As usual my first reaction after getting out of the nice airport was to look at the taxis and try to jockey for the waiting line to see if I hadn’t got the displeasure of travelling in a 30 year old battered piece-junk-with-4-wheels. I don’t know how they pulled it in Cali but when I got to my turn the taxi was the oldest and the worst looking car I had ever travelled. It was raining and still I had to open all 4 windows because of the intense smell of gasoline (man, if I rubbed 2 stones against each other the car would explode). In Bogotá I had once to wait 20 minutes for someone to take the taxi that was first in line… the car surely was old enough when I was born… 32 years ago! I mean it was a Renault but I never had seen that model, it surely must have got out of production before I was born. The suspension was strangely set up in a way that the back of the car had more road clearance than a range rover (!). The car I took was not better, but no smell of gasoline.
I kindly asked the driver for how long he was a taxi driver. 35 years! I am sure that must have been his only car! In Cartagena expect the same… the 3 or 4 cars that were in front of the line remind me of the car of Batman in a tv series of the 60s. Those that are the same age than me must remember it; it was black and had green lights! I started to observe that no one takes this cars, they just was towards the end of the taxi line and choose the more recent cars. And this leaves me to make an observation about the taxi drivers in the airport; they are more trustworthy than the normal taxi driver in the street as they have special credentials. Not every taxi driver can pick someone at the airport, they need to have a badge and this badge exists to your security so make use of it even if it is a little more expensive. And by the way in Cartagena the taxis don’t have a meter do you need some negotiation. The minimum fare is 3k, which is for going like from El Laguito to the Old Town. The ride from the airport to El Laguito was 10k. At night expect to pay double rates.
The city can be described as having two distinct parts: the old city and the touristy strip called Boca Grande. They are completely different… worlds and times apart, the old city is inside a wall that used to protect the city from the pirates and is world heritage stuff. Don’t even think about going there without spending an afternoon knowing and admiring this beautiful city. The new city is a couple of modern hi-rises that stand in sea front locations along a avenue that leads to El Laguito. The most important street is not the one that is sea side but the parallel called Calle San Martin. El Lagito starts after the big hotel “El Caribe”
I stayed at the tsm-friendly Hotel Las Velas (Av las Velas Nº 160 T 57 5 6650000 http://www.hotellasvelas.com/), that is located the most touristic part of the strip or peninsula, its called El Laguito (little lake). There are many other hotels to choose from, el Almirante also seems to be a popular choice but the price is somewhere neat the 100 USD mark, quite distant from the 90k COP (35usd) that I got from Las Velas. If you are well off in life there is always the Hilton that is the best hotel in Ctg, but I would not stay there as the place seem to have better security than an American embassy. Another good choice are many apartments in this area, like the one belonging to Bruce the owner of Tsm Travel. Eddie Salence seems to be the local man to contact for this kind of arrangements (esalence@yahoo.com)
You surely can have a good laugh about the 4 star (?) rating of the Las Velas, this is a place that needs to be seen… the elevator only stops in each 2 floors (3-5-7-etc), don’t bother waiting for the hot water because cold one is all you will get and also don’t turn the air con on anything else than full power because even that way it wont get the room cold enough. But in life all cant be bad and I loved my room because it was on the penthouse and all the babes loved the view, it was very spacious and there was also a mini fridge that… worked! The girls that cleaned the room had a crush on me for sure… they would go 4 or 5 times in bed room per day… starting at 7am to wake me up (god!). The breakfast is “a la carte”, well the “carte” only has 2 or 3 menus but thanks for the effort LOL! Strangely the breakfast is charged… did not understand why… anyway when checking out the rate in my bill was 80k, did not understand if the other 10k were tax, the breakfast or they had mess up. I was charged 25k per guest.
For me the biggest plus of this hotel was its impeccable location, those used to read some of my rants here on WSA know I am a beach person so the beach location for me is very important. Las velas is located in the best and most famous beach in Ctg: playa Hollywood as the touts calls it. Personally my only deception about Ctg was the beach: the sands are dark like many beaches in the south of Spain. I like white sand beaches like Cancun, Punta Cana or Rio. This is where the comparison of Cartagena being a poor mans Rio made some sense. If the waters are or not polluted it is not easy to figure out… they seemed pretty clean to me.
The beach is just like a war zone; there is no moment of peace while you are in the sand! Damn, in seconds intervals you will be hassled by all kind of touts, and guys trying to sell you almost everything: necklaces, fruits, massage, sun glasses, t shirts, ice cream, necklaces, water, tickets to a trip, lobster, oysters, more necklaces again… whatever you can imagine… their selling. This becomes almost a game, a firm no, usually gets them on their way. If you show any kind of interest or curiosity about what they are selling then you probably need a Desert Eagle to make them go away. There are also the chair and umbrella guys, I can not understand why but each day different prices were charged for the damn things.
Hollywood beach is also the hunting ground for the world famous Tony, the tout. I will never forget his introductory line: Hello my fren I am Tony number one. I had to byte my lips to don’t fall apart from laughter. Beware he is an insistent guy and a very clever one too, he sat on a chair next to me and started to make his sale pitch, started by asking the usual questions and asking if I was from TSM website, I just played dumb and said I had no idea about it. He showed me a folder with some prints of reports and a card of Mr TSM and then proceeded to show me the available talent. I was getting tired of him and let the girl sit by me and bought her a drink, at that time I knew that he was doing, the more girls he get to sit with you the more chairs and drinks your tab will be padded with. I ended up taking the girl home after negotiating 60K COP (tony suggested 100k), but I also did this because I also had to go exchange some money and the girl knew a place that was located inside a supermarket called Carulla in the begging of Calle San Martin. The rate was OK, somewhere around 2500 COP to USD. I only used this cambio house this time because after that I used my Mastercard in ATM at the Colmena bank (located in the end of Calle San Martin near Hotel Caribe). Oh! And before I forget: watch out for Tony, the knows 1001 ways to separate you from your money, he will intentionally get your bill wrong, he will borough your change and he will steal your personal belongings if he has the chance to.
There are more touts on the beach but I honestly don’t know if they are not worse than Tony. I don’t like persons like him and I do everything to stay away from such persons, it was very annoying to have some one always 2 or 3 meters away from me following me like a shadow There are some great restaurants in Ctg, my favourite was Carbon de Pallo in Plaza San Domingo, its the perfect place to take you sweetheart. The one that I used more often was Riquismo, it’s a small open air grill restaurant that is pretty cheap and conviently located near Las Velas and across from Pandoro another restaurant/café very used by Tsm. Another great restaurant was Crepes e Wafles, I can’t give the exact location of the restaurant, it’s in street parallel to the Calle San Martin in Laguito. If you like to try new stuff this is you place. Food is pretty inexpensive in Ctg even in the top places like Carbon de Pallo.
The first night is always the most difficult one in a new town, by reading some reports I already knew about La Dulce Vita a bar/disco full of working girls, LDV is located just in front of hotel Las Velas. I headed there around 23h00, the night starts late in Ctg. The place is big but to my desperation there was only a handful of girls in there. They are not aggressive they just wait for you to make eye contact and gesture them to come over, it is difficult to observe the girls because the room is very big and full of corners and column, a binoculars would have been very handy. That particular night there was nothing worthwhile in sight, after 20 minutes of observation I ended up inviting a girl to come over, but regretted it the moment she arrived near me, she was obviously high on alcohol or any other type of psychotropic substance. I spoke very briefly with her and excused myself. I did not return to LDV after this because I had already read some reports that this house was going downhill and this served as a confirmation.
My next destination was the old city, Tu Candela and La Garita to be more precise. Just take a taxi to the Porta de Reloj (the entrance of the clock tower). The only similarity in one of this 2 spots is their location, Tu Candela is upstairs from La Garita but have different entrances. La Garita is a small disco and 99% of the women there are working and Tu Candela there are good girls and bad girls… witch makes it much more exciting to know who-is-who. There is a great party atmosphere in La Garita even if the girls are working, everybody dances and drinks the night away. the girls will bid for 100K COP but price is quite negotiable. If you are into dealing you can always take 20 or 30Ks.
The place is quite small so expect to know and be known by everyone on your third night there. The word must spread between the girls because at the end of my stay all girls wanted to be with me. The only reason I found for this is that I always bought a bottle of rum and invited several of them to drink even if I was hooked with someone. If you are shy they will approach you and ask your name and where are you from etc etc. Strange things happened inside, one girl came to me asking if her friend could come and meet me at my hotel during the next day because she was with her regular boyfriend but wanted to know me(?!). another hit me because I told her I would not pay anymore rum because we had already drank 2 bottles, she got bitchy and I just turned her my back and picked up another girl…
she got so pissed that she waited until I left with the other girl and as I was leaving hit me with her purse and called me every bad name in Spanish! (This one was too funny!). I generally had luck with the girls I took from there… all where very passionate and kissed, made bbbj and loved to have sex. Only one did not stay the night and left after we had sex. Another story to tell my grandsons was of one girl that came and almost 2 hours of sex and 3 or 4 orgasms ended up using my dick and her finger to masturbate herself with such an energy that almost felled off the bed (it was almost 8am and all I wanted to do was sleep! Now I know why many of you bring vibrators).
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