Island speed

We were not expecting Tioman Island to be so huge or to be so like a giant, jungly mountainous tower with only a few beach coves that housed any civilisation. We stayed on the quiet side of the island, in Juara, which necessitated a Jeep trip over the hill, standing in the bed of the truck and ducking whenever the jungle hung too low. This side of the island is less commercialised and beautiful in a wild way. It’s also the east/windward side so the waves are choppier and has more cloud cover. Actually a blessing in some ways as our timings have often been that we are on the beach during the midday heat (mad dogs and all that).

We did one hike up to a waterfall and a bit of kayaking but have generally slowed our pace for a few days and have just been exploring the beaches and the sea and playing with many, many cats and a baby monkey.

Matt has gone native and is sitting beside me wearing a sarong to fend off the giant, lazy mosquitoes that are floating about and getting into our cabin via who-knows-where. Holes and cracks have been sellotaped and doors are being opened and closed practically on an airlock. “Quick, come in! SHUT THE DOOR!” We realised today that the screeching noise that goes on for most of the day is from fruit bats, hanging in the trees. They were the size of small cats, had funny inquisitive ginger foxy faces and peered at us with their bulging black eyes as we got close. We have seen lots of small bats too, and been dive-bombed by them at sunset. If you are a bat then I do recommended moving to the island. There are plenty more mosquitoes to go around.

We visited some snorkelling sites by boat. One man saw a big shark but thankfully we had gone in the opposite direction and just saw lots of colourful fish plus a cuttlefish. We have been watching Blue Planet and other documentaries about octopus and cuttlefish so it was fun to see in real life their strange behaviour. Eva dived down and touched it and it immediately changed colour to match the white sand and flashed the blue light around its skirt. Another highlight was a man on a nearby boat giving us some crackers to feed the fish. They frenzied around us, biting our hands and arms. Some were convinced that our camera was a cracker so continued to pursue and nibble me.

The boat ride between sites was more of an adventure. We spent, I think, 90% of the time airborne. I disembarked with quite advanced claw hand from gripping bits of my family, convinced they would surely be tossed into the sea.

So after that I feel we deserved our final civilised night when, mossie -proofed, we sat out on our terrace and drunk a couple of home-mixed cocktails; alcohol bought from the other side of the island, a mix of lurid, artificial juices from the next door shop. We managed to make one look and taste a bit like a Singapore sling. And Singapore is where we are heading to now, via a brief shopping stop at the slightly rough-round-the-edges border town of Johor Bahru. And Singapore is where we meet with our final two St Ebbes apprentices before heading home!!!

A zigzag road back to the jungle

In Kuala Lumpur we met up with yet another ex- apprentice from St Ebbes church. It’s fun to catch up and see what people are doing after leaving the cosy hub of Oxford.

But after a couple of busy, urban days and yet another Chinatown, even towny Matt was ready to hit the countryside again.

But first we wanted to go back to Melaka, Malaysia’s most historic city. It is a crazy blend of Dutch-Portuguese-English-Chinese-Malay with various people building things (red buildings Dutch, brick Portuguese, white English) with the English legacy mainly being trying to destroy it to solidify their port town further upriver.

We did the essential tourist things, including riding in a pimped up trishaw. Pokemon for the boys, Hello Kitty for the girls (much to Eva’s disgust).

Naval museums:

River walks to see the graffiti and watch the monitor lizards swimming by.

As well as some off piste fun such as a sweaty walk through a Chinese cemetery to an anti-Japanese memorial (?!?) via Melaka’s great abandoned and unmarked model village(?)

Then we got in a bus to the east coast of Malaysia to a jetty/town. After a noisy night of backfiring cars, calls to prayer from the mosque and someone ringing the bell in reception over and over again at some unearthly hour, we got up and had a 7/11 breakfast of dubiously-flavoured buttercream filled rolls and then stood in a queue for 30 minutes watching the bus ticket seller eat her breakfast behind the counter with no apparent awareness/care that she was 30 minutes late opening and the first bus was about to leave. Our onward ticket (finally) bought, we stepped onto the morning boat for the jungly wilderness of Tioman Island.

From the actual jungle to the urban jungle

We have arrived in Kuala Lumpur. We are not taking for granted getting here safely. We went through the worst turbulence that we have ever experienced on any flight. You know it’s bad when the cabin crew panic and start shouting. Judah was in the toilet and, as Matt was trying to get him out and into a back seat, they were both lifted clean off their feet. Matt’s legs were lifted behind him, easily above seat height, like he was in a wind tunnel. If he hadn’t been holding onto it, he would’ve ended up in the cabin crew area at the back. Not that any cabin crew were there, they had all stopped and dropped wherever they were.

So, although we were sad to leave Borneo, we were happy to land in Kuala Lumpur.

It feels like a completely different place. It’s even more bustling and multicultural than Singapore. We found a fancy hotel right in the centre, with a swimming pool and a view of the Petronas Towers. It cost much less than the skanky hostel in Singapore, where we shared a squat toilet, had a ration of two plain slices of bread for breakfast and the walls were held together with sellotape.

We’ve wandered about a bit, eaten a pile of sushi, avoided going into any of the plush shops in the shopping centres and finally, got a lift home from a kind Marketing Executive from Petronas, who saw us wandering the streets and took pity on us. Malay kindness stretches even into the big cities it seems.

Monkeys!!!

We finally arrived in Borneo. It’s lovely to be back here after 15 years. Unlike Singapore, which has a new and incredible building built about once a minute it seems, Kuching has barely changed at all. I think even the plastic tables and chairs in the cafes are probably the same ones we sat on all those years ago! It’s bringing back vivid memories. “That’s where we ate those dumplings and that’s where we had the incredibly spicy laksa that made us develop the technique of swallowing food without it barely making any contact with the tongue.” Etc, etc.

Malaysia certainly isn’t as scrubbed up and modernised Singapore. But it is surprisingly functional and organised. And it’s super cheap, the food is delicious, and the people are just as friendly. Plus, and this is obviously the most important thing, it has monkeys.

We headed out to Bako National Park today. We used Malaysia’s version of Uber, so reached our destination in comfort and for a reasonable price. With the exception of the narcoleptic bus driver on our way home from Bako, the driving here has been impeccable. Even the boy racer taxi drivers drive like sensible old ladies.

We did three of the tracking trails. The overcast and drizzly day was perfect. Last time we did these treks we nearly perished from heat. This time we were still sweaty, but had a refreshing breeze every now and then. A little bit of drizzle did us the world of good. Especially as, this time, we weren’t allowed to swim on any of the beaches as there is a saltwater crocodile on the loose. This added a bit of excitement to the boardwalks beside the rivers too. Judah is convinced he saw the crocodile from our boat.

In fact, we needn’t have got at all sweaty. After registering at the park HQ, we stepped straight outside the door and saw a group of people gathered around a tree. There was a group of proboscis monkeys right there in a tree on the beach. They were a couple of metres above our heads, jumping from branch to branch and causing a surprising amount of destruction as they went. They are very large and heavy, jump onto the smallest branches and don’t seem to care a hoot that they snap a few branches on the way through. They also nearly stripped the tree of flowers while we stood and watched. They munched them up faster than a cloud of locusts, their ridiculously long noses wobbling away as they chewed. We only needed to venture as far as the HQ toilets to see our first macaque, although, judging from our walks about the park today, these seemed rarer than the supposedly rare proboscis monkeys. They also seemed more timid, which was a complete flip from our last visit when we were practically mobbed by macaques.

Anyway, here are some photos:

Spot the monkey!

What day is it?!?

Traveling always brings with it some disorientation and confusion. However, for some reason, we seem to have had this double measure. No doubt our flight being delayed, causing us to miss a connection and arrive at our destination one day late, had something to do with it. We have spent the last week wondering what day it is and what time.

At first, This confusion amounted to a few mixed messages with the hostel owner about when we were going to stay until and when we were going to pay. Matt had somehow erased from his mind the fact that Sunday came between Saturday and Monday, and couldn’t be convinced otherwise. However, it reached the pinnacle when we arrived for our short-haul flight to Borneo and realised that the reason our booking code wasn’t valid was because our flight had left 24 hours ago. We had somehow lost a day.

But, no matter, a guardian angel in the form of the customer services man in Scoot Air, helped us rebook a cheap flight and sort out all the other details. We were lamenting that an extra cost was our missed booking in a hotel in Kuching, as we would now not arrive until the next morning. But when Matt phoned to let them know we would not show up, they didn’t have a record of our booking. We had received email confirmation of it, and until that night, it was also on our booking app. It miraculously disappeared when we missed our flight!

So despite these minor annoyances and feeling we would never reach our destination, we have thoroughly enjoyed the journey together. People in Singapore and Malaysia have gone out of their way to help us and we seem to have met just the right person at the right time.

One example of this today was that I needed to buy paracetamol for a headache that’s been rumbling on for a few days. Being tight, I refused to buy Panadol and it is often the only one available. The two times I have found cheap tablets I have been away from Matt (AKA The Wallet) or we have been too rushed to stop. But today I resolved to find a pharmacy. We stopped on the far side of town in Kuching and bought some (20p a pack-bargain). The pharmacist had to write down my name and he started up a conversation about the surname Pope. All the normal jokes about whether we live in the Vatican etc. After a five minute roundabout conversation, he revealed he was a Christian and went to a local Evangelical church. Matt mentioned the name of the pastor, which took the pharmacist aback. “That’s my church!” he said. “I’m preaching there on Sunday!” Matt said. “The pastor asked my permission for you to speak because I am an elder,” the pharmacist said. “And I said ‘I don’t know who this man is!’ But now I have seen you!” So having dithered about buying paracetamol in two countries and several shops and pharmacies, we ran into a man we unknowingly had a close connection with. We are looking forward to seeing him again on Sunday.

So despite missed flights, sickness bugs, upside-down maps, spectacular sliding-tackle falls, stinky squat toilets, stolen bikinis and headaches, we haven’t laughed so much in quite a while. Even these things are in God’s all powerful hands!

Here are a few photos from the trip so far:

Mannequins and other matters

We were heartened during our time away that the Colombians have not yet succumbed entirely to the American ideals of physical beauty. In fact their mannequins, we noticed, embraced bodies of all shapes and sizes.

And shapes.

And sizes.

And shapes and sizes….

Some rather optimistic (this angle saves some blushes, the side view is best left unseen)

Some almost unpublishable

And some maybe a little ahead of their time.

Anyway, we have managed in the last three weeks to get another glimpse and a few more insights into Latin American life and have arrived safely back in the UK.

Unfortunately all of our luggage hasn’t.

We had a few problems at each check-in, as the Canadian government decided to throw in a bonus alongside our travel visas and award Judah permanent resident status! It must have just been a wrong box ticked but it meant puzzlement at each departure as we were not able to produce the corresponding Canadian resident’s card. Clearly our suitcase wanted in on the action because it decided it belonged in Canada too and slipped out of the queue to the London-bound flight and is enjoying a few more hours in Toronto.

So the laundry will have to wait until our suitcase reunion but so will the aguadiente homecoming toast, as the bottle is nestled amongst it.

We spent the last couple of days in Honda, purely as it was a halfway point between Manizales and Bogota but actually happened upon quite a nice little town, and an even nicer hotel. Honda is scorchingly hot so we booked into a hotel with a pool and it was the nicest place we have stayed yet. Beautiful, fragrant flowers all around, views to the mountains, numerous birds, including hummingbirds and clouds of vultures by day and a remarkable bat show by night. A few big bats skitted back and forth to start but then a group gathered, screeching in the tree above us before taking turns to swoop down past our heads across the swimming pool catching the insects that gathered above the water and leaving a trail of ripples behind before flying back past us. We only wish that they’d stayed around for the morning, as we made the mistake of sitting in the shade for half an hour and now have very itchy and spotty limbs.

A final night in Bogota to eat lots of meat, spend our last currency and see the city in sunshine, which makes it moderately more attractive, though not as attractive as these fine young men.

Don’t judge a book by its centre

If Rio Sucio centre looked a bit shabby then Manizales was an absolute dump. A sprawling array of thrown together houses and fume-filled, noisy streets. Some old wooden houses had fallen down the bank of the river so it just looked like people had used the bank for years of fly-tipping – literally ‘rio sucio’. We were back to grumpy faces country too.

I can’t say I blame them though:

The wheel of my suitcase had shredded in half in the cobbled streets of pretty Guatape. In the warm sunshine and colourful surroundings, it had seemed a quaint kind of thing to happen; “Ah, my well-travelled portmanteau, she has seen too much.”

Turning your ankle over in a pothole on a busy, dirty street in the drizzle doesn’t evoke the same wistful feelings.

So operation Get Out Of Town Quick was put into action. In fact we didnt have to go far. Los Yarumos eco-park is just on the outskirts of the town. A £1.50 taxi ride and free entry. We had a fascinating guided walk through a section of forest – the highlight being when the guide poked a leaf at the side of the track and a cloud of butterflies flew across our path from their hiding place. He also showed us a plant that shrinks away when touched, a ‘walking tree’ that moves across to better locations if it is crowded or the bank it is on crumbles and a tree that throws down tarantula shaped seed pods so birds will pick it up and throw it elsewhere when they realise their mistake.

On the hill is also a brilliant science museum where you are guided through each section by a different person. We were filmed in slow motion, by infrared, put under microscopes and given a personal presentation in their planitarium. All free. There are also free rides and activities outside, like a bungee trampoline, some mad cycle gyroscope thing, waterfall rappelling… Open at other times (we couldn’t tell when) were zip wires and a walkway over the forest.

Time to go a few more kilometres down the road and lay back in a hot spring to watch the birds.

We also made some friends and have since been invited back to their house tonight, although we will be in Honda by then. She was so disappointed that we couldn’t come and stay with them as “hotels here are so expensive”. Really warm and genuine people.

Finally a walk through another public nature area with free activities. Sadly for Judah, we couldn’t see where to borrow the clubs for the free golf course but we did clamber up an old steam train, watch some more birds and be more closely watched ourselves. The more ‘local’ we go, the more we become the freak show. A group of people were pointing and staring at us and then literally formed a circle around our bench and started talking about us. We would assume we were being mugged if the group didn’t include a kindly old man, a woman and a bunch of young kids. As they walked away, the woman smiled and asked if we were gringos and was pleasantly surprised that we understood Spanish. We shared a few words before they walked on and then turned and continued to watch us. Awkward.

We’ve also been the subject of a few surreptitious selfies. ‘I must just take a picture of myself with the backdrop of this brick wall, a dustbin and – oh! – a tall man with a little blond sunburnt family. How did they get in the shot?!?’. I know your game lady because I’ve done it several dozen times myself.

We did do one activity in the centre – other than a quick lap on the cable car system – we climbed the spire of the cathedral almost to its tip. It is a spectacularly ugly concrete structure 106 metres tall in all its unrendered, unpainted glory. They have taken a slightly more drag queen approach of prettifying it by uplighting it with an array of garish lights. Along the edges and ridge of the roof they have built a metal cage so you can safely walk up and along it and then onto a metal spiral staircase inside the spire, which gets increasingly narrow until you can almost touch the inside tip of the spire and then emerge out into a small viewing area. It was exciting and terrifying, mostly nudging towards the terrifying.

The green, green hills of Antioquia

We have arrived in somewhat of our comfort zone. I’m writing this accompanied by the familiar rattle and hum of a bus as we travel up through the verdant mountains of the Antioquia region. The driver has braces and looks about 15 and we are in an open sided, enormously wide and colourful bus on roads barely suitable for a motorbike. We were wondering why there was only two buses a day going in the direction we are headed, both early morning, but soon reasoned that it must be because this road has no passing places and therefore there must be some kind of arrangement whereby vehicles pass once way in the morning and the other way in the evening. But even as I was about to type that, we met the first vehicle – another bus, albeit smaller, who had to manoeuvre himself up into the undergrowth while we clung to the edge of a crumbly cliff and edged around him.

Mercifully, we have passed through clouds on what must have been (we hope) the highest part of our journey to Rio Sucio (Dirty River – nice). The road now has at least a bank between us and the valley below and we aren’t so dizzyingly high. The lady beside me has lowered her scarf and it using it just for warmth rather than as a blinker, shielding her from the view down.

It made sense for us to arrange domestic flights for the first couple of journeys. None of us wanted to endure 21 hour bus journeys to save only a few pounds. But flying does mean we missed out on the pleasure of seeing the landscape change and getting glimpses of what life is like outside of the bustle of towns and cities. Every now and then someone living in a deserted house in the mountains is waiting on the porch for the bus to pass and collect or deliver something to the nearest town – a certain sized spanner is shown to the driver’s buddy and a request made for a replacement. Other jobs assigned to the buddy – another teenager – include dismantling the wing mirrors of parked vehicles so we can squeeze past them, and loading and unloading a load of corrugated roofing transported between two men an hour apart on the road for the bargain price of 50p.

The bus must be a lifeline for the people living here. We boarded with a mum and preschool daughter. Two hours along the route there was another man waiting to deliver something or other, and the little girl with him waved and shouted something to the girl on board – clearly friends.

More familiar territory is being back in the realm of small, friendly towns with access into beautiful countyside.

We spent two nights in Guatape and two more in Jardin. The former is a small rainbow coloured town where people from Medellin come to enjoy the activities that surround the man made lake that borders it.

We learned on a boat trip into the lake that the land was bought up and gradually flooded over five years. The lake would now take 2 days to walk around. Having taken a while to drive past some of it on our way out of town, we would estimate a much longer time. It’s big. The boat driver gave a running commentary as we raced around the lake and we deciphered some of it. The most interesting bit being about a brick structure with a cross on it in the middle of a deep part of the water. After clarifying with the other couple on the boat we realised that it was the tower of a church. He proceeded to show us pictures of a town much larger than Guatape that had been flooded, the ruins of which we were floating above. They had preserved the tower as a reminder of the town that had been.

We also stopped and goggled at the houses of James Rodriguez (Footballer, Bayern Munich & Real Madrid. I didn’t know either.) and the deserted Hacienda Manuela, Pablo Escobar’s secondary residence until it was famously bombed by PePEs. You can imagine it when it was a luxury house on the lake, although it is now practically a shell and the pool is full of gloopy green water. A lot of the living quarters were apparently dug into the hill like a hobbit hole and we saw the exits of a few of the escape tunnels he had built for those inevitable sticky situations one has as an international narco. His remaining family own some lovely houses on the next door hill. The money for them apparently came from a time prior to all the drug and blood money. Hmmm.

Then we scaled a huge pinky grey granite monolith just outside town. Not in quite the same way as the man who first climbed it in the mid nineteenth century. We took the slightly less pioneering route of a tuktuk to the base and then around 700 steps built into the sheer face of the rock to a viewing area, a souvenir shop and a bar selling some quite revolting watery and salty beer with slices of mango in it.

Jardin was as it sounds. Tucked in a valley surrounded by green hills. I’m reluctant to call them mountains, although heightwise they qualify, as they are far too green, covered in forests, fruit trees, flowers, coffee plants etc. We explored it in the best way in the world – on horseback. Our guide was a coffee farmer and possibly the nicest man in the whole world. Just he and one other man farm the whole plantation of banana and coffee, totally organically, using basic machinery and with utter love and devotion. While waiting for the bus back into town (another adventure as Matt had to hang off the back alongside the farmer) he answered our questions, enthusiastically demonstrated some machinery, and climbed a tree to pick handfuls of fruit which he threw into my outstretched hat for us to take back with us.

Again it was another community which lived out its life around a beautiful plaza, with compulsory massive church at the top, fountain in the middle and flocks of pigeons. People gathered round little tables on cowskin chairs to chat, play, eat, drink and greet the locals. This square had the added benefit of gentlemen riding or leading their beautifully kept horses through it too. It was also cheap, so we were happy on all counts. We’re sad to be moving on but the journey back to Bogota has to continue.

More accidental fun

Having really beached it up on our last couple of days in Cartagena, we headed back inland to Medellin, the second largest and most important city of Colombia. It is famous for its history of gold and coffee exports and is still responsible for a large proportion of Colombia’s income. It is also famous for having been the most dangerous city in the world. Pablo Escobar was raised there and his Medellin drug cartel caused well documented trouble, as did Farc and other groups. At one point there were around 9 murders a day. It is worlds away from that now and we felt free to wander about with no need to look over our shoulders. In fact a tour guide recommended that we visit an infamous old slum area to see its amazing graffiti. It used to be incredibly dangerous to step foot there. We didn’t, for lack of time, but it shows how far the city has come.

It is a vast city, spread in the bottom and perilously up the side of a huge valley, surrounded by steep wooded mountains. Most of the houses are red brick, which contrasts pleasingly with the green scattered around and throughout it. We warmed to it instantly. Cheap entertainment and a nice morning spent was buying a metro ticket for 50p and traveling the length of the city. The metro ticket is good for any length of journey, so long as you don’t leave a station and it also encompasses the cable car legs of the journey so we could see the city from all angles. The cable car, particularly, is good for indulging any people-watching needs – seeing a good sweep of people going about their daily lives and obviously nosing at the varied activities that go on on people’s roofs

However, we unwittingly came during their annual festival so there were hardly any beds (not affordable at least). We found out the night before that the booking we had made had not been honoured so there was a mad panic from the very repentant young hostel owner to find us a room. So we had our own little nativity parody – since there was no room at the inn, we were directed to a room in a stable (the garage of a used car seller), with only two beds, cold water in a shower down the hall, a squeaky borrowed fan and the hardest beds you could imagine. The nativity scene was complete when we realised that the mattresses were made from compacted straw. Thankfully there were no animals to share the scene. We would have to wait until the next town to play ‘catch the gecko under the bed’.

So we spent a merry few days watching the end of the flower festival, which in our case consisted of seeing the truck floats and the antique car parade (as usual, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time as we were not organised enough to find out where each event was).

But our main entertainment was found in that well known venue… the supermarket car park at the end of our road. Weirdly we spent a fair chunk of time there as a local beer company had set it up with tables and chairs and a float for live bands. Street sellers sold hot food and you were welcome to buy some drinks and snacks from the supermarket and join the party, which broke out there each night. Even by our standards, it was incredibly random. But it was certainly authentically local and we were welcomed with lots of conversation and enforced dancing.

It has certainly been the most friendly place in Colombia. There have been a good number of people, often older men with their smart ponchos and panama hats, stopping to check we know where we are going, and then walking us there, making sure the children were safe on the metro etc. And a touching moment at the festival where a man was shouting something at one of the people on the floats and gesturing towards Judah – the next thing we knew, we were being thrown a linen poncho for him, which he proudly wore, to the man’s delight.

Spoilt Gringos!

There has been something strange about this holiday and we couldn’t figure out what. There was something missing somehow. A sense of discovery? Adventure?

And then it hit us. We have become what we never feared we would become. We have become Tourists. In all our travels, we have proudly considered ourselves above that: We are travellers. Travellers come to see whatever they see, tourists see what they came to see. A subtle but important difference.

In short, Mexico has utterly spoiled us. There, there were sights at every corner. Beautiful vistas, archaeological wonders, ease of travel and the guarantee of reward at the end. We ran out of time every place we lay or heads – there was always more we could have seen and done. We developed a sort of travelling ADHD. What is a holiday of you don’t need a holiday to recover from it?

Colombia is a very different experience. It is a vast country and unwilling, in our experience so far, to put on a show. It isn’t possible to easily and cheaply jet about, talking in the highlights.

We have travelled up to Cartagena; a beautiful walled city with colonial buildings and history aplenty. It’s lovely. We have rented a very cheap apartment where the children have their own room and even their own beds.

However, one of the reasons we travelled this far north was to see our old friend again – the Caribbean coast. But Cartagena has dark sanded beaches and a brown sea. To find anything like the turquoise sea we found in Mexico you need white coral sand and this can only really be found on the Rosario Islands, which is an expensive day trip for only 2 hours on a beach. Staying there and making the most of the islands, including the bio-luminescent plankton, which can only be seen at night and only if you can find a guide willing to take you, is ruled out by the fact that it is vastly expensive. The second best option is a £50 round trip by boat with a 2-hour stay at Playa Blanca – a slightly less impressive beach -again, price and hassle outweighing the fact that there is a slightly cheaper and, again, slightly less idyllic beach just across a little channel which can be reached by boat for about £15 there and back: Punta Arena. Crystal water and white sand he said. Not so much. Plus we were then obliged to buy an expensive meal from his friend, who tried to charge us for the driver’s drink too. And we literally had to swat away ladies who were forceably trying to massage us. Awkward. It was a lovely beach – albeit a bit pebbly and rubbish strewn. It was there that we banned sentences beginning with “If we were in Mexico….”

So we have become fat, greedy tourists; expecting perfection to be served up to us from a varied menu of delights, preferably translated into English and served with a smile.

I think we are even letting our appreciation of cultural learning slide: When Judah thought that Simon Bolivar (the liberator of most of South America, 1st president of Colombia and the man after whom lots of South American roads and plazas are named) was the man who wanted to jump Niagara Falls on a motorbike, we didn’t even bother to correct him.

Then we went and got a Domino’s pizza for dinner.

But with this self realisation complete, we gave ourselves a proverbial slap and determined to just put our expectations aside and enjoy fully whatever we encountered. We went to the beach just in front of our apartment and it was absolutely delightful. We made a huge sandcastle, body surfed and then wandered about in town until dark and had our best day so far. Here are some other photo highlights of our time in Cartagena.

Our first day-impressive storms and wading through flooded roads…

Judah eating a ‘fat bum ant’

Sunset from our balcony – as vultures and pelicans fly by. And the rooftop pool.

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Historic Cartagena

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In a Russian bar – obviously…

Punta Arena beach – kids swam until pruney, as is their habit when given a chance

Why hire a bodyboard when there is a formica worktop that will do the job 5% as well?

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