Christmas in Cartagena

View from apartment at night

Cartagena, I noticed quite quickly, is hot and humid. It felt more or less the same as the jungle climate I had left behind a week previously. Unfortunately, my phone, which had begun working properly again after I left the jungle, also soon noticed that the climate was like the jungle and started overheating and losing power really quickly again. Since then my phone has been nearly useless, which means I've not been able to use it to keep track of what I'm doing or take blog notes, so I'll probably miss lots of details out from now on, which surely can't be a bad thing?

Zdenek offered to take me for a quick walk around the old town to introduce me to the place, but it was only brief taxi journey there to walk around, and we didn't even stop anywhere for a drink. Already, though, I was noticing that most of the people in Cartagena seemed to be very well turned out and it was full of large expensive cars. I was beginning to suspect we had come to a rich people's playground for Christmas.

The beach across the road

View by day

The following day, Christmas Eve, we visited the supermarket and bought just about everything in the shop. We went a bit crazy but we were all keen to capture as much of the magic of Christmas so far away from home and our loved ones, so we made sure we had fizzy wine and plenty of other booze, but also blue cheese, which isn't very common in South America, nuts, some cake, little sausages to wrap in bacon, and all the other Christmas essentials. We did at least draw the line at the massive turkeys they had, settling instead for a large chicken. It was clear that the two Swedes had different ideas about how to run Christmas, though, and they preferred to keep their shopping separate. We were spending a lot but, I told myself again, it was Christmas, wasn't it?

Parrillada

That night we went out for dinner at a parrillada in the local area. The prices were a bit high but, I told myself, it was Christmas. The Swedish boys wouldn't cave, though, and got their food from MacDonald's or some other take-away; Andrew was actually starting to sound like he had some sort of eating disorder because he only seemed happy to eat a very limited range of food and what they had on offer here, bits of cooked animal, was just too "yucky" for him, since he seems to only like it minced up into burgers and sausages. In fact, when my full parrillada arrived I too briefly had second thoughts: not only was it huge, but it included some long wiggly thing that looked suspiciously like it might be intestines; I remembered that the fact a parrillada always seems to include intestines is the main reason I had not so far ordered it, despite being surrounded by suitable places in Argentina, and frequently since. I thought I might as well try it since it was sitting in front of me and I was surprised to discover it wasn't too bad, at least nothing like as bad as tripe usually is, but maybe that's because tripe isn't usually barbecued until crispy, so that it becomes reminiscent of crackling.

The counter just needed a prop to go on it

Genuine I think and much cheaper than UK

On Christmas morning I got up quite early so that I could take my laptop to the MacDonald's where there was wifi for me to Skype Joanne and my mum. I was a bit too keen and the manager seemed not to have turned up on time with the keys because lots of staff were sitting around outside waiting. While I was waiting someone offered to sell me some Cuban cigars, which he claimed were on promoción. They seemed quite cheap and he happily lowered the price by half in response to some mild haggling, making me thing I should have aimed lower, but it was Christmas after all. I returned to the flat for breakfast and Buck's Fizz. We had decided to use the cheapest bottle of fizz for this, which was Colombian, but it really was terrible; even with the orange juice it was still pretty horrible, although the orange juice itself was also disgusting, in fact I think it might have been the biggest problem: the carton proudly proclaimed it to be lactose-free, which you would have thought went without saying on orange juice, until you remember the strange South American habit of adding water or milk to fruit juice - and always sugar, of course, because fruits just aren't sweet enough are they? Well, in this case, they had helpfully substituted the absolutely necessary milk with... soya milk! Yum yum, and now we had it in our very bad Colombian sparkling wine; I drank most of everyone else's as well as my own.

Natasha opens the first fizz

The girls sit down to a bucks fizz breakfast

After breakfast, I finally got into MacDonald's, ordered a coffee, and proceeded to call my loved ones using Skype. The place was jam-packed with noisy hyper-active spoiled little brats and their bored-looking parents, who seemed totally unwilling to control their progeny. At least I was able to download a Christmas album as a surprise for Lucy, who had complained that Christmas music was the one thing missing, and it wouldn't be Christmas without it. The conversations were a bit frustrating with all the noise, but it was just about enough to make up for not being there.

Prawn cocktail and avocado to start

Xmas dinner nearly assembled

When we were nearing the end of our conversation I got a text from Lucy, as my phone hadn't quite run down yet, telling me that food was nearly ready. The girls had done all of the preparation work, so I was glad to be able to complete the experience by putting on The Best Christmas Album In The World Ever with aplomb. The girls had done a great job and we tucked into huge amounts of food and booze, including some much nicer sparkling wine, not from Colombia, all accompanied by cheesy Christmas classics and a couple of Cuban cigars, until, near the end of CD2 my laptop screen suddenly went blank and the music was also frozen on one particular note. When I rebooted the machine it wasn't working; the thing would go on, but Windows didn't get very far into the boot-up process. Not more hassle! Was this the effect of humidity as well? What about my photos and my blogs, and using it for wifi? Someone sensibly advised me to forget about it until the next day.

Lucy carves as Zdenek poses

Not bad for being so far from home

Xmas dinner hits the spot

So apart from the laptop it was a very lovely and successful Christmas day. Unfortunately the next day we had to move out of the apartment because the price was nearly doubling in preparation for the New Year period. Amazingly, Lucy and Zdenek had got up earlier than me on Christmas morning and had found us a new place to move to on Boxing Day.

Everyone but me

Still there after plenty of rum and beer

Cake at last