Colombia Cartagena: Day 1

We landed in Cartagena at 5:30 this evening, tired and relieved to be here. We recuperated a bit with cold beer & hot food & now I am winding down in the hotel room, reflecting on all the little clues that remind you, even after only a few minutes in a tropical country, that you are not in Kansas any more. Or (in our case), not in Canada. There's the temperature clue, of course. Cranbrook was cool when I left, Southern Ontario even cooler these past few days, & our brief stopover in Bogota was chilly enough for me to keep my jacket on the whole time. But as soon as I emerged from the airplane doorway on the tarmac in Cartagena the heat settled down like a weight & suddenly my little jacket felt unbearably heavy. By the time I got to the end of the disembarking stairway I was damp with sweat.

And tropical countries - in developing nations anyway - just smell differently. The air is not only warmer but richer & more full with sensory information. It seems to take longer to breathe it. Pavement, car exhaust, fruit, street food, & countless unidentifiable odours all add their data to the mix. The language, too, socks in like a thick blanket. For the first few minutes it's all just noise but it doesn't take long for individual words to stand out & take meaning & a little later phrases emerge from the soup of chaos. If this visit is like others I know it will be several days at least before the environment starts to make any kind of sense.

There's the sudden-ness of sunset. When we arrived at the hotel it was still day, late afternoon. I went into my room to unpack for 15 minutes & when I returned outside it was night. Just like that! But the streets get livelier as the night gets darker, and by the time we all strolled out to the Old City looking for a bite of supper the place was hopping with people, music, waiters hawking restaurant food, vendors selling baskets, and horses drawing tourists in carriages.

Tomorrow we have a day off! We are going to explore the Old City some more & maybe hire a taxi to show us the sights. Cartagena is a UN World Heritage Site & it would be criminal to come all this way & not see what makes it so special.