The Great Cartegena, aka the Magna Cartegena

So, to show you how well I know my girls, I'm guessing that bridgett giggled out loud when she read the title and Sharon rolled her eyes.

Today I got off the ship for the first time. The port was Cartegena, Colombia. it's the closest to the equator I've ever been and it felt like it. It was hot. But it was a humid heat. So it was really hot. I got off the ship with the drummer, who's italian, his girlfriend who's a dancer, and another couple of Russian dancers. Everyone in the dance dept are coupled up so I'm constantly a 5th or 7th wheel. Oh well. Where was I? To quote a song from the 70's "the heat was hot."

You walk for about 5 minutes through the port and you come to a little port shopping area like you find everywhere. Except, unlike everywhere, there was a little bird sancuary where both enclosed and non-enclosed birds were wandering around. Most were parrots but there were also touccans which are amazing birds. I've never seen one before today I don't think. I took pictures. Super cool.

We then took a cab into the old city. The cab driver agreed to a price of $20 round trip. For some reason as soon as we left the port area, he got confused and decided that we would pay him $40 for the round trip. We corrected him by telling him we would give him $10 and then $10+tip if he came back to pick us up (there are dozens of cabs in the city, so we weren't in danger of being stranded or anything.)

We walked around in the old city and I stopped to look at some sunglasses from a street vendor. I couldn't find any I really liked (though I needed sunglasses). Finally there was one that was ok so I asked how much. $80. I said "no thank you, too much for me." He said, well how much. I explained that I just needed cheap sunglasses and I only could afford to pay 10. The rest of the negotiations consisted of him saying a number, and me shaking my head and saying 10. I bought the sunglasses for $10. I'm an awesome negotiator. They say Ray Ban on them. They look fairly cool.


The cab picked us back up and all was fine. We were only out for a little over an hour, but it was plenty.