our first destination, La Fortuna.

La Fortuna means ‘fortune’ and is so-called because when the Arenal volcano, which looms over the town, last erupted it erupted on opposite side of the mountain, sparing la Fortuna. I do hope this isn’t tempting fate when the still-active volcano next erupts (currently next predicted to do so in a few hundred years).

It is said that only one in two visitors to La Fortuna actually get to see the peak of Arenal volcano as Costa Rica’s tropical climate, frequent rain and the sheer height of the volcano means it is often shrouded by clouds and the view is not great.

 

The view of Arenal volcano from La Fortuna

We went on a ‘two volcano hike’, a five-hour trek up the steep side of a dormant volcano that sits next to Arenal. The clouds descended the day we went so the views weren’t great but the hot and humid conditions at the bottom soon turned into cooler temperatures and swirling mists when we entered the clouds.

Cloud forest hike

The dormant volcano is now what is known as a flat volcano – where it has collapsed into itself and formed a fifty-metre-deep by five-hundred-metre-wide lagoon in the crater, filled with rain water.

Posing by the crater lake

After hiking back down the other side of the volcano, we continued on trails that took us over hanging bridges and on to a waterfall.

The benefits of hiking with a guide meant he pointed out plants, birds and animals along the way – that would otherwise have been too well camouflaged for our untrained eyes to spot. We saw a toucan, hummingbirds, a tree climbing snake, an eyelash viper, a white-faced coati, funnel web spiders, the famous red-eyed green tree frogs (synonymous with Costa Rica) and heard the song of nightingales that sounded like a water harp.

There is certainly a lot of biodiversity here – apparently five percent of the world’s species can be found in Costa Rica.

A tree-climbing snake

After our hike, we were taken to a river to soak in its thermally heated (thirty-eight degrees Celsius) water. It was strange to be in a river as hot as a bath, but lovely to soak our legs and feel clean again after our long day of hiking.

The following day we fancied another soak in the thermal water so we went to one of the many nearby hot springs. The pools are arranged so that the higher up you go the hotter the water – the bottom pool being around thirty-seven degrees and the top pool around forty degrees. However in a hot climate, it was a bit too hot to spend too long in the hotter pools and I kept needing to cool off in the cold plunge pool.
Generally Costa Rica is a bit more expensive than its neighbouring countries and as a tourist you are more often than not charged in US dollars rather that in ‘colones,’ the local currency. It’s also the busiest time of the year – Easter week plus the last month of dry season so it’s busy with tourists and local holiday-makers alike.

To keep the cost down, we’ve been eating in the local cafes, called sodas. Our favourite local speciality is the ‘casado’ – chicken, fish or a pork chop with rice, black beans, plantain, salad and vegetables. Pretty balanced and healthy too!

 

 

Local speciality: casado

We had a much better view of the volcano on day two, though the peak was still in clouds. However, when we took our boat transfer to Monteverde, we were very lucky and had a wonderful clear view.

 

We spent our next few nights in Monteverde: hiking in the cloud forest (which due to the dry season and sunny weather, wasn’t in the clouds on the day we hiked, but made for lovely walking conditions)

We did an amazing zip-line canopy tour, high above the tree-tops and reaching top speeds of one hundred kilometres per hour and including a ‘Superman’ zip line, where you fly headfirst like Superman!

 

 

I also had the opportunity to do Central America’s highest bungee jump! A 143-metre cable car jump, where I went off backwards (for added fun!) There were stunning views from the top and I’d put the jump in my top three bungee jumps – just a shame it wasn’t a bit higher, with a bit longer freefall!

The bungee platform over the cloud forest

Lastly, we went on a coffee, chocolate and sugar cane tour – Costa Rica being a producer of all of the above. We got to see the process of each of the above from growing the plants, to harvesting them and producing them into the finished product – which we then got to sample.

Cocoa beans

A freshly picked coffee berry

Here are some interesting coffee facts for you:

-  The lighter the roast the more caffeine there is – so a stronger, richer tasting coffee has less caffeine than a weaker tasting blend!

-  There is more caffeine in a cup of tea than an espresso.

-  Milk reduces the effect of caffeine so a latte is not as strong as you might think…

'Caffeine per cup' chart

Next up we’re on our way to Montezuma for a week of relaxation and beach time. We’ve been warned it’s where all the Costa Ricans will be heading for Easter weekend too so it’s likely to be very busy – but also a nice chilled-out vibe. I’ll blog again from there next week.

Luang Prabang

We had a really easy border crossing from Thailand into Laos, the officials were friendly and the border police even asked the bus driver to take a selfie with us after asking where we’re from! 

With some time to kill at the bus station, we stopped for some food on the Laos side of the border – we had a choice of noodle soup or noodle soup: presumably it’s the only dish on the menu that the staff know how to say in English (and our Laos language is limited to three words at present) – so two noodle soups it was, with a can of the local Beer Lao. The soup itself was a lot like Vietnamese pho: a thin broth with thin rice noodles, beansprouts, spring onions, meatballs, tripe (or at least I think that’s what it was – I didn’t eat that bit!) and a wedge of lime to squeeze over the top.

On the whole, Laos is a bit more expensive than Thailand, despite being poorer and less developed. The currency (Kip) is 10,000 to the Pound, so we are enjoying being millionaires every time we go to the cash point!

From the border, we took an overnight bus into Luang Prabang, which took fourteen hours. Believe it or not this was the quickest option, with most tourists opting for the two-day slow boat up the Mekong. With hindsight, we wish we had also taken this option as the entire fourteen hours was on winding, pot-holed, mountainous roads. We had bunks on the bus, so lying down it felt even more precarious! 

If I thought the journey to Pai in Thailand was bad, it turns out most of Laos’ roads are like an extreme version of this – with sections of unpaved road, lots of pot-holes for good measure and many trucks driving through the night.

Night buses in Asia are also famous for having freezing cold air conditioning blasting out all night – we had on all our clothes, including fleeces, scarves and woolly hats and we were still cold! Arriving into Luang Prabang at five am, we were certainly pleased to get off, but we then had to wait until we could check in at our guesthouse. The cafés didn’t even open until 6.30 so it was a long and tired wait, but it is at least the only night bus we have planned to take on this trip. 

Luang Prabang has a big French influence. There are bilingual schools and all the cafes serve baguettes and crepes. After our time in Thailand, it was lovely to have fresh baguettes again, instead of the usual sliced, white loaf.
It’s a beautiful, well-preserved city. All the shop fronts have the same style wooden signs with lettering and there are lots of golden temples, but the buildings also have a colonial French style to them.

The coffee here is also excellent, grown locally and served Vietnamese-style with condensed milk in the bottom of the cup. It’s very sweet but very strong and delicious. 

The local-style cafes light two fires in the morning and keep them burning all day. On one fire, there’s a big pot for brewing the coffee and on the other is the stock for the noodle soup. In contrast, there are also lots of more western-style restaurants and cafes – all charging western prices.

One day we took a minivan to Keung Si waterfall, twenty kilometres out of town and which apparently, cannot be missed. The main waterfall is spectacular and cascades from a great height.

The water then continues downstream into turquoise pools and further falls. We started with a walk to the top of the falls and ended the day with a swim in one of the pools at the bottom.

Another afternoon we did a boat trip on the Mekong – a local man took us out in his boat (something like a house boat, but adapted with additional seats to take out passengers and living quarters at the back).

We cruised upstream for thirty minutes, then he cut the engines and let the current take us back downstream, whilst he did some fishing. We were lucky enough to have the boat to ourselves – it does seem to be really quiet here at the moment, despite being peak season.

 

On our last day, we took a walk up the steps to Mount Phousi – a mountain viewpoint with a temple at the top and great views out over the city, the river and the mountains beyond. If I thought before that it was quiet on the river, then it must be because all the tourists were at the top of Mount Phousi – all there to see the sunset! It was so busy it was almost impossible to take a photo without someone’s selfie stick in the way, so we decided not to stay for the sunset and to head somewhere a little quieter…

Luang Prabang is a small, but picturesque city and after three days here we feel like we’ve got a good feel for it. Our next stop will be Vang Vieng, where we’ll be for Christmas. I’ll write again once there.

Happy Christmas everyone!