COLOMBIA: CARTAGENA PART II

 March 15, 2023

One of the things we quickly came to appreciate in Colombia in general was the street art.  I think they have more murals than anywhere we have ever been. Little did we know when we were ooh-ing and ah-ing over the murals in Cartagena that they were just a fraction of what we would see later in the trip.

I particularly love this shot of the old buildings and mural on a hilly street with the downtown skyscrapers in the background.

Carolina dropped us off at our hotel at about 4:30, and by 5:00 we were out walking again. We first navigated to Centenary Park to see the gray titi monkeys that live wild in the trees. There aren't a lot of them, but we were able to see a few leaping from limb to limb or resting and watching their surroundings. I love their long, furry tails.

There was a string of shops bordering one side of the park. Savannah wanted to buy a mochila bag, a traditional natural fiber cross-body purse with a brightly-colored woven strap traditionally made by Colombian women. You can see Mirabel carrying one around inn the movie Encanto. 

Savannah found a beautiful black one with a bright strap in one of the shops, and the shop-keeper told us it was 70,000 pesos (about $14). I tried to bargain--as I had been told to by our guide--but he would not budge. We ended up buying it, and later in the evening we saw one that was very similar selling for $84 in a jewelry shop.

I loved Savannah's so much that I bought a red one for myself in a market in Bogota a few days later, paying several dollars more than what we paid for hers.

Continuing on, we waved to a larger-than-life bronze statue of Pope John Paul II, installed after he visited Cartagena in 1986 to mourn the loss of the 23,000 victims of a mudslide caused by a volcano eruption in Armero, over 600 miles away. You can tell that a lot of passersby have held his upraised hand.

I found an old friend, Miguel de Cervantes, in Plaza Cervantes. I'm not sure what he is doing in Cartagena.

Colombia is famous for its emeralds, and Bob really wanted to buy me a piece of emerald jewelry, so we went to an emerald shop he had read about. I thought the jewelry was WAY too expensive for what you got. I think Bob was surprised that I didn't jump at the opportunity, but what I thought we could afford didn't appeal to me, and I wasn't willing to pay big bucks for the ones I liked.

However, later we went to another emerald shop, and I found something there that was both appealing to me and affordable--a simple band set with a long, rectangular emerald. We had two bands soldered together to make one ring for me, and we bought a single band for Savannah. 

On our way back to the hotel, we were impressed by the vibrant nightlife in the Old Town area. There were groups playing music, people dancing in the square, and lots of people walking around and enjoying themselves.