Colombia!

I just got back to San Jose after one of the best weeks of my semester and one of the coolest trips I've ever taken.  I finished up midterms in Costa Rica, then spent Monday visiting some museums with a friend and trying to change Costa Rican colones to Colombian pesos because my flight to Cartagena, Colombia was Tuesday evening!  Gabe and I arrived in beautiful, hot Cartagena Tuesday night and stayed until Sunday evening.  We stayed in a little hotel, where the people at the front desk learned who we were and whose roof was outfitted with three Jacuzzis and some hammocks.  We spent two days on the beach, which involved the evil trio of sun, sand and sunscreen, but I really, honestly enjoyed the beach.  The waves were beautiful and the water was warm and it was nice to be able to relax and talk and nap.  My one complaint about the beach was the "entrepreneurs."  We were constantly being bombarded by people who wanted to sell us something (anything).  We were wearing sunglasses, but people would try to sell us sunglasses.  We were eating lunch and people would try to sell us these odd coconut-dessert things.  And though I thought I looked pretty relaxed, women were always trying to give us massages!  At one point, a woman actually grabbed my foot and started rubbing this soapy stuff all over it before I could grab it back and, with the most serious look I could muster, tell her I really didn't need a massage.  She kept saying I was so tense, and I couldn't help but think that may just have been because she grabbed my foot without consent.  But it was a memorable experience and we loved the beach, even with all the attention.

We spent another day visiting a mud volcano- the crater is 28m deep, and full to the brim with lukewarm mud.  We got to float around in the mud for a while, then rinse off in the river.  Once again, there were people trying to give us massages, but we fended them off.  And my skin was so smooth!  We spent that afternoon going on a tour of some mangroves in a little canoe (Gabe and I have both done a lot of canoeing in Latin America).  I promise to get a photo of the mud up here, but Gabe has those.  It was a really great day, and we got to know our tour guide pretty well.  To top of the busy day, we spent that evening riding around the city of Cartagena in a Chiva.  Chivas are open-air buses and, in our case, have live bands playing Rumba music!  We rode around the city for a few hours, with a stop at one of the forts in the city to dance with all the other Chiva-goers and a stop at a night-club, where Gabe tried in vain to teach me to salsa.  I prefer walking.

Finally, we spent a day and a half walking around the old city.  It was so much fun to be in a city with such a rich history.  San Jose, Costa Rica just doesn't have an "old" section and I've forgotten how cool monuments and ruins and history are. Cartagena was a Spanish fort city and we spent a while walking on the "great wall of Colombia" and checking out the forts.

We felt like we were in Europe for much of our walk through the old city.  The streets looked European, our hotel thought it was in Italy and there were a ton of international restaurants.  But then someone would try to sell us a passion fruit (granadilla) or a mango and we remembered where we were.

It was a really great week, not only because Gabe and I were able to spend so much time together, but because we got to see a beautiful, different city.  Now it's back to San Jose for a week, the hot, sticky field station for two weeks, three weeks of a research project, then, unbelievably, the end of the semester.