MUD

Ching Jen and I totally got stuck in the mud. A big 15m high ant hill of mud, bubbling volcano mud, natural muddy hot spring mud, really really grey sloppy mud. It was very cool. Outside of Cartagena there is an actual volcano that burps out mud. It is now of course a tourist destination and you literally go into the crater, which is kept at a 15' to 20´diameter. The mud that bubbles up the skim each day so that the volcano stays at it´s current dimensions. I´m not sure where they take the mud nor how long they have been doing this. The volcano is situated next to a lake so after soaking up the mud (feet don´t hit the bottom, you kind of just float, like in pudding) we then walked down to the river where you wash off. After this trip the tour took us to a beach village where we hung out for a couple hours and had a lunch of grilled whole fish, it was so tasty! We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around the old city, when it rained again. We ducked into the Gold Museum, out of the rain, but it rained through sunset, so no Cafe del Mar, a drink on the walls looking out at the Caribbean.
The day before we went to the fort San Felipe. It is huge, big and very cool with many tunnels mazing around in the foundation. The day was super hot. From the fort though there were beautiful panoramas of the city. After this we headed to walk around the old city, but we sort of didnt make it there. It poured! It rained buckets and we got trapped under a bank building with the locals who were kicking a rat around into the flooded street. It was actually kind of fun. Ching Jen felt sorry for the cute cute rat. I think she misses the subways in New York. We eventually did make it to wander the old city and the walls, but it was too rainy, cloudy and wet everywhere to watch the sunset.
We´ve met some great travels, a total of 2 couples moving to australia in the next 6 months, go figure, and another bunch of australians. All on multi month travels around South America. They love their 5 and 6 week annual vacations or the ability to leave their jobs and easily find a new one with all the benefits.

Yeah, the Australians pity us Americans in this situation! The Australians didn´t have high recommendations for Playa Blanca (a famous ¨beautiful¨ white sand beach), they felt that there was too much trash and too many interruptions by men selling all sorts of goods. So we took that into consideration and decided not to go as we have been told that the beach would not compare to any in Hawaii anyway. So we decided today to set out on foot and walk out into Bocagrande, a pennisula with beaches on one side and high rises on the other. We walked the entire length with a break in the middle watching fishermen pull in an enormous net, however, we didn´t see a lot of fish caught! Today was also the day of fruit juices! All together we have had mango, passion fruit, pineapple and ¨zapote¨ (an eggplant shaped fruit). They were all tasty and much needed in this hot weather. For dinner tonight we had crepes and ice cream. We also made it to Cafe del Mar tonight at the perfect timing. The sun set just as we sat down and we were right up against the wall. Tomorrow is our last day in Cartagena, not set on what we´ll do exactly, but likely another trip to Bocagrande beach and more wandering in the walled city.