26 July 2019 14:28 R.E.D. Friday (Remember Everyone Deployed)
We have a taxi lined up for tomorrow’s trip to the airport with our favorite driver Aley. We both seem ready to head back to the United States but a little sad to be leaving Colombia. It has been a good trip overall, we have seen a lot, learned some Spanish (Emily more than me) and ate really good food. 
This morning we were thinking we ran out of things we wanted to do and see while here so Emily checked the guide book Cartagena & Colombia’s Caribbean Coast by Moon publishers to make sure. Emily does have kitesurfing on her bucket list but we don’t have enough time for that. She didn’t think about it early enough. She did find a couple restaurants to try before we go. We walked into town and found the first one, the other we are going to tonight. We got pictures, it was a very neat place and the air worked well. It’s exceptionally humid today, my exposed skin is wet almost as soon as I’m outside on days like this. There were a couple fellas that came in after we had ordered and Emily heard English being spoken so she went over to chat with them. Turned out they are Marines and one was from Missouri. The food was very good. I had fish and chips. Mine was a lunch special and it came with a dessert that Emily and I shared that was very good. It was a torte with cake, pudding, coconut and a little chocolate sauce. Tips are usually already added to the bills, this place does that but they are voluntary, you can ask to have it taken off if you wish, if I read right through they are supposed to ask if you do, so far none have asked. It’s only 10% and in pesos that is never very much. 
We are looking forward to dinner tonight, Emily has picked out sea bass and I may have a steak but we’ll have to see. I have seen horse steak on some menus here and while I’m sure it is probably good to some I don’t want to eat horse unless I’m on the range and I had to shoot my horse before it died in agony, maybe if I was starving then possibly. 
Emily is at her last class, it sounds like it will be another hard class and the ending will be without any fanfare. I’m disappointed that I didn’t learn more and with the school’s administration. I wish they had been more proactive. They lacked customer service, 24 hours is a long time to wait between responses, there should be someone at the school that could help when situations that will reflect on the school happen. As a business I can’t recommend them. Emily says the Costa Rican school is run better. I will have to let her pick the school next time. Until then I will continue with my DouLingo and other self study aids. I may also join Emily and Sharon’s club if possible. 
I do recommend visiting Cartagena. Emily and I may have to return to visit more of Colombia in the future. I hear it’s cooler in the mountains. 
I’m going to do one last load of laundry here tonight, with luck no major leaks. Since the guy came and fixed the large leak there has been a smaller leak after the machine is done that has steadily gotten bigger. Being able to do laundry while we have been here has been nice, we will come back with very few dirty clothes. In Peru we had some laundry done and that was very helpful. We are learning that either having a washer or having laundry done means you can pack so much less stuff. The Hynes 44l carryon does hold a lot. https://hyneseagle.com/collections/carry-on-backpacks/products/santiago
If you travel I recommend getting this bag! I hopefully will never have to wait for luggage at the carousel again! 
The LocTote bag is a great idea, luckily we have not had to test it on the streets. We did lock our things in it while SCUBA diving and that was nice. https://loctote.com/collections/all/products/flak-sack-sport
Worth looking at, a better lock would be nice, but in the end it’s about keeping honest people honest since the bad guys always find a way sooner or later. At least you make them work for it. I also wish it was a complete dry bag. I am going to email and see if they will be doing one in the future. There is a dry pocket inside that does work, we tested it. The bag itself resists water but the ropes will wick in moisture. 
I’m hearing a lot of thunder again this afternoon, there was some yesterday as well and it did rain some while Emily was in class. The windows in the apartment do not muffle any sounds. Rain may be nice if it’s done before I go to meet up with Emily. 
I’m hoping the weather will be good when we get back so we can get some canoeing and bike riding in before it cools off and Emily gets busy with work. Seems like I’ve been off a long time. From here it feels odd thinking about going back on shift next Thursday, but I’m sure once I get there it will be like the last 23 years, minus the first two years of college. 
One of the interesting things here is how much they decorate the busses but you don’t see a lot of customized cars or motorcycles. Occasionally a car will have some different wheels and a few stickers and motorcycles may have a different seat and some stickers but the busses are painted bright colors, usually red, yellow or green but the are plastered with stickers, little murals and chrome pipes. We had a cab today that was decorated inside I had to take a picture. So many of the stickers on the vehicles here are advertising for products we see all the time in the USA but not here. We do see clothing here with English words on them, sometimes I wonder if they know what it says, I would Google translate it if it were me. 
20:01
The restaurant Emily had picked was closed, seems they don’t open until 7:30pmWe went to the tried and true find someone with restaurant menus and go there. The food was good, I had some ribs since it been a week and they didn’t have chicken wings. I may have to do some when I get back home. 
We stopped and picked up some leather keepsakes. I got a new wallet and Emily got a small purse of Colombian leather. 
I’m mostly packed at this point and my clothes are laid out for tomorrow. The trip home is less exciting than the trip here. I will be sad to leave but happy to be back stateside. Hot showers, central air and real bedding. This bedding is way to light and I get tangled up in it. It will be strange not hearing the beeping, sirens, dogs barking, big trucks and the rest of the big city sounds, but I will enjoy the quiet. I also look forward to color, the plain white of the apartment and the lack of green space I won’t miss. We’ve officially entered the lame duck period! 

We had a very pleasant final day here in Cartagena. We got up with no plans and had a slow morning. One of Bill’s travel books recommended a couple of restaurants so we tried one for lunch and were planning to try a second for supper. The lunch restaurant had a very fun atmosphere and the food was good. While we were there, a couple of guys speaking English came in. We’ve met very few Americans, so I went over to talk to them. One of them was from Kansas City, MO, the other from Colorado. Both were Marines and were doing some sort of training here in Colombia. I didn’t ask many questions because I assumed they wouldn’t be able to tell me much. Both were very nice. The guy from MO spent quite a bit of time in IA doing something for the Marines. He was familiar with with the MO Bootheel and with the Des Moines/Cedar Rapids area in IA.

My last class was good. I asked my 22 year old teacher if she liked to dance. She said everyone here dances, its part of the culture. You grow up seeing your family dance and dancing with them. Music is on most of the time. She said there are rare people who can’t dance, but most people just do it naturally. I told her I didn’t know anyone who knew how to dance and her response was “I don’t know any white people who can dance.” She says even the white people who take lessons are rigid and not very good. It was funny.

For dinner, we went to another restaurant I found in Bill’s book. It was closed when we got there but we assumed it would open at 6pm. As it turned out, it didn’t open until 7:30pm so we had to find another place to eat. We waited for a while in a square next to the city wall. As we were leaving, we heard a crowd of people right outside the wall. There was a protest going on and the protestors poured into the square right as we left. Nabely, my teacher, had told me right as I was leaving class that there was going to be a protest. Apparently, for the last few years, all over Colombia, local community leaders have been being assassinated. These are people demanding better education, land rights and public services for their communities. So many of them are currently being assassinated that people decided to organize a protest. Apparently the government is behind the assassinations and everyone knows this. There has been a lot of police and military presence in the area.

Overall this has been a really good trip. We are ready to come home, but we feel like we have done everything we wanted to do. The only thing I didn’t do that I wish I had found out about earlier is kitesurfing. Cartagena has some great kitesurfing schools and locations. It looks hard but it also looks like a lot of fun. It’s on my list of things to do next. This is an amazing kitesurfing video for anyone who’s interested.https://youtu.be/

Bill and I just got back from dinner at a tiny little restaurant we happened to come across. They were out of coconut lemonade, which was disappointing, but I had a fried fish fillet and Bill had something that tasted like a Mongolian meat dish with several different kinds of meats. The food was pretty good, but my legs started to feel really itchy while I waited for our food. I had been a little itchy all day so I though maybe I got bit by something at the aviary yesterday. It kept getting worse so Bill and I had a conversation about whether we might have bedbugs in our apartment. By the end of that conversation, I was itching all over and wondering if mom would let me come back to stay at her house! I considered leaving all of my possessions here and buying some new clothes at the airport or coming home naked if the airport didn’t have clothes. Part way through our meal, Bill noticed that women sitting at the table behind us were also itching their legs. He looked down and mine were covered in tiny mosquitoes. They were swarming everywhere. Normally, mosquitoes go for Bill, and he gets bit much more than me, but they chose me tonight. We both came back to the apartment, took a shower and smeared hydracortisone all over our legs. I’m still itchy. On the bright side, Bill checked our beds for bedbugs and found no sign of any!

Our vacation is winding down, so we had a fairly uneventful day. We swam in the ocean this morning, fixed ham sandwiches, then I went to class. I’ve been working on some very difficult verb forms and not really succeeding. I think I should have mastered a few other skills before moving on to this, but at least I’ll be familiar with this part of the language, and everything is good practice.

We did a little bit of shopping before dinner. I got my friend’s baby a couple of adorable headbands. She will probably hate them, but maybe she’ll wear them long enough for a picture. I got a headband with a flower for myself too. Afro-Colombian women make them and sell them on the street. I posted pictures below.

When we got back to the apartment, there was a gecko outside our door eating bugs around the lights. It was a cute yellow one. When we came in, there was also a gecko on the wall in the kitchen. We were excited because it was a pretty, colorful one and we are hoping it will eat the ants that have taken over the kitchen counter, which we use as our table! Bill thinks it just ran across the top of the sofa while he was writing his update. If so, it’s going the wrong direction. We thought about catching some outside and letting them go in the kitchen.

Tracy fouund a recipe for coconut lemonade that looks like what I’ve been eating. Here it is: http://katieatthekitchendoor.com/2015/06/18/colombian-limonada-de-coco/

Since we both have relatively short posts, I’m including Bill’s below rather than making a new one for him. Here it is:

25 July 2019 19:25

Our trip to Cartagena, Colombia is winding down. We have had a great time here and have seen what we wanted to and gotten to relax. We got to try out SCUBA! Even though I was frustrated with the experience I still am glad I got to do it. In reading our pamphlet from the dive shop if they would have filled out the dive information we could have used the dive towards getting certified and would been helpful to the next place we go in knowing what we did. Long term it won’t matter as we will be a ways off before we do free diving on our own, it would have been nice to have though. 

I’m not wishing I was home yet, but just feeling satisfied with my time here and home is  always nice to go back to. 

We didn’t do a lot of noteworthy stuff today so updates will be shorter. 

After breakfast settled we went to the beach. This morning the sand was dry by the rocks along the wall separating the beach from the sidewalk. It was very soft and powdery, once you get to where it is wet, it’s hard with very little give, sometimes it doesn’t leave footprints. 
The water feels soft when you are in it and it is calm but then a wave will come and hit you and as it breaks around you you can feel the force and sometimes for a brief second it almost feels solid. 
While swimming today I discovered a flaw in men’s swimsuits, no tops! A fish bit me on the nipple, it still feels sore. 
There were some children out this morning that appeared unsupervised that borrowed my goggles. I wasn’t sure if I would get them back or mot but I did. They did have some supervision but we are guessing it was a sitter or older sister that wasn’t very interested in her job. 

I met Emily after class and we went to see about some hair bands and dinner. 
The place we picked for dinner was a bit sketchy but the food was good and not too high priced. It had mosquitoes though that seemed to like Emily more than me which is a switch. 

Yesterday, we called our taxi driver and went to an aviary about 45 minutes outside of Cartagena. It was a really neat place, and we have a bunch of bird pictures for anyone who’s interested. I spent three hours talking in Spanish to our taxi driver then another three hours in class. By the end of the day, I was completely wiped out! Salsa class was yesterday instead of today, but I just didn’t have energy to go. I came home to swim in the pool instead, which was lovely. Bill had more time to write, so his post is below and the pictures follow that. He had people ask what was in his Cuban sandwich, so that’s part of his description.

24 July 2019 16:52

My Cuban sandwich was thin sliced pork, slice of ham, mozzarella, pickles (sweet) tomato, lettuce, onion and mustard. The bread was a light airy bread. It reminds of the bread Sub City used to get from Wedeking bakery back home. A soft crust, light and airy inside. They then pressed it either on a flattop with a weight or using a panini press. It was served hot and delicious! Tracy knows what I’m talking about! A little messy to eat. 

I did get a response from the school to an email that I sent yesterday. They did offer a classroom and Emily says they told her they could get a teacher who speaks English. I declined. I’m not sure what that would actually do to other students at the school. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” (Spock). 

Plus I have found myself keeping occupied, today laundry and a nap! Last night was towels. I have a system for drying in the humid environment, A/C and a fan blowing the length of the drying rack. The fans here are loud so it is best to do when you are not trying to talk. The white noise isn’t so bad for sleeping as the city can be loud. Emily was jealous since we took a tour this morning. She had already spent 3 hours doing Spanish with our guide / driver before going to class. I do recommend our taxi driver if you are here and speak Spanish. One of the pictures has his information and the tours he does. 

21:14
Our tour this morning was to Aviario Baru, there may have been a misspelling yesterday that was related to the texts I received were done while he was driving. 
He explained all the things we passed on the way out to Baru island. It is connected to the mainland by bridge. We had to go though the industrial area and past the ports. The port is huge and they have a large industrial area as well, including a petroleum plant. 

It was a nice morning to be out side of the city. So much more green space along the roads. Still kind of junky looking closer to town and in the small towns we passed through. Aley says they do have a stop littering initiative but the primary initiative to build is bigger and faster. 

The aviary was very neat! The colors of the birds here are so bright for the most part. The aviary itself was really nice and they are continually improving it. They have been working on it for ten years. It was humid but the breeze was nice and the trees made for very nice shade. It’s always humid here. 

After Emily got back from class we went for a swim. It wasn’t a bad evening for a swim. The water was a bit warmer feeling than yesterday. 

For something easy we had pizza from the place next to our building. It reminds of New York style pizza, flat, thin, not a lot of sauce. The crust wasn’t bad and it’s probably real cheese, it wasn’t super flavorful though. We dipped in some pasta sauce we had left over. It did feed us, probably a step up from gas station pizza or maybe a tie with Casey’s pizza when it’s fresh. It may be good if you like New York style pizza, I’ve had it in New York and I’m not a fan. I prefer Chicago style pizza. 

Like in Peru they use the mortar and broken glass bottle system to keep people from climbing of their walls. You have to wonder do they drink a bottle of something the save the bottles until they get enough or do they finish a bottle break it in half and bust out the mortar so they get some coverage right away? It is a city of a million people so there will be crime and it has to be somewhat cheap. I would think razor wire would be better to deal with. 

Just a couple more days here in Colombia. Time has gone by pretty fast. We have had a lot of good experiences here. Even though it is a big city it hasn’t been overwhelming. The area we are in is a good one if you want to avoid crowds. It’s easy to get around walking or by taxi to the things worth going to. Taxis are cheap, 7 mil (7000 pesos or about $2.50 depending on the exchange rate) during the day and 8 mil at night. Some will get the 8 during the day as well. $400 will get you around 1.2 million pesos if you want to feel like a millionaire for a bit. 

Food at some of the better places run 80-130 thousand pesos. The good chicken place by us though, 30 thousand, like $10 for both of us with drinks. 

There are not as many dogs here roaming around, they do have some animal control, I seen a truck one day that had dogs loaded in crates. 

That’s Bill’s post. In the pictures, notice the new tattoo I’m trying out. It’s a dragonfly. I really like it! I’m thinking about a permanent one of a hummingbird or something like that.

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!