Cartagena de Indias

What a contrast to Bogota – hard to believe we are in the same country!!! It’s a delightful town, set on the coast of the Caribbean Sea, with a very mixed, much jollier, noisy, colourful people. It has a long and interesting history – the huge and lovely city wall was built to protect the town after it was looted and ransacked by Sir Frances Drake!

The walls are made of a mix of stones, brick and coral.

Again, we stayed in the Sofitel, this time right in the old town, and very beautiful it is, being another converted monastery.

There’s a lovely central courtyard garden complete with Botero relining lady and a resident toucan - and a fabulous big pool, spa etc; at last I felt I was “on holiday”!!

There is a large city extending outside the walls, including a narrow peninsula with lots of huge modern high-rises, hotels and casinos, but the old section is quaint and colonial and noisy and fun.

The first night, we ate in the courtyard and then had a nightcap in the bar which also opened out to the street behind. There was a great Cuban band playing, people were dancing – it was great!

Sharing breakfast with the toucan will be one of THE memories of the holiday – what a character! I spotted him when we first checked in, but he vanished before I could get Mick.

I began to think I was hallucinating til he hopped across to our table next morning demanding breakfast by “trilling” his beak, a strange sound, a bit like a muffled woodpecker.. Whether he damaged his wings and was rescued, or has been deliberately clipped I didn’t want to ask – he can fly a bit and hops around the trees, descending when there’s a chance of a bit of melon.

We simply enjoyed the next two days, strolling the town – it got a bit hot by lunchtime, 31’ - with soooo many pretty, colourful houses with balconies laden with flowers

and popping into a couple of interesting places including the history museum with a garden display of Spanish Inquisition torture implements!! No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

We also visited the fine Naval Museum

And Mick got a rather severe hair-cut!

There is an active art scene, so here and there would be odd art pieces like this adapted scooter that I puzzled over for ages thinking it was an actual working machine!

There were lovely views from our balcony and we spent time enjoying the antics of the pelicans and frigate birds

Late one afternoon we came across a huge band samba-ing away off one of the squares; it was quite a racket, but at the crowd got in the groove later in the evening