Cartagena from the sea

Unfortunately as I arrived at the start of January during a giant electronic music festival and had not booked a hostel in advance finding a hostel that had space proved challenging. But after much  searching around we managed to find a space on a couch in the TV room of Mamallena Hostel thanks to the friendly Australian owner.

Streets of Old town Cartagena

The hostel itself had a spacious courtyard, bar and food.the rooms and beds were good however this is a party hostel and with a bar located directly underneath it that doesn’t close till 3am don’t expect to get an early nights sleep. But if you want to party this hostel is a good choice. It’s also conveniently located in the old city which is really safe and a short walk to all bars, clubs and  waterfront.

Clock tower in main square of old town

Although my time in Cartagena was relatively short at only 6 days and granted most of those days I was doing some pretty heavy partying at the clubs, hostel and spent a great deal of my time hungover I still really enjoyed my daily walks throughout the stunning old town area’s.

I had one of the craziest nights out in one of the club’s in the old town called Mister Babilla. If your up for a crazy night of partying with strobe lights, disco lights, confetti,baloons in a club packed with tourists and locals alike I would definitely recommend checking it out.

More streets of Cartagena

I have to say that out of my entire trip Cartagena has to have the most beautiful buildings and streets. Everywhere you walked it just oozed charm and style.

Street vendors on the street selling fresh fruit

One of my favorite parts of Cartagena definitely had to be the giant stone wall ruins that surrounded the city, complete with old canons were visually stunning and was great to stroll along the old wall while eating a some icy cold gelato on a humid night.

Old walls that used to protect Cartagena from pirates and attacks

The other interesting thing I did in Cartagena was to takea  dip in the volcanic mud pools. at only $15 USD for cost of the bus and entrance it was too good of a deal to miss out on.

So what are the mud pools? basically you visit a small volcano (Its more like a tiny hill of dirt) where there is a boxed off natural warm grey muddy pool. The pool itself is over 200m deep however because of the density of the mud it is impossible to sink. This would have to be one of the weirdest experiences in my travels. getting into a pool of mud with a bunch of random people.

Getting all muddy in the mud pools

They offer a number of other services available for purchase at the mud pools as well each of these cost a couple of dollars

1. Photo taking (As your in the mud you cant take photo’s)
2. A mud massage, A Colombian man will give you a 5-10 minute mud massage
3. Washing mud off by an elderly Colombian lady

I opted for the mud massage and the photo taking. The massage was ….interesting I couldn’t stop laughing the entire time though. I chose to skip on the old lady washing in the river and did it myself. However a couple of female friends of mine who I went with got it done and they said the ladies were very… thorough making sure they cleaned off all the mud even down their tops and bottoms haha.

Me coming out of the mud pits a new more muddy man

With the mud pools done and with my funds dwindling I made the tough decision to skip over most of Colombia in favor of being able to see more of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. I booked myself a flight from Cartagena to Quito in Ecuador and was off on the next exciting chapter of my adventure.

I still feel a little guilty about skipping over Colombia and It is definitely still on my travel list to return to in another trip