World Travel and Adventure: South America!!

Our traditional $12
Pearson Beer

So begins the second entry into this blog. For our first anniversary Marlene and I decided to get away from the bitterly cold, snowy and sun-deprived city of Toronto for the white sand beaches, topaz blue waters and warm Caribean breezes of historic Cartagena. This trip was not on the scale of grandeur as our "honeymoon" vacation to Africa but incredible none the less.

We finally arrived to this most beautiful of back yard gardens

Since it was March break (peak travel season) the cheapest flight we could find brought us through New York, where we managed to get about 4 hours sleep before having to connect with our 6am flight to Miami. After a couple hour lay over in Miami we were finally on our way to Colombia on Avianca airline! Avianca knows what customer service actually means and it was a very enjoyable 3.5 hour flight. I watched "Inception" but unfortunately due to interruptions and the short duration of the flight I got about 2/3 of the way through the film, the captain turned off the entertainment system just as the movie was getting super interesting...needless to say all I could think about was the movie, that is, until we got out of the tiny spec of an airport. The immediate reaction to the heat was shock, our bodies were used to the negative celsius weather of Canada, and our eyes were going to need adjusting to the bright sunshine.

Inside the Walls

The area surrounding the airport immediately brought memories of other South American nations we'd previously visited but once we winded our way through the busy side streets toward the ocean side boulevard we knew this city was going to be much different then anything we'd seen in SA before. The ocean was deep blue in color and the waves were constantly crashing on the surrounding beaches. As we approached the "murales", or the walls, I began to get a sense of the history in this place.

Cartagena is a UNESCO world heritage site and one of Colombia's major economic centres. Cartagena was colonized in 1533 and became an attractive plunder site for pirates due to its wealth and prosperity.
Because of all these attacks, the spanish created a walled city and built many forts around the city in order to defend their assets. The Spanish pumped loads of money into the city and in the 17th century paid from prominent military engineers to carry out the construction of fortresses which are some of Cartagena's most significant identifying features today. The construction took over 200 years to complete and included food and weapons storage as well as underground tunnels. Once these defenses were complete, the city was considered impregnable and was never overtaken again. Cartagena was a major trading port for precious metals and was also a slave port.