Bill has a very long post with lots of information about our day, so I’ll keep this one shorter and add pictures. It rained here this morning with very strong wind. I like to watch storms come in. The rain and clouds cooled things down a bit. The rain must have brought fish to the surface because sea birds grouped together on the water and kept diving for fish. Some fishermen noticed the birds and took a net out to where they were diving. I love to watch the birds dive. Some of them are really graceful and others smash into the water in what looks like a very awkward dive.

Since it was cloudy and somewhat cooler, we decided to walk along the top of the wall around the old city. It was a lovely walk, with a nice breeze. We accidentally came across the Naval Museum and decided to visit. As Bill noted, we got a guide, but it would have taken us hours to make it through a relatively small museum if we had stayed with him. It’s nice to have information, but at some point, you just want to move on. Fortunately, a British couple showed up who seemed exceptionally happy to be on museum tour that would last several hours so we left the guide with them! Bill had a lot of fun with the interactive submarine and ship exhibits. See pictures below.

Bill talked me into buying a coffee cup. I’m collecting coffee cups (for tea) from each country I visit. I bought a Cartagena cup a few days ago then immediately found another one that I liked a lot better. I didn’t buy it then, but when we came across it again today, Bill talked me into getting it. I’m glad I did, I really like it!

We ate lunch at a neat restaurant that sells very expensive Cuban cigars. I’ve ordered coconut lemonade several times here in Cartagena, and I love it! This restaurant had the best coconut lemonade that I’ve had so far. I’m definitely looking for a recipe when I get home. If anyone has a coconut lemonade recipe, let me know. It’s delicious!

Bill decided not to go to class today since he wasn’t sure what it would be like. I was afraid he would be bored, but he had a productive afternoon. By the time I got home, he had gotten groceries, swept and scrubbed the floor with disinfectant and sprayed for ants (tiny ones have invaded our kitchen). He also organized a tour to a nature reserve with our taxi driver. I asked him to do this without remembering that the taxi driver doesn’t speak English. Bill managed to engage in a successful text conversation with the driver and we are leaving at 9am tomorrow for the reserve. I’m really looking forward to that.

Class was fun for me this afternoon. I love my teacher. She’s 22 and a lot of fun. I’m making good progress, it’s too bad I have to come back to IA so soon where I forget everything. My friend and I and maybe Bill are going to try to get a Spanish tutor this fall.

Okay, that’s it for me. Pictures are posted below. As Bill said, feel free to commend on anything or ask questions. I know how to respond to people’s posts now!

23 July 2019 15:46

Based on time stamp, I am not in class. I sent the school and email this morning about the issue yesterday and so far all I have gotten back was a automatic response that they got my email. I’m not sure if they will say something to Emily at class or not. 
I’m okay with not going to class, last week went well with Karen and I would have been okay if I had another teacher like her, that could speak English well. 
Instead of class I walked with Emily to the Exito (Walmart type place) where we parted ways. She is used to doing a lot on her own in foreign countries. I was able to get money, do some shopping from our list and then walked back to the apartment. 

I swept and mopped since lint is more prolific than Emily’s hair here in Colombia. I’m not sure where it all comes from but I sweep a lot of it. 

I also scheduled our tour to one of the national parks, aviario barut. It should be a good trip. Aley, our guide from the other day only speaks Spanish so I had to use the few words I do know and google translate with a spotty connection. It worked out though. Emily and I are looking forward to some green space tomorrow. The city has been good, we are feeling pretty comfortable getting around, there has been plenty to keep us occupied, but not much green space. What we do get is usually a dumping area or a place for the men, policia included to use as a bathroom.  Last night we were walking by and there was a large police presence and I said maybe they are flushing out the homeless or ruffians but as they were coming out of the trees you could tell that was not what they had been doing. 

This morning Emily and I tried to walk the whole wall of the old city. We got to a point where we had to go down and it was by the naval museum so we side tripped into it, it was neat to see. There was a man that offered to be a guide for a 20, most of the information is only in Spanish. We took him up on it but had to bail on him as he was a windy fellow and a British couple had joined us shortly after we started and the lady was as windy if not more. We gave him a ten and Emily told them she had class so we were going to move on. We got to see everything and they had barely moved along. It wasn’t like we zipped though either since we had to stop and play on the interactive exhibits. I like the models of the city at all the museums including this one, but the good stuff was upstairs and was life sized. I about gave Emily a heart attack or two pushing buttons on the submarine exhibit! Those alarms are loud!! I recommend stopping by. We tried to get back on the wall but it only went a short ways and we had to turn around and go back down. We did a little shopping and got Emily a mug she had seen the other day she really liked but wouldn’t buy. It should hold some tea. 

We never did find the wall again, we found the neighborhood from last night and to the area by The Clock Pub. We got a picture! 
We did a big loop looking for something to eat and decided on this Cuban bar and restaurant. I had my first Cuban sandwich, it was delicious!! All others will probably fail in comparison unless I get one in Cuba. I was a neat place. They sold cigars there from Cuba and Colombia. It was a really cool vibe there. Did I tell you how good the sandwich was?! 

It has been overcast today, it started out with a rainstorm. I think we are still going to try and swim after Emily gets back from class. 

Be sure to leave comments or questions if you have them! We enjoy seeing what you have to say and if there are some questions we can find answers to while we are here we will definitely try! 

I also will try and keep you informed about our gear and other helpful travel information. I will see if Emily can add some links to the products we use. 

One of the things I have not mentioned yet it the LocTote bag we have been using. LocTote Industrial Bag Co. we have a small grey one, I believe the 3l sport bag. I love the idea this bag. It is made of slash proof material and the ropes are cut resistant. The cool thing is that the bag locks. You can lock it to things. It does have a waterproof pocket inside and it also protects your credit cards and what not from being read while in the bag. Overall a fabulous bag for traveling. It is comfortable to wear, Emily likes it better than her old backpack she used for carrying stuff around when out and about. 
We both think the company needs to do a dry bag for those who want to do snorkeling or SCUBA diving. A dry bag would be good to either take under with you or you could lock it to the boat. Getting pounded by water on the way back it would have been soaked even inside, the outside is water repellent but the rope straps wick water to the inside. The pocket does stay dry though. Overall a great bag, easy to use. I would like the padlock that comes with it to be spring loaded so it lessens the chance of accidental lock combination being changed. Some may want a different lock altogether though. 

The motorcycles here have such tiny motors. Maybe 125cc. They have a lot of scooters too. The ones that aren’t electric may have same size motors. 
There are motorcycle taxis, the school says not to take them due to the danger. They do give you a helmet, some wear it some don’t. Our driver said there are motorcycle accidents everyday, there are no rules for motorcycles. They do u turns and lane splitting wherever they want and some have lights some don’t. Some pass on the right. Taxis really can’t talk too much they think there is a third lane on all the two lane roads for them. They pass when they want a lot of the time as well. The traffic is not a crazy as Peru but they drivers are friendly to each other most the time. I’m not sure why Americans are such angry drivers. The taxi’s tires are so small and they must not have free air here as a lot of vehicles need air in their tires. 

19:13
Had a short swim after Emily got back from class. Pool was a bit cool since there wasn’t any sun. It is surprising how fast when the sun is out that you get used to the cool water in the pool. It sort of works the same here for the shower. We get extremely hot water to the sinks but the shower doesn’t get any. In fact when you turn on the hot water side it gets colder. I always just stand with the water running before I get in and that seems to help. But once you are showering it doesn’t seem too bad. The maintenance guy said the tile has to be removed to fix the handle since it falls off, they should fix that and the hot water. It looks like that tile has been off before. 

Not much else going on tonight, we have that tour in the morning and we pretty active all day so I will do some laundry and relax!

After our exciting scuba excursion yesterday, Bill and I decided to camp out in the apartment this morning rather than do an activity. We were going to swim, but the pool was closed for maintenance. I had difficult homework anyway, so it was just as well that we didn’t go out.

We had some problems with class this afternoon. The school switched Bill’s teacher, and they ran out of classroom space for us so we both ended up at different cafes for our lessons. The results for Bill were not good. I’m including his post here since it’s not that long. Here it is:

22 July 2019 20:18

Week two of Spanish did not start well. They switch my instructor from Karen to Michelle. Michelle does not speak much English and what she does it is very broken and hard to understand. Nothing was explained to me, Karen introduced me to Michelle and said she was going to be my teacher this week. Then Michelle asked me to follow her and she took me out of the building and a fair distance from the school to a cafe that had music in the background. She was busy on her phone and during the walk and at the cafe she was saying she was sorry and that she had worries and gesturing to her phone. I had a lot of trouble understanding her and there was nobody that could help me so I told her I was done and we went back to the school. There, it seemed that everyone who could speak English was teaching. So, I caught a cab and came back to the apartment. At some point, they let Emily know I had left early. Her instructor told her they had a lot of students this week, there were no classrooms available, and that the private lessons were moved to off site locations. I’m not sure I like that as I have a hard enough time hearing and understanding. I may have to revert to my CDs and DouLingo. 

After Emily got back we went down to the trendy neighborhood and had dinner. We got to see some street performers and walked around some. Very interesting neighborhood we are going to try and get back down there Friday night when it should be busier.

That’s Bill’s post. The school should never have put a beginning language learner with a teacher who can’t explain anything to him. It’s completely overwhelming to have someone giving you instructions in a language you can’t understand. She tried to have him do a worksheet, but she couldn’t explain what he was supposed to do or what the concepts were. It’s hard enough to understand another language in a quiet, classroom setting, but in a noisy restaurant, it’s impossible. I’m hoping I can talk to the school tomorrow and get him a different teacher and a quite space. He did really well last week, and it would be nice if he had the opportunity to continue.

As he said above, after class, we decided to go to a trendy neighborhood called Getsemani. There’s a well-known salsa club there that I wanted to go to. Unfortunately, the salsa club is only open Thursday-Saturday from 8:30pm to 4am so we will have to go another night. The neighborhood is very mixed with extremely nice buildings next to super sketchy ones. People were living in apartments right next to restaurants in an area that, we think, gets wild beginning Thursday night. There was a strong police presence there tonight and it’s only Monday. It’s a fun neighborhood though with shops, bars, restaurants and street performers. We found a neat, very colorful restaurant. The music inside was loud, but we found a table on a private balcony on the second floor and that was perfect. We got to watch street performers on the square below us. There was a very talented group doing break-dancing and a Michel Jackson impersonator. We walked around for a while before and after supper.

The food was good. I had a pan fried fish fillet and Bill got fried shrimp, calamari and fish. The restaurant forgot his French fries, which was disappointing, but he had a cookie when we got back to the apartment, so he’ll probably be okay! We have colorful pictures posted below!

22 July 2019 11:08

Yesterday’s post was limited as we were both super tired (we have towels for capes) when we got back last night. We neglected to mention eating at The Clock Pub once again, I should have ordered the coconut chicken instead of nachos, they were good but I liked the chicken better. We also failed to get a picture of it again. We may be down that way later and will try. I’m also going to try and get a picture of one of the food delivery people. They do have uber eats here but the one I want a picture of is a different company. 

Emily is doing some homework before class. I did not get homework, Karen must be nicer than she seems when threatening me when I translate what she says. 

I do want to give a shout out to my Columbia (the company and a river in the Pacific Northwest, not Colombia the country) pants/ shorts. I think these are great for travel. The wash and dry easy, the pockets are useful and the leg zip off. I got them originally for Peru where it was cool in the morning but in the afternoon sun it was warm. They worked great there and here they are lightweight and breath very well. I have not used the legs here at all. For travel these may be the only pants/ shorts I may use in the future unless we go somewhere cooler, much cooler. 

I also want to mention Neutrogena Ultra Sheer face and body stick spf 70. Fantastic sunscreen! And it is not a liquid so you do not have to put it in you one quart size liquids bag for the flight. It is a little pricey but very worth it. 

Emily and I have been really enjoying our experience here in Colombia! We have felt like it has been a vacation and we are getting to learn Spanish. The three hours of class in the afternoon has not been as much of an issue as we had thought it might before we came here. We have been able to do things before class and after, we don’t feel we’ve missed things (we do have a few more to do though) or that we have been rushed. We have had some issues with our apartment but issues are much more minor when we get to relax more. 
An organized trip like Peru did make it possible to see a lot of things that were totally worth seeing, but a slower trip has been much more pleasant. In the future organized trips will be only for covering a lot of ground in a short time. 

As for SCUBA, we are both still thinking we will do it again and this morning we are feeling a bit better about the experience yesterday. I am still a little disappointed in my buoyancy issue and that I ended up breaking some corals. I know the corals get broken naturally as well since the beach on the island is made up of it, I just felt bad about it. 

21 July 2019 19:21

Got up and made an omelet to be well fed for our snorkeling adventure this morning. Turned out well. The pan has some dents and doesn’t always sit level but it works. 

Once we got to the dive shop the gal up sold us on something they call “Discover SCUBA”. It is where you get to do some work with a instructor in a pool and then actually go out in open water and dive with an instructor. 
Since we have talked about doing SCUBA and didn’t think we would have time this trip we planned the snorkeling. 

The pool work wasn’t too bad. I don’t care for the fins. I get they are useful but I feel they are a bit long. They were also a pain in the pool as it was not a very deep pool and I couldn’t get in a comfortable position. 
Breathing underwater took a little bit of an adjustment. It sort of is like snorkeling but better in that your air doesn’t get cut off when you go to deep. 

The open water dive was interesting. I made it to the bottom a lot. I think they put too much weight on my belts. They tried to adjust my buoyancy vest a couple different times but I had problems being able to stay out of the coral and it frustrated me. I felt okay with the respirator and my mask worked excellent. I did not have any real issues with leaking, even with my facial hair. I did learn how to clear my mask in the event of water getting in it though. 
I would have probably enjoyed the dive more if I would have been able to hold the horizontal position and not keep sinking. 
I did get to see some fish and coral. They took us along the edge of the reef where it gets deeper, though they kept us around ten meters. About 32 feet. 
We only got about half the dive since my air went fast. I was breathing too fast and deep. I will need to work on that. It may have been related to my frustration. Next time I hope that I don’t have issues with sinking. I will also have to look into fins to either find some I like better or just to use the to get more used to them. 

We did not get any pictures of our diving as we did not think to borrow a gopro or buy one for this trip. Next time. 

The boat ride out to the island wasn’t bad, the way back was very, very wet and rough!! 

The water though was amazing! The colors changed from dark blue to a sea green. Around the resort and where we dived (except the pool, it needed cleaned!) it was clear! 

Bill and I started the day planning to go snorkeling. Scuba diving requires training, and I didn’t think we had time to fit that in on this trip. When we arrived at the dive shop, we learned that they had a crash course in scuba diving. Bill and I were excited about this because we have been wanting to try scuba. We’ve talked about doing a scuba trip over Christmas break.

The dive shop took us to a marina where a massive fork lift was lifting sail boats off of racks and putting them into the water. I’ve never seen anything like it! Some of the boats were 1000 sp. ft. or more and nicer than people’s houses! There’s a lot of money in Cartagena.

We took an hour boat ride to a hotel in the Rosario Islands. We got outfitted with scuba gear and got our first lesson practicing in the pool. It was much harder than I had expected. Part of the training is learning how to eliminate water from your mask if it leaks. You have to lift the mask up a little bit and blow through your nose to force the water out while also remembering to breath through the mouth piece. The biggest part of learning to scuba dive is learning not to panic when you feel like you are going to drown. We also had to learn what to do if we lost our mouth piece or got water in our mouth. You have to blow bubbles out of your mouth while you search for the mouth piece, then put it back in and flush out any extra water. It takes incredible calm not to panic under water when your breathing apparatus is taken away or your goggles fill up with water. My mask is not very good and kept leaking. I almost broke down and cried in the pool because I didn’t think I could get the intense feeling of panic under control to go back under the water. In general, I love to swim and be in the water. I made it through the hour long pool training and got cleared to try the ocean. There was a Lebanese woman in our group who also struggled like me.

After our training, we headed out to the ocean. Scuba gear is extremely heavy. We got all strapped in and I successfully jumped out of the boat. The water was pretty choppy and it’s hard to swim with fins on so I struggled to make it to the front of the boat where everyone was waiting to dive. Ideally, the dive instructor deflates your vest, you have weights on a belt around your waste and you hold onto a rope and slowly descend into the water. While you are going down, you have to equalize pressure in your ears by pinching your nose and blowing. This has to be done several times during the descent.

I had my vest deflated and started going down. I was already really nervous but when I tried to equalize the pressure in my ears, my mask filled up completely with water. I panicked and came to the surface immediately. I couldn’t see because my mask was full of water, and I accidentally grabbed my dive instructor’s mask and pulled it off of her. I didn’t even realize was beside me but when I got my mask off, she was coughing and choking on water. I almost quit, but she showed me how to pinch my nose without filling my mask up so I tried again. I was more successful the second time. I made it down but kept floating toward the surface. It was really hard to concentrate on breathing, emptying my mask of water and swimming successfully with dive equipment. The instructors kept us in a tight group so it was also hard not to run into the other inexperienced divers. There were neat fish and corals, but it was hard to pay attention to them and focus on not drowning!

I think I would like to try again. It’s probably an activity that would be more fun with additional practice and maybe additional training. It really is incredible to be under the water with no need to surface and plenty of time to be around marine life. There were lots of pretty, colorful fish and interesting corals. I would try again and I would recommend it to people as long as they understand that it’s harder than you might expect.

We met some interesting people today. There was a young woman in our group from the French speaking part of Switzerland (there are lots of Swiss people here). She was an experienced diver and has done dives all over the world. We also met a French family from Paris. The parents were vacationing their their sons, all in college. The youngest is going to be an engineer, the middle one is in medical school, and the oldest is studying astro-physics. Very high achieving family!

We had a very interesting day, but Bill and I were both happy to be back at our apartment and clean. The salt water and sun are harsh on your skin! I have a few pictures but not many. I had a water proof case for my phone, but there was no way I could take pictures and scuba at the same time! The water was incredibly blue and crystal clean in places. On the way back to the marina, the water was extremely choppy. The boat ride was like a roller coaster. I still feel like I’m moving on the waves!

20 July 2019 15:00
This morning we went on a city tour with our taxi driver from yesterday morning, Aley. He is a super friendly guy and did a good job with the tour. It was long so he needs to work a stop for street food into his tours. He said that he has only been doing the tours for a couple months. He spoke only Spanish, but he would repeat or talk slower when needed. Emily got a lot of practice with him. I was able to get the gist of some of it. We’ll post a picture of his information in case anyone is going to be in Cartagena. I used the whatsapp to text him. It worked well and was easy to just pick the country and put in his number. We have kept it and are thinking of a trip he offers to a national park about 40 minutes away later in the week one morning. 

Cartagena is a large city with many different neighborhoods or barrios. I like the people and their attitude towards each other. The people here love being Colombian and even more so from Cartagena.
Aley took us through several different barrios on our way to some of the sights and told us a little about them. 
The sights were interesting and Aley was knowledgeable about them. Aley also takes pictures so we did not need to use our new selfie stick. 
La Popa and the Castillo de San Felipe provided us with some excellent views of Cartagena. 
After visiting Boca Grande (big mouth) I find that I like the neighborhood we are in better. The beaches there were packed and there were people selling stuff. Our beach even when busy and with the lady that offers massages to Emily, is better. 
I like that we have knocked some sightseeing off our list. For as long as we have been here it didn’t seem like we had seen much, mostly busy with classes. Most likely our trip tomorrow will be icing on the cake though! 

Possibly tonight we may go to a trendy area of town and check out some clubs. Hopefully Emily paid attention to my Spanish CDs on how to ask someone to dance if she is wanting to do more Salsa! 

20:56
We opted to do the trendy town another evening, she probably wants to work on her moves and asking someone who can dance to join her. 

It’s Saturday and a holiday here so it will probably be nuts there. Another evening may be more our speed and we have to get up early tomorrow for our snorkeling excursion. 

We went in to the old city tonight to walk around some and get dinner. We stopped and had Italian at a place Emily just pointed at and asked “how about here?” It was very good and had been a place a famous writer enjoyed that Emily was familiar with. She probably posted who in her blog. It turned out well. I have not had any bad food here yet. The first place was good but everyplace else has been better for what I have ordered. 

We had another really fun day! A few days ago, we met a very friendly taxi driver. He only speaks Spanish, but he gave us his number and told us he did city tours. He was willing to be patient with my imperfect Spanish so we took him up on his offer. He picked us up at 9:30 this morning, we had no idea where the tour went, how long it would take or how much it cost, but you only live once! It turned out to be a really good tour! The tour lasted about 5 hours, and it was a pretty intensive 5 hours of Spanish for us both. I started out translating for Bill, but after 5 hours, he was picking up a lot more on his own. We saw a monastery on the highest point in the city, a really interesting fort built by the Spanish with tunnels that connected the fort to old, historic part of the city. Most of the city is built on what used to be water. We saw several different neighborhoods, rich, poor, and middle class and we visited an emerald workshop. Colombia produces some of the best emeralds in the world and they are very proud of them. Our driver just started doing tours a few months ago, but he did a great job and we really liked him. He also does tours out to a nature reserve so if he’s free this week, we are going to do that one morning. I hope we get to do that. There’s also a place where you can go soak in volcanic mud, but I don’t think we will be able to fit that in.

We got home around 2pm, fixed a quick bite to eat then rested for a while. I got a little burnt during our tour in the scorching sun, and we must have lost pounds of water sweating. Bill thinks I slept for a while because he came to check on me and I didn’t respond and didn’t realize it was already 5:30 pm when I finally got up. We both really enjoyed the trip though and we recommend the cab driver!

We walked down to the old city for supper and found a really neat Italian restaurant. It had interesting artwork on the walls. The paintings were done by a friend of the owner. The owner also proudly told us that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of Latin America’s most famous authors, had visited the restaurant. Marquez is Colombian and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. The owner had pictures of Marquez on the wall. I got a spinach pie and Bill had lasagna. The food was good and we got Gelato for dessert. It was a fun evening.

I’ve signed us up for a day of snorkeling tomorrow. We are really looking forward to that! I signed up and paid online so I hope that all works out. We have to be in the old city at 8am for an hour boat ride to Isla Rosario where there is good snorkeling. Everything got good Trip Advisor reviews.

I wanted to go to a dance club tonight in a section of the city called Getsemani. We toured through it today in the taxi and it’s a neat place. It’s also a huge party spot. Today is Saturday and a national holiday so we decided to wait on the trip there until one evening this week when it should still be fun but probably not as wild! We are both past the wild nightlife stage!

Pictures of our city tour are posted below! Bill will have an update soon. My first picture is of a drink Bill and I have been drinking all week. It’s lemonade with “coconut crystals.” The “coconut crystals” are really small, chewy, marshmallow- like pieces that float around in the lemonade. It’s very interesting. It’s good, but it takes time to get used to.

It’s Saturday! I was too exhausted to do an update last night and I’m just getting around to posting Bill’s update this morning. He did a really good job, so I’m just going to add a couple things to his post.

After our dance class, I suggested to Bill that we could potentially be great at salsa with some practice. His response was “we might be great at chips and salsa!” I suggested that we go to either a salsa dance club or an Afro-Caribbean dance club tonight and he wanted to know what I’ve been smoking. I think I have him talked into going to take a look at the dance club! It was a really good week and we are looking forward to a fun weekend too.

Okay, the rest is Bill’s post! I’ll add pictures below.

I should probably clarify my statement about translating what Karen says. She speaks to me mostly in Spanish unless I admit I have no clue what she was saying to me. It seems you can answer with “si” a lot and she is okay that. I really don’t know what she said because she moves on. But sometimes she says things that she knows I don’t understand and repeats herself slower and I will hear a word that I know and I will translate it. Other times she will write a word I know and I will automatically blurt out the translation. When I do that she will tell me in Spanish not to translate, I’m learning “no traduciendo” very well!! It’s probably good I’m not in a class with other students. 

This morning I looked through our posts and seen that I should be reading my posts before I send them to Emily to be posted. A few missed letters and words. 

Every morning down on the beach there is a guy that sets up little tents. They are just four posts and some tent stakes that we believe people rent for shade. 
There is also a guy that must sell fresh fish he caught. He sets up a thing on the wall that separates the beach from the sidewalk and cleans them tossing the guts to the birds. He usually has several lined up by the bus stop. 

It’s Friday so that means we’ve made it a full week! It seems like it has gone by fast and that we’ve not done a lot besides school. But we have walked around the old city and seen some of the local culture. We’ve been getting in some swimming which has been nice. Even with three hours of class in the afternoon we have been making good use of our free time. It feels like a vacation and not school. Even my time in class is fun. I’m not good, but I am getting better. 

Today we decided to go into the old city early and go to a couple museums, turns out the two we were planning on today is actually one museum. Palacio de la Inquisition/ History Museum. It was interesting, they had a window that people used as a drive up for carriages, narc on your neighbor drop off. The carriage would pull up and a note would get tossed in the window. 

Before the museum, we stopped off at Juan Valdez coffee shop, I don’t normally drink coffee, I am in Colombia though and felt I could give it a go. If there is a place to drink coffee it would be here where it feels like 100 degrees most the time! I had a cafe tinto, which here it’s just tinto. It tastes like coffee in the US. 
After we walked up on the wall for the view and bought a selfie stick. They are dorky but we won’t have to take close up of us, we can get some background in our shots of us!! 

After the museum we did a little shopping in the old city for souvenirs. We both were able to find some things. 

We had lunch at a nice place. We used the method “look she has restaurant picture menus” and followed the woman with the picture menus. It was nice place, the food was good, I had a rabbit based concoction that tasted familiar, kind of a comfort food. Emily’s shark meal was good as well, a bit more exciting to taste. 
We met a couple from New York, she was born in Russia and he was from Nicaragua by birth. They were very friendly and we got to try some Spanish, Emily more so than me with the man. 

Class today was more numbers for me. I did a little better with not trying to translate. Karen only had to say not to a couple times. It’s nice to be done with numbers. 

After class we came back to the apartment and swam for a spell in the pool. There was a mother and two kids leaving as we got there and there was a man sitting by the pool drinking Budweiser beer listening to music, a mix of Spanish, 80s and 90s American. He must’ve lived either on the same floor as the pool or one floor up or down. He would get a few beers at a time and bring them out to where he was sitting, he did not take the elevator as he was not gone that long. We have three elevators serving 18 floors, the first two maybe three are parking, the lobby and store fronts. There are 8 apartments for the rest. The elevators are slooow!! 

For dinner tonight we opted to go back to the restaurant we went to last night. I got a photo. I had fried chicken that was very good. 

Emily booked us a snorkeling trip on Sunday that should be fantastic!! We also got the number for our taxi driver from this morning who was very friendly and is willing to be our driver / guide Tomorrow morning for a while and show us some hot spots and must see things about his city. He was very enthusiastic about Cartagena.

We are now entrenched in Colombia, day 6, 4 days of attempted brainwashing by Karen the polyglot. She has started thinking of ways to punish me when I translate what she says. Tomorrow may involve corporal punishment!! I suppose it’s fair as she has had to endure 12ish hours with me. I may be improving on some of my Spanish. I also have been getting some geography and math refreshers during my sessions. 

Emily and I have not done well talking in Spanish together as of yet. More often than not I think of the Spanish after I already said something in English. 

This morning we spent some time in the ocean. I did some isometric exercises in the water. They do not have any gyms close to where we are, they seem to be in the rich neighborhood. We do get a lot of walking in either to or from class, sometimes both.

After class this evening we took the Salsa class offered at the school. My talents lie more in my Elvis pelvis moves and should shimmy where my feet are more or less on the floor! Emily and I danced a little and then I started to dance with a gal that then tried to teach me how to dance. She was a good dancer when she danced with the instructor. Emily thinks we are capable of becoming great Salsa dancers. I think we will maybe have a chance at the dance where I just stand there and spin her! 

On our way back to the apartment tonight I took a picture of part of one of the buildings along our route to and from school. They are working on this building when we go to class. The building look like it’s one of the better buildings but they don’t seem to concerned about having things plumb. Most the buildings here are the same type of block covered with concrete as we saw in Peru. Here though they are painted and have roofs on them since it does rain here. 

For dinner we stopped at one of the neighborhood places. They seem to sell mostly chicken, roasted and broasted. Our dinners were very good and reasonably priced. It was dark when we left so I will have to get a photo tomorrow. 

I would not want to work on a ambulance here. We have seem a few and they are usually stuck in traffic. It has to be very stressful for everyone in the ambulance and those waiting for one to arrive. The traffic here is extremely congested at times. During the rush hours it reminds me of Lima. The main drag that goes by our apartment building is like any major city down by the wall all the time and then only like that during the rush hours by us. 

I think the people here are generally nice. Most of the people who we meet on the elevator or the street will offer a greeting. There doesn’t seem to be much of a delineation between the various shades of people. It seems like every group is mixed, I can’t think of any I have seen short of tourists that are all the same.