New Year in Cartagena

The apartment we moved to on Boxing Day was a bit closer to the centre of town, but essentially it was still in Bocagrande, which meant that the beaches were still easy walking distance, but I hoped we might be able to spend some time in the old town, which includes a cheaper backpacker district. In fact we just kept going out in Bocagrande, which really is very expensive, and it has none of the charm of the old town. Once you get past the nice views because you are twenty floors up, Bocagrande really doesn't have much going for it: it's full of tower blocks and horrible people, who won't even slow their expensive cars to let you cross the road, on their way to parking them right up on the pavement so that you can't walk anywhere. OK there is also the beach, but it's not the nicest of beaches, and I really need to spend a lot of time in the gym before I would feel like spending any time on a beach, for fear that I might be harpooned.

View across the bay from new apartment

View towards central Bocagrande

Quite soon I was regretting having agreed to the extra twelve days, in the second flat, in Cartagena. There was a dance music festival on the 6th January which we had all wanted to go to, but even before New Year I was utterly sick of getting wasted and staying up most of the night at terrible clubs you have to pay to get in all for the privilege of paying crazy money for the drinks and listening to terrible loud music. Bocagrande is not my sort of place at all. And of course, because we were up so late we never managed to do any touristy things like go to the castle or walk around the old town during the day. At least we could see the castle from the window at night.

View towards Bocagrande at night

View across the bay at night

Lucy and Natasha on the beach

Another thing spoiling my time was wasting so much of it on trying to fix the laptop. I kept going to the internet cafe to look online for solutions. Eventually I gave up on Windows and downloaded a miniature Linux install, which is easily small enough to run from my USB key, without even needing installed. I couldn't get the sound or camera working, and the resolution wouldn't go higher than 800x600 but it would be enough to deal with my photos (stretched wider at that resolution) and write blog entries. Finally on Hogmanay I joined the others on the beach, which made a nice change, but after a couple of hours I'd had enough. I don't know how I used to lie on the beach for hours on end, because I really don't like it now. The sea I enjoy, but beaches are just covered in sand, which gets everywhere. On the beach I realised that the birds flying up and down the waves were not seagulls as I had assumed, but pelicans, which are much nicer and perform frequent impressive dives into the water for fish.

The beach on Hogmanay

A bird on the beach

Bocagrande from the beach

We had been given a leaflet by someone running a free New Year party selling cheap beer, which sounded like it had great music, and much more the type of event I enjoy. The only problem was that it was fifty kilometres away, or an hour in a bus. Natasha and Silvie seemed quite keen as well, but when we put the idea to Lucy she wasn't keen at all because of the distance. Zdenek was sure that there would be parties on the beaches round about where we were, so that became the vague plan for the evening. It was very nice to be with friends over Christmas, but I was really beginning to see the disadvantages in staying as a big group. However I had paid the exorbitant rent, so I was stuck with my rash decision.

Across the bay to a blue moon rising

Blue moon rising over el club nautico

The moon

Again

Zdenek suggested staying longer in the apartment to save money, and do most of our drinking before we went out. Most people in Cartagena don't seem to go out until after midnight anyway, so it certainly made sense. He went into dangerous barman mode and kept plying us with shots of rum, while we watched the incredible blue moon rising over bay and the city.

Blue moon risen

The new apartment

Zdenek dishes out the shots

Cheers!

Finally, after the bells, we were sufficiently mashed that we felt it would be sensible to go outside. There were no parties on the beach and all of the clubs were asking for outrageous covers. Zdenek was absolutely certain that there was a party near an after-hours club out of town that we had been to a couple of times and he really liked; he had noticed late night parties from the taxi on the way there, which he thought had been running every night since Christmas, so we got a taxi right out of town to this beach and there was nothing happening there either, although there was an unlit empty stage still there from the previous nights.

Lucy and Zdenek dressed up. OK maybe just Lucy.

The ladies are ready - just as soon as they've drunk their pina coladas

Andrew likes Silvie's look

Maybe too many shots?

It was far too early for the after hours club to be open, but we didn't just want to pay for a taxi back to town - for what? - so Zdenek knocked on the door and they were happy enough to let us in. We ordered a bottle of rum and drank it slowly, totally on our own for a couple of hours until a trickle of people started to come in. It did eventually fill up and we had a good night, but I have no doubts that the free party out of town would have been much better - and cheaper. But I hadn't been on my own, so other people had to be taken into account, also I didn't really want to be a party-pooper and go off on my own, although the Swedes had disappeared early on in the night and done their own thing, but they were a team beforehand, whereas my partner in mischief had gone back to Scotland.

Last photo before we head out

written by

The Happy Couple on January 1, 2010 from Cartagena, Colombia

from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon

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