Adventure Logan

Our trip to Columbia was a return trip for David. For 35 years he has told the story of arriving in Cartagena on the HMCS Saguenay in 1979 and visiting for 5 or 6 days.  While there, the ship replenished as is very common. However, when they ordered 6 sides of beef, the beef that was brought to the jetty was still walking. The cows were sent away and when they returned they were freshly butchered and now in baskets with dripping blood all along the way to the ship. Dave (who is generally not too queasy) was so turned off that he ate peanut butter for the rest of the trip. So it was quite interesting to visit with him. The population then was 300,000 and today is 1.3 million so not much looked the same to Dave.

We booked ourselves on a tour that included a bus portion and a ride on a carriage.

Since it was New Year’s Eve day the old town was very busy. They were setting up for parties on every corner. Our bus stopped us outside the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas but we weren’t given enough time to climb to the top (yippee). The couple from Arizona who were at our dinner table each night were on a different tour and they walked (climbed to the top) expecting to look down into the centre – but there wasn’t one so all they got was a view down to the base.

We toured inside the walls of the old town via horse and buggy over very narrow cobblestone streets. The architecture was very interesting – a lot of it called colonial.