My alarm went off at 5:30am, and we were all packed and down at reception by 6:00am, where Carlos (lovely concierge) said he would call us a cab to the airport. We had a simple version of breakfast, fruit and coffee as we didn’t have time for a full breakfast. Our lovely server brought us over a treat from her personal breakfast, a sort of doughball (like a timbit for Canadians), it was lovely of her to offer. 

Our cab arrived at 7am and we went to meet it. The server asked for our room number (prompted by our concierge friend Carlos) [backstory here is that I had been trying to learn our room number in Spanish for three days with the help of Carlos]. Carlos was just over the server’s shoulder edging me on like a pageant-mom. When I succeeded, we both celebrated my success! Carlos was truly lovely and made our time in Medellin really great, we’ve never really had an experience like that at a hotel before. We jumped in the cab and drove 20 minutes to the airport. There was an accident, so the driver took an alternative route. The driver was super nice as well. It cost us 135,000 pesos for the trip, but I didn’t have the exact change so we gave him 140,000 which he seemed to appreciate. 

It was about 7:30am when we arrived at Medellin airport. Airport security only took a few minutes. It feels really weird flying in a foreign country and not needing your passport or to take your liquids out. 

We bought two very cute sketch books at a shop in the airport and then found our boarding gate. We had about two hours until the flight boarded. We read our James Bond books and waited to board. We had a window and middle seat again and we actually sat in those seats this time. The lady behind us was super sick, sneezing and coughing constantly with no mask of course, and I developed a cold over the next few days…thanks, lady. If you are sick, please wear a mask, being ill on vacation sucks. 

Anyways.

Our flight wasn’t a full hour, and we arrived at 11:04am in Cartagena. We walked off the plane, which I always love doing. It was 30 degrees celsius, but certainly warmer with the humidity. We then exited the airport and walked 30 minutes to our accommodation. We had to walk along the highway for a bit, and it was pretty windy with blowing sand in our eyes, but it wasn’t a bad walk and we got our first glimpse of the Caribbean Sea. Neither of us had seen the Caribbean before. 

We arrived at our hotel, “Bondo”. I had asked if we could check in earlier at 12 but the hotel did not respond…. Well they were very strict about check in time, and we could not check in until after 3pm. I wish they would have responded to my message, so we could have made other arrangements, but instead they sent us to the roof top to wait for check in and we could not leave the building because we did not have a keycard to use the elevator. We sat for three hours on the rooftop of the hotel in the crazy crazy wind. Eventually a bartender arrived and we ordered a beer (20,000 pesos each!!!) and then the bartender disappeared again until after 3 pm when he let us back down in the elevator. I really wish we had had the opportunity to garb our bathing suits to at least swim while we waited. 

At 3:05 we rode the elevator back down to ground level and got our key and bags. The room was ok. The balcony we were promised was covered in dirt and plants and was inaccessible. 

Jives had a quick shower and we changed before heading into town to get some food. We hadn’t eaten all day, except for some fruit at 6am. We walked 30 minutes into town. The old town was surrounded by beautiful old city walls which you can walk on and explore (we did this later). We walked through a pretty little square and looked at the beautiful colourful buildings. 

We decided to go to a taco place called “Gordos” which looked a lot like fast food… but we were so hungry, so not really picky. I got three delicious veggie tacos with vegan meat and Jives got a spicy fish taco. We both got a weird tomato juice concoction that I found to be too sweet. The tacos were delicious though! The waitress taught us how to say “la cuenta por favour” or “the cheque please”. 

We then walked back to our hotel to relax, as the sun was about to set and staying out past sunset is not advisable.. We briefly stopped at the store to buy a few beers and bananas for breakfast. We then stopped at the beach right outside our hotel and had a beer in the sand as the sunset in an orange glow. 

They were playing super loud music on the rooftop, so it was difficult to sleep. As well, the ceiling of our bathroom was leaking water onto the toilet, so we set up one of our umbrellas over the toilet so we could use the toilet without mystery water dripping on our heads.