We went through to the foodcourt area and bought some drinks and snacks and then sat around to wait for our flight. We had nearly 2 hours to wait until we started boarding again, and most of the shops were closed – although some of them did open around 4am. I had purchased some internet time at the airport during our stopover on the way to Santiago and still had credit, so I was able to get back online for a while and get a few more things done. When that ran out, we took it in turns walking Andres around the airport, showing him the TVs where they were playing Rugby (and explaining that this is what they call “Football” here in Kiwiland and that he would also find people playing it in Sydney).

When we eventually boarded and took off again, we didn’t bother getting the bassinet set up. Andres did eventually fall asleep in Leanne’s arms, and she fell asleep holding him. The flight went pretty well – and Andres didn’t complain at all during landing, and with the sun now up, he was able to look out the window as we came in, which kept him occupied. They served us another breakfast before we landed and we arrived in Sydney a little ahead of schedule just after 7am and were out of the plane and heading for immigration by 7:30am.

Immigration was pretty smooth – they checked Andres’s passport and visa and gave us the all clear. They did insist on checking our yellow fever vaccination records – but that’s normal for people who have travelled to this part of South America. We waited about 45 minutes for our bags to arrive – Sydney international airport still has not improved in that department! Since we had bought some souvenirs back with us that might cause some problems for customs, we declared them and had to pull them out of our bags to show the customs officers. They didn’t have any problems with most things, but some of the little shakers (percussion instruments) had seeds in them. We let them break open one of them and they confirmed that it was a seed and not just stone or something else harmless. Even thought there may not have been any problems with the seeds (I thought they had been cooked myself) – they err on the side of caution at customs and said they would either need to treat the instruments (very expensive relative to the value of the instruments themselves), or confiscate them. I wasn’t that fussed – they were pretty cheap items and I always suspected that customs might have an issue with them, but the customs officer did offer a compromise, and suggested that he removed the seeds from each of the instruments and let us take them. This kind of defeats the purpose of the instrument, since they no longer make any noise, but we should be able to find something to replace the seeds with and repair the damage to make them function again – so we took him up on that offer.

After leaving the customs area, we headed to the Hertz counter to collect our car. Rather than waiting for a taxi with a car seat (you can no longer ride in a taxi in NSW with an infant just sitting on your lap), we decided to rent a car with a child seat for a few days. This way, we have some time to get ourselves organised with a bit of the shopping we have to do – including buying a car seat for the Charade! We had been looking at buying a new car, and probably will eventually – but for now, the Charade still runs very well, and even though it is too small to carry a car seat and a pram at the same time, we figure it is still good enough for most things. If we want to go away for a trip where we have bags and want to take a pram, we’ll look at hiring a car instead – still far cheaper in the short term than buying a new car.

The Camry we had requested wasn’t available yet so instead they gave us a rather large Ford Fairlane. That gave us more room for our bags, but it’s more of a pain to park. By the time we got to the carpark, the guys were fitting the car seat for us, but Andres started yelling for a feed so we had to wait for him before leaving anyway. Eventually we got the car packed and Andres settled in the car seat – Leanne sat in the back with him since it was reverse facing and he couldn’t see us. Being just after 8:30am, the traffic was still pretty heavy, but at least the car is comfortable and it was a smooth drive home.

After bringing the bags inside, we walked down the street to collect some supplies (milk and Weetbix being the most important!) and then spent the rest of the day unpacking, sorting through mail, catching up on emails, tidying up and generally trying to stay awake. It is very cold here in Sydney compared to Cali and Cartagena and the room we have Andres sleeping in gets quite cold too. When we were shopping for clothes before we left, we mostly concentrated on warm weather clothing, so we are a bit short of stuff for him to cope with the colder weather. After lunch, we walked up to the shops at Chatswood to buy some warmer clothes and a warmer Grobag for Andres to sleep in.

Leanne’s sister came around for dinner and to meet Andres for the first time (although she has seen him via video chat), and we sat around talking for a while before putting Andres to bed. We are hoping he will sleep most of the night – although I won’t be surprised if he does wake up early. I struggled to stay awake most of the afternoon – and we ended up going to bed not long after dinner.

Leisurely start to the day – up in time for breakfast at the hotel and then we got ready to go out for the day. Clear skies made it look much more inviting to go outside, even though it did still look very cold.

View from our hotel room - Holiday Inn Express

View from our hotel room - Holiday Inn Express

We got one of the hotel drivers to drive us to the Santiago Zoo – we had wanted to visit this zoo the last time we were here in Santiago, but it is closed on Mondays – so our visit had to be today or not at all. The zoo is set on the side of Cerro San Cristobal – the mountain with the statue of the Virgin Mary on the top and the funicular which takes you up to the top. The zoo is surprisingly steep, much steeper than other hilly zoos we’ve been to like Taronga or San Diego – and it even felt more steep than the Zoologico Santacruz south of Bogota that we visited last week.

Leanne and Andres say hello to a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

After climbing up from the road to the zoo entrance, we kept climbing and climbing as we explored the exhibits – the zoo seemed to just keep going up the side of the hill. The walk-through aviary was quite spectacular, set at the edge of the zoo with views out over the city, you walk along a raised platform that must be at least 10m above the ground at some points – trying to take photos over the side of ground dwelling birds below made me quite dizzy.

Walk-through aviary at Santiago Zoo

Overall the zoo is not great – small enclosures that are generally not up to scratch by modern zoo standards in other parts of the world. They have a reasonable collection of native animals, plus quite a few exotics – lions, tigers, hippos, polar bears, and even giraffes and elephants.

Santiago Zoo

It was a sunny day today which made it much more pleasant than yesterday, although the air was still very cold – at least standing in direct sunlight made it a little less unpleasant. Even so, next time we visit Santiago at this time of year, we will definitely take gloves and beanies. One good thing about the zoo is that it didn’t take very long to warm up with all the climbing.

A roo with a view - Santiago Zoo

Leanne and Andres at Santiago Zoo

We left the zoo around lunchtime, climbing back down to street level at the bottom of the hill. We walked to Baquedano metro station and after stopping for a quick lunch we hopped on to the metro to Tobalaba station which seemed to be the closest to the hotel. We wandered around a bit looking for somewhere to buy formula and nappies to stock up for the trip home. It took us a while, but eventually we got everything we need – it seems that supermarkets here in Chile aren’t allowed to sell formula, you have to go to a chemist!

Santiago Zoo

Leanne and Andres outside Santiago Zoo

We eventually got back to the hotel and started the task of packing the bags preparing everything for the long trip home. We really didn’t know what to expect with Andres – we didn’t know how many bottles he would want and so needed to make sure we had more than enough formula and bottles to cope with unexpected demand. We also didn’t want to be stuck without enough in case of delays or other problems on the flight, so we took far more than we needed to, just in case.

With all the washing, sterilising, drying, preparing and packing, it ended up taking nearly 3 hours to get ready – we then had a bit of a problem. We had requested a late checkout because our flight is not until 11pm and we needed time to be able to get everything ready. I explained that I wanted to leave at 6pm, and the hotel staff seemed to indicate this would be fine. However, I think that there was a bit of a breakdown in communication because just before 5pm, we got calls from the hotel management asking whether we would be out of the room by 5 – the hotel was full and they wanted our room back! I explained that we weren’t ready (couldn’t just up and leave the room at that point – would have been impossible) and we really needed the room until 6. They weren’t happy, but there wasn’t a lot they (or we) could do.

We got down to check out right on 6pm, and they tried to charge us a full extra day for use of the room – the agreement was that the late checkout would incur a 50% charge of the normal room rate. I managed to convince them to only charge us the 50% and not the full day’s charge – paying full price for only 5 hours use of a room was a bit steep I thought. Anyway, we eventually got that all sorted and got the hotel driver to take us to the airport. Traffic seemed quite a bit lighter than I had expected, so we actually made good time and arrived quite early.

At the airport, we managed to jump the checkin queue (having a baby is better than frequent flyer status in some places!) and they got us checked in for our flight, assigned seats with a bassinet position. We then headed through immigration and security and then went to get some dinner. Santiago airport is quite well setup with quite a few shops and restaurants on the air-side of the airport. We stopped at Ruby Tuesdays for hamburgers and then went for a long walk around the terminal to help digest it all. Finally, we stopped near the gate and settled down to wait for our flight to start boarding. Fortunately they have free WiFi at Santiago airport, so I was able to catch up on a few last minute things before the flight.

Eventually we boarded (again, jumping the queue), and got settled in. After takeoff they set up the bassinet for Andres, and although he didn’t really like it at first, he eventually settled down and finally fell asleep. The timing of the flight worked quite well overall – Andres slept most of the way from Santiago to Auckland, which meant that we were also able to get some sleep. We did actually manage to sleep a bit – we were both exhausted from such a long day. Having our Thermarest compressible pillows with us really made a lot of difference – these were one of our best purchases on our trip last year and we also used them pretty much every day on this trip too – especially so on the long flights!

Andres in his bassinet on board our flight to Auckland

Tweets from today

waiting at Santiago airport for our flight to Sydney (via Auckland). Couple of hours yet until boarding.

23rd June, 2009 8:42 PM from TweetDeck

just back from a day out in Santiago – cold but sunny. Finally got to visit the Zoologico Nacional de Chile, missed it on our trip last year

23rd June, 2009 2:51 PM from TweetDeck

We eventually got up and went down to breakfast around 9:30am, with Andres making plenty of friends with the hotel staff again. The hotel puts on a nice continental buffet breakfast, and Leanne especially liked the warm milk with packets of chocolate to melt in it.

Now that it was daylight, we could see that we were in a really nice area of Santiago – there are hills quite close to the hotel and large mountains nearby. Pity it’s was quite misty and very cold – forecast maximum was 11 degrees for today and poor Andres has never worn so many clothes in his life.

We waited around the hotel for a while getting ourselves a bit more organised and then around lunchtime, we headed out to the Embassy to collect a visa for Andres. It was a leisurely 20 minute or so walk down the road to the Australian Embassy, which is nothing grand like the US embassy across the road from the hotel or the Czech embassy a few blocks away – the Australians just occupy a couple of floors of an office tower. We had to wait for a little while to get the visa – there was nobody at the counter and we had no way of signaling to anyone that we were waiting! Eventually someone came out and fetched Patti for us – she took all the paperwork and the passport and came back a short while later with the visa stuck in the passport – all very straight forward.

Leanne and Andres out and about in Santiago

We stopped for a hot chocolate and a snack and to feed Andres and then wandered back to the hotel via a different road – this area is really up-market with nice apartment blocks and office buildings. We can see more of the mountains in some places and there is snow not too far up, which actually makes us feel even colder. It is very still and quite misty, so visibility is rather poor.

We went out again for dinner – this time to TGI Fridays for steak and seafood and then stopped at a mini-mart on the way home to pick up some supplies.

It is nice to get back to the hotel and snuggle up in bed after being out in the cold!

We managed to check in okay (no excess baggage for these international LAN flights – yay) and Patricia escorted us to immigration – even helping us jump the very long queues to pass through security, having an infant really helps sometimes. We breezed through immigration – the officer there checked the documentation carefully, but seemed quite happy with it all and let us through with no questions.

After a lengthy wait for our flight to actually leave, we boarded and settled in to our seats. Turns out there are no seats with bassinet positions on this plane, so we were going to have to hold Andres the whole way (6 hours), which was a bit of a pain. Just before we took off, the cabin crew came and asked us to move seats – apparently there were only two oxygen masks in that seat and we needed three in case of emergency. They moved us to a row with three vacant seats, which gave us a little more room and allowed us to put Andres down for a while during the flight too.

It was a boring flight – we didn’t get to watch movies and as we were now in the centre, we couldn’t see out of the windows either. Andres only screamed once when he got hungry all of a sudden but I was in the toilet so couldn’t make his bottle soon enough. Was a little grizzly on the way down, but sucking a dummy helped a bit.

Eventually we got in to Santiago and made it through immigration and collected our bags. We arranged some “official ground transport” from the airport to the Holiday Inn Expres in Las Condes – over the other side of the city, but close to the Australian Embassy where we will need to go tomorrow. It took far less time to get to the hotel than I had thought it would.

The Holiday Inn Express is a fairly basic hotel, but nice enough. It took them a while to get a cot set up for us, but they eventually got it done. The only downside is that there is no restaurant here (they do a cold buffet breakfast though), and so there is no room service, although apparently some of the local restaurants will deliver to the hotel.

There are quite a few restaurants down the same road that the Embassy is on (just around the corner), but of course, most of them are closed on Sunday nights. We ended up with a sandwich and hot chocolate at Starbucks, which was really all we needed anyway. Andres made more new friends there – I feel sorry for the other customers who had to wait for the staff to finish telling Andres how cute he is!

We had a fairly early night – exhausted from the long day.

Our last breakfast at the Hotel Caribe this morning – I took some photos of us eating by the pool. After breakfast we headed down to say goodbye to the Tamarin, and on the way we discovered they have a resident three-toed sloth at the hotel too! I’ve never seen one up close before, he was crawling across the ground very slowly (they can’t stand on all four legs, so have to drag themselves). We also went around to say goodbye to their monkeys and the Macaws.

Leanne and Andres at breakfast

Leanne and Andres at breakfast by the pool

The resident Tamarin - Hotel Caribe

Resident three-toed sloth at Hotel Caribe

Leanne and Andres say goodbye to the Macaws

We finished packing our bags and checked out around midday – heading to the airport in a taxi. We nearly didn’t make it, the taxi developed engine problems about halfway there and the driver nearly had to stop and get us a new taxi. Fortunately he managed to nurse the car as far as the airport, so we made it in plenty of time. After checking in we wandered around for a bit before heading to our gate. Andres made plenty of new friends again, we were the center of attention at the waiting lounge!

Flying over Cartagena

The flight was pretty uneventful – about the same length as a flight from Sydney to Melbourne, so not too troublesome. We arrived in Bogota and caught a taxi to the hotel. They have a good system for taxis at the domestic airport in Bogota – we went to the taxi ticket office and told them where we were headed – they punched the address into their computer and printed out details including a price for the trip, which we later handed to the driver. This is to avoid people getting ripped off by the drivers – the price is set up front so you know exactly how much to pay.

Flying into Bogota

We stayed at the Hotel Halifax once more – even thought it would have been more convenient to stay at a hotel closer to the airport, the Halifax is at least familiar – we know where everything is, we know there’s a good supermarket just around the corner, we know we can sterilise the bottles easily, and we know we can get good meals there. Of course, there was also the little thing that we had left two of our bags there in storage when we went to Cartagena!

They gave us the same room we had last time – I don’t think they even changed anything (other than fresh linen). After a quick trip around to the supermarket for supplies, we spent the evening re-organising the bags and repacking them to distribute the weight more evently. Leanne did most of the organising, I did the tricky packing bits squeezing clothes into the backpacks and other bits and pieces like steriling the bottles.

Andres video chats with Aunty Bron

Tweets from today

back sterilising bottles again while wife organises the bags ready for me to pack later

20th June, 2009 8:36 PM from TweetDeck

back at the Hotel Halifax in Bogota – in the same room too – looks like they just left everything the same for us. Very early start tomorrow

20th June, 2009 4:49 PM from TweetDeck

woohoo – free WiFi at Cartagena airport

20th June, 2009 1:37 PM from TweetDeck

packing ready to head back to Bogota, there for only about 18 hours before we fly to Santiago. Have enjoyed Cartagena, we love the Caribbean

20th June, 2009 11:41 AM from TweetDeck

Late breakfast again – Andres took a while to settle down last night and so slept late this morning.

After breakfest we headed back to the room and eventually Andres went back to sleep for his regular morning nap while we got ourselves a bit more organised (and I had a bit of a nap myself). Andres actually slept for nearly 3 hours until after 1pm.

It was a dull and overcast day, so we decided not to go out looking for photo opportunities, instead we decided to go to the beach. It had simply been too hot on previous days – unlike the locals, our lily white skin would have burned too quickly in the scorching sun.

We headed across the road to the hotel’s beach-side restaurant for lunch, but found that most of their dishes were expensive seafood or steak, and so just ordered some empanadas con carne to eat and Colombiana to drink (we’ve become a bit addicted to this local softdrink – has a nice subtle flavour and is not too sugary).

After we’d eaten, we went down to the waters edge where one of the hotel staff set us up with chairs in one of their “cabanas” (tents) where we could sit out of the sun. Within minutes we started getting the local touts come up trying to sell us their wares – the girls offering massages (they actually try and start massaging, we have to shoo them away), guys selling necklaces, watches, sunglasses, cigars. We’ve found the tshirt guys are actually the most persistent – trying to show us every design they have, insisting that they have my size (they don’t really), and then pulling out the kids sizes for Andres (all way too big). There are also the icecream and drink sales people roaming up and down the beach, plus there was an older lady selling fresh fruit from her cart – although she was a bit scary when she headed off down the beach armed with a large knife (and a pineapple). Mostly we just shook our heads and said “no” and that was enough to get rid of them – there was just a constant stream of people coming past our seats offering us stuff.

We did get other attention too – Andres hasn’t lost any of his charm, and is still proving to be a real chick magnet (some guys stop and comment too). Mostly it’s the older ladies (most of whom offer massages on the beach), but some of the younger girls there on holidays stopped to admire him and would ask the standard questions: what is his name, how old is he, (and sometimes: is he yours). We also occasionally had people ask us where we are from, we explain Andres is from Cali and people usually appreciate that – they all know where Cali is.

The hotel staff all love Andres too – the cleaning staff will usually stop and say hello, as do the waiters – and even the maintenance guys smile at Andres. Some of the guests seem a bit unsure, but many of then come up to say hello to Andres (they ignore us mostly, they just want to tell Andres how cute he is). We’re getting used to all the attention – hardly any of it has been bad, mostly because Andres really is so cute!

At the beach, Andres played in the sand quite happily, but after a while he did get a bit grizzly, I think he started getting sand in awkward places, and had been rubbing his face with sandy hands, which was uncomfortable for him. Leanne took him down to the water to see how he liked it. Like the first time we bathed him in the baby bath back in Cali, he was very nervous of the water – and didn’t really like the waves washing over his feet and legs. He didn’t mind us walking through the water with him, but he did complain when we dunked his legs in the water. I think it’s just a bit new and scary for him – he now loves bathtime and splashes around and makes a huge mess – so I’m sure that with a few more visits to the beach, he’ll begin to love it.

Leanne introduces Andres to the beach

While I sat on the beach with Andres, Leanne went out for a swim, enjoying the beautiful warm Caribbean water. Later we swapped and I went out for a swim while Leanne stayed with Andres. It really was a very pleasant afternoon (even with the constant attention from touts).

Simon and Andres at the beach

After a few hours, we walked back across the road and found the outdoor showers the hotel provides for guests and cleaned off all the sand. Then we went upstairs and had showers and gave Andres his bath (making sure we got rid of all the sand!).

We then sat around for a few hours waiting for dinner – we had decided that we would go down for the Friday night buffet, since there was supposed to be a live band and special Colombian food and music. It turned out to be a couple of guys playing CDs, which was disappointing. The buffet was okay, nothing special. After dinner, we sat by the pool for a while enjoying the cooler evening air before heading back to our room to put Andres to bed.

After breakfast we caught a taxi back to the old town, this time with cameras – although I only took the wide-angle lens on the DSLR and also had the compact digital. This combination is much easier to work with than swapping lenses all day on the DSLR. I did stop to take some photos around the hotel before we left though.

Hotel Caribe - front view of the main building

Hotel Caribe - Torre Lagomar. Our room was on the 4th floor, right at the far end of the building

Leanne and Andres wait for papa to finish taking photos

Leanne and Andres say hello to the resident Iguana

It was a particularly hot day today, and I was sweating profusely quite quickly. We had to stop several times to buy water to ensure that we didn’t dehydrate. We wandered around, looking through small shops, taking photos of the architecture and the local life.

Hotel Santa Teresa - Cartagena Old Town

Looking back towards Bocagrande from the walls of the old town

The guide books recommend not visiting this area with a plan in mind, and I would have to agree – much better to just wander aimlessly and without a timetable, soaking in the atmosphere and the history of the area – getting lost amongst the maze of narrow streets and colonial buildings (with occasional grand cathedral or other official building).

Looking down into the the Old Town from the walls

Cartagena Old Town

Cartagena Old Town

Cartagena Old Town

Cartagena Old Town

We stopped at an airconditioned cafe for lunch and to cool down (one of the few airconditioned places we found). After lunch we wandered some more – making friends everywhere we went as people stopped and smiled, and many of them asked what our baby’s name was and how old he was. One old lady selling fruit on the street was very vocal about how wonderful he was and how beautiful he was – we quickly had a small gathering of women (young and old) fawning over Andres.

Andres makes more new friends

Cartagena Old Town

Cartagena Old Town

Eventually we decided to catch a taxi back to the hotel and cool off. We had showers and then we all snoozed for a while, before getting ready to go out for dinner.

It didn’t rain this evening, so we decided to try the restaurant we were supposed to go to last night but couldn’t because of the downpour. There is an Argentinian restaurant a couple of blocks away from the hotel that looked nice (and air-conditioned!), and we developed a bit of a taste for Argentinian beef on our travels last year, so we thought we would give this place a go. It does seem a little out of place in this area where for some reason every second restaurant seems to be Italian! Perhaps they just love pizza and pasta here? I’m sure there’s something more historical as an explanation though – must research that sometime.

Anyway, the service was typically slow – we are used to that now in Colombia, but it still is a little annoying when we have a young child and just want a fairly quick meal. But the steaks were delicious and Leanne’s beef medallions were especially tender and flavoursome – we enjoyed the meal.

After dinner we continued another couple of blocks to the local supermarket (open 24 hours) for some supplies, and then on the way back to the hotel we stopped at an ice-cream store for some dessert. It was still very hot even this late at night, the average temperature at night here is still around 27 degrees, and I read that the lowest ever recorded temperature in Cartagena was 19 degrees! Being this warm at night is really quite uncomfortable – there is simply no relief from the heat.

The only downside to staying out late was that Andres took ages to get to sleep once we got back to the room. Once we did get him to sleep, we followed not long after, it had been an exhausting day.

Another late breakfast, it has been a nice change having breakfast served until 10am – no need to get up early to get everyone ready for breakfast by 7am or 8am. It seems to be even hotter this morning – walk out of the airconditioned building, and start sweating instantly. Makes breakfast a little less pleasant than one would normally expect.

After we got back to the room and fed Andres again, he slept until 1pm. I needed to get caught up on a bit of work, so Leanne got a few things organised and then relaxed on the bed while Andres slept.

Andres playing on the bed

Andres playing on the bed

We decided to go out and try and find something to eat for lunch, so got dressed and wandered up the street. Not being happy with anything we found, we ended up at the supermarket and bought some sandwiches, fruit and orange juice (plus some other supplies we needed) and then walked back to the hotel, where we sat outside in the shade and ate.

That afternoon, I caught up on some more work while Leanne and Andres napped.

Leanne and Andres cuddle on the bed

Leanne and Andres nap on the bed

We had decided to go out to one of the restaurants up the road for dinner, but when we got downstairs we discovered it had started raining. I went back to get the umbrella and some warmer clothes, but by the time I got back it had turned into a bit of a tropical storm with heavy rain and gusty winds. We decided it was not a good idea to try and walk anywhere in this weather and it didn’t show any signs of easing off in a hurry, so we ended up back upstairs and ordered room service again.

Of course, by the time our food arrived, the rain had eased off to a drizzle, but if we had waited until now to leave, it would have been very late before we got our dinner at a restaurant.

Bath time for Andres

Tweets from today

liking the new @TweetDeck so far – no more 10 column limitations, multiple accounts – yay. Still looking for a way to show ungrouped users.

17th June, 2009 3:24 PM from TweetDeck

trying to find a hotel for our two night stay in Santiago, Chile. Will be visiting Australian Embassy in Las Condes to get a visa for Andres

17th June, 2009 11:38 AM from TweetDeck

We got up and dressed and headed down for a leisurely breakfast – the buffet is served in the open air dining area next to the pool, which makes it a nice place to sit, but it is still very hot, even at this hour of the morning. The staff directed us to a table with a fan pointed at it and found us a high-chair for Andres, which made things a little easier. The buffet was okay, certainly not like the 5-star spreads put on by Asian and many Australian hotels, but they did have cereal with fresh cold milk, and that’s generally good enough for me.

After breakfast we headed back upstairs to cool down a bit and get ready to go out. Andres slept for a while and when he finally woke up again we went back downstairs and caught a taxi to the old town.

Cartagena has a long and interesting history – being on the Caribbean coast and quite a successful town after Spanish colonisation, was a ripe target for pirates and corsairs and others who sought to take advantage of the local wealth. After a few such attacks, the Spanish government sponsored the construction of port defences, with forts and barricades and such to help ward of raiders. The city still came under attack, and so more money was spent, eventually leading to the construction of a wall around the city as a key defensive mechanism. It only took 200 years to complete! Wikipedia has more on the history of Cartagena de Indias if you are interested.

This walled city still exists and was declared a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1984 along with other key parts of Cartagena. Now, it is a prime tourist desitination, but still the centre of business and trade in the town. As we wondered through the narrow streets admiring the old colonial architecture and quaint little buildings, we were struck that despite being very old and protected, there are a mixture of very modern businesses and shops running from this area. It’s like development of the buildings was stopped, but life still went on – which gives the area a very ecclectic feeling, a blending of old and new. Many of the buildings have been well maintained, with new rendering on the walls, new paint, and new woodwork – all usually quite sympathetic to the original architecture.

We spent a couple of hours wandering around, trying not to collapse from heat exhaustion – and we eventually decided to stop at a nice little Italian restaurant for some lunch. Key to our decision was it was airconditioned! Lunch was a leisurely affair (things never happen too quickly in this part of the world), but it was delicious and we cooled down nicely.

After lunch, we continued our walk, discovering some of the main commercial areas with street vendors selling all manner of goods – although fruit and vegetables are the most popular, especially avocado (which are huge and smooth), lemons (which are small and green like limes), mangos, coconuts, and such.

Eventually we decided to head back to the hotel and recover from the heat. We decided not to take any photos on this outing – it was a camera-free day.

That evening, Andres was tired and grumpy, so rather than go out and try to find something to eat, we had room service for dinner.

Early start this morning – had to finish packing our bags, our taxi was coming before 10am to take us to the airport for our flight to Cartagena.

We have one night back in Bogota before our flight to Santiago, so we decided it would be easier to stay back at the Hotel Halifax – especially since we could leave some bags here and not have to pay all the excess baggage fees for our domestic flight to Cartagena. We managed to fit everything we needed into our two smallest bags and left the two big ones in the storage room at the Halifax. This had the added benefit of making it much easier to fit things into a taxi and we could easily manage the bags at the airport by ourselves.

We managed to get things organised in plenty of time and our taxi was actually early, so we made it to the airport nice and early – checkin was quick (no excess baggage fees!), and we made it through security to our gate nearly two hours before boarding. The only catch was that we didn’t realise that there were no food and drink facilities on the other side of security – other than a couple of vending machines, none of which had any water available.

The flight was okay, Andres slept for the first part of it and played for the second part – it was a fairly short flight but a bit longer than Cali – Bogota. He grizzled a little bit as we landed, but we found that the dummy seemed to keep him calm. As we got off the plane, the heat hit us – it is very hot and humid here. This is what I had expected Cali to be like, but in reality I found that Cali was nowhere near as hot. We had been warned about how hot Cartagena is.

After checking in, we settled into our room – right down the far end of the hotel with views out over the ocean. We hadn’t eaten yet, so we ordered some food from room service which was a bit of a novelty for us this trip – mostly we’ve been eating in dining rooms. After we’d got ourselves a bit more organised, we went downstairs to explore the hotel grounds a bit.

View from our room at the Hotel Caribe

The Hotel Caribe is centred around an old colonial style building with some more modern structures on the large grounds. Our room is in one of the more modern (and slightly more spacious) buildings. They have deer roaming around the grounds and a mini-zoo with monkeys, macaws and tamarins in cages.

View from our room at the Hotel Caribe

After looking around a bit, we headed out for a walk to find the local supermarket and buy some supplies – an exercise which involved a lot of sweat due to the heat.

Later in the evening we went for a walk along the waterfront – being a public holiday, the beaches had been crowded all day, and there were still plenty of people around at sunset – it was still very warm, and the water was also warm. The beaches here aren’t all that special, dirty sand and breakwaters every 200m or so to stop the sand disappearing. The water isn’t that clear either – apparently you have to go offshore a bit to find the clear, clean water of the caribbean.

For dinner we headed downstairs to one of the open-air restaurants and ordered pizza. Fortunately they had fans blowing which helped to keep things pleasant – it is very hot here even at night. We were the only people at the restaurant and the lady serving us took Andres and walked him around while we ate, which was useful – they didn’t have any highchairs for children at this restaurant, and we don’t have a pram or anything else suitable for holding an infant while we eat, which makes things a bit awkward.

It was a bit of a late night for Andres, but an early night for us, as we were exhausted from the early start and the busy day.

Here’s a link to Google Maps showing the hotel and where our room is: Hotel Caribe

Tweets from today

http://twitpic.com/7imef – psycho squirrel says “watch how I eliminate this piece of mango with extreme prejudice”

15th June, 2009 9:40 PM from txt

http://twitpic.com/7ijs2 – View from our room at the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia – looking out over the Caribbean Sea

15th June, 2009 9:09 PM from txt

woohoo – free wifi at Bogota domestic airport

15th June, 2009 10:23 AM from txt

final packing ready to fly to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast this morning. Only taking 2 of our 4 bags – trying to split our gear evenly.

15th June, 2009 7:22 AM from txt