Friday 7th August
Cartagena was quite a surprise. We hired a taxi for two hours, with another couple to see the highlights. The old city has a wall around it and a substantial number of the population still live there. A lot of the buildings are around 500 years old with lots of history and beautifully maintained. It has the distinctive Spanish look about it. Many old churches and other building such as the town hall and the local council building and would you believe it the original Hard Rock Café. The modern city (outside the walls) has lots of tall apartment blocks along the beaches. It’s rather a clean city with lots of little parks and gardens. There are armed guards everywhere but one doesn’t feel intimidated at all. The port area where we were docked was the usual greasy, busy trade port and probably deterred a lot of people on the ship from venturing further. There were also warnings of pick pockets etc. Those who didn’t go ashore and explore a little missed out on one of the most interesting places we have been so far.