Cartagena Flood!

June 22nd - 23rd 2008

During the last hour of my 14 hour over-night bus ride it started to down-poor really hard. The morning in Cartagena was tainted with rain (I really wanted sun) but the attitude of the children in the streets caught my attention (keep in mind my bus is driving along a street with about a foot and a half of water!).

I asked myself with a smile on my face, "why are these children so happy rolling in the rain streams, jumping up and down, throwing balls back and forth, and playing games in the rain?" It looked to me like the kids were doing rain dances with big smiles on their faces and their arms up in the air, welcoming the downpour. I was reminded of when I was a child at the farm and my mom took me and my siblings outside to do a rain dance. Trying to put 2 and 2 together, I immediately thought this must be a tradition or something stemming back from Africa (my older sister Tania was born in South Africa, where my mom and dad met and lived for a couple years).

Even though I wanted sun, I started to lighten up to the idea of embracing the dismal rain; after all, attitude is everything in life, a truism held alive by the children in the streets.

I looked at the weather forecast at Hostel Casa Vienna and it was showing rain, rain, and more rain with chances of thunder showers. I peeked at the forecast in Costa Rica and it was much of the same forecast. I decided to embrace the rain and get some sun in Vancouver when I'm back home!

I spent the day walking around the city, talking with locals, eating at the Cartagena Hard Rock Cafe (to watch Spain defeat Italy), taking photos, and sitting in the main Plaza Bolivar. I was lucky to catch a group of local dancers drum an african beat and shake their thangs like it was nobodies business. I payed them a few pesos to keep them happy and made my way back to the hostel as the night was falling.

I took some photos of the sunset along the Carribean Sea from the ancient wall (lined with canons) that protected the old city from intruders back in the days of pirates, invasions, and wars. At the hostel I booked a day trip to the Mud Volcano and called it a night.

I woke up early to head off to the Mud Volcano. This was another interesting experience! A group of 20 of us arrived an hour later to a 30 foot mountain made of mud. In the middle, there is a clay\mud bath that is the result of some gaseous spring from the earth below. About 30 people were crammed int this mud bath and each person was "mud massaged" as they entered. What a weird feeling. You could barely move in the sludge, and felt like you were floating (knees mysteriously bent with nothing below to step on). When you got out of the mud, there was a group of African ladies that took you down to the swamp and washed you off. Of course, these people were working for tips, but in the end the whole experience from entry to exit was unique.

When I arrived back at the hostel, I showered, then went for another walk into the city. I spotted the African ladies with their fruit baskets atop their heads and bought some fresh Pineapple in exchange for a photo. On my way back I picked up some dinner a the market and made plans to set off for the highly touted Playa Blanca.