Another food cart that we ate from had these banana shaped things that were filled with potato like things, but Mother said it was probably plantain. Yesterday Ryan and Mother went out for a vegan lunch. After they came back all of us went out. We meandered around, and stopped at a grocery store, where we got cookies and apple soda, which was… interesting. It started to get dark, so we headed back to the hotel around six. After that, Ryan and Dad headed out alone to get food alone. They came back with these little dough things filled with egg and cheese. I opted for having a bologna sandwich instead. There were various grocery stores around and Saturday night we bought bologna and bread to make sandwiches.

Today Dad left to go deal with the trailer and van stuff, since it’s ship arrived today. Mother thinks we’ll leave tomorrow.

Our hotel room(s) are small, with white walls. There’s a bunk bed in the corner, and the top bunk is right under the air conditioner, so it’s really cold at night. There’s a big bed where Dad/Mom sleep, and then a little bed that can slide underneath their bed, which is where I usually sleep. Though last night, I got to sleep in the bunk. Score! The bathroom is small, and the shower is situated between the toilet and sink, so it’s kind of hard to shower.
Jack and Ryan’s room had two beds of equal size, and their bathroom is actually seperated with a curtain. One day, the maids rearranged the sheet on the beds so it was shaped like a bow.
®©Jennah©®

Cartagena is hot and the air is moist. We managed to squeeze all seven of us into a small cab and headed off towards our hotel. Cartagena is really nice I think. The air is about 80-90 degrees Fahrenheit and thanks to our stay in Florida, I was more climatized than I would be; however, it was still hot enough to give you a head ache or make you sweat a river. Our hotel is just a walk away from the Walled City area. We’ve been eating only bread from this bakery down the street and food off the street.
Everywhere inside the walled city there’s horse draw carriages. I don’t really know where the horses go to eat or sleep or drink, maybe there’s a massive stable in the middle of the city. There are also these motorcycle taxies which are just like normal taxies, except you get to ride on the back of a motor cycle instead of inside a car!
I think that’s all now. Bye.

We discovered that Cartagena is really lovely.  It is like a bigger, more authentic colonial Caribbean pirate city than New Orleans.  It is very colorful, lots of pinks and yellows and wrought iron and palm trees — and we saw women with fruit on their head walking around.  Easy to see why this is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We tried to use google maps to chart our walk but Cartagena has almost no cross walks so google maps had us walking all over the place to cross at crosswalks.

The heat is almost unbearable.  Perhaps it is the lack of any coloring in our skin (we are uniformly solid white).  Perhaps it is two decades in Alaska.  But whatever the reason, the heat just does us in.  The sun shines and the day is 94 degrees.  Its like a combination of Miami and Death Valley.  With salsa music and a million people.  Who speak Spanish.

The kids have been really awesome travelers.  We walked about 3 miles today (which is not so much as we are a walking family) but it was hot and sunny and crowded and very unfamiliar on narrow streets with speeding cabs and was quite overwhelming.

We arrived in Cartagena, and when I stepped off the plane, it was so hot, I assumed it was from the plane engines. Unfortunately, not. It was always that hot.
We hailed a taxi to the hotel, where we had reserved two rooms. Ryan and Jack had one whilst Mother, Max, Annie, Sylvia and I had the other. The hotel had internet and air conditioning. We spent the remainder of the day in our hotel room, only leaving to get bread to eat from a bakery.

At nine o’clock the next morning, we stepped out into the heat to explore Cartagena. We meandered around, going to a castle, and whatnot. I started to almost pass out from lack of fluids and heat. We bought some sodas and went back to the hotel.

But the moments passed and we all feel better.  We spent all day cleaning and organizing the camper for whatever kind of Colombian inspection lies ahead.  Laundry, paperwork (and holy cow, is there a lot of paperwork!), van maintenance — so much fun.  Tomorrow we condense our personal belongings into three dufflebags for the next 13 days and for the inevitable plane trip to Cartagena on 12/12/12.  Then we are stuck here.  Without a car.  For 13 days.

We have reservations for two rooms inside the walled city – one family room that sleeps 6 and one additional room that sleeps 3.  The dogs will be guests of a veterinarian down the street from our hotel.  The van & camper is scheduled to arrive on 12/13, which is Thursday.  But the RORO ship stops along the way and it could be delayed so we may not be able to retrieve the vehicles until Monday.

One thing we did do this evening is to try to make reservations for language immersion in Ecuador. Mar Azul is our first choice (http://ecuador-spanishschool.com/) – they have salsa lessons, too.  Not sure how they feel about 6 kids being there, we’ll see.