Christmas in Cartegena, Columbia

Anchored at Club Nautico, Mid-December until after Christmas 2006

We sailed through the break in the underwater wall that surrounds the bay at Cartegena, Columbia, in mid-December. The wall had been built many hundreds of years ago to prevent and/or sink ships. Those ships were trying to capture the gold and silver, etc, that was held there as a depository by the Spanish. The Spanish would wipe out indians from all over South America and transport the valuables to this harbor because it was the most secure in the Caribbean. Then the Spanish ships would transport the booty to Spain...or sink and become treasure! Hey...they even converted the indians that were left so they could have slaves! Nice Guys, huh? Today Cartegena [car-ti-HEY-na] is a picture book walled city with massive structures, walls, gates, churches, monesteries and an amazing number of fortifications around it to protect the booty. It all made for great days of exploration.

We took city tours, old neighborhood hillside walks, hiked the wall, shopped too much and enjoyed the good food there. The best emeralds come from the mountains of Columbia and we had allocated the profits from selling an old generator on Ebay last year for just buying emeralds!!! Yea!! Some are appraised in the US at 5 times their cost in Columbia, but who knows. They went right into the safety deposit box after one wearing. Lynn will be a well decorated old lady when we return from cruising!! Columbia used to be wildly inexpensive but has now caught up to the rest of the Caribbean. Even Columbian coffee was more expensive there than Sams Club back home! It tasted better there, though! The only drawback was the dreadfully polluted water in the harbor that even caused an eye infection after a splash. The folks were nice and there was a record number of cruisers for the Holidays. We all had a pitch-in dinner for over 160 folks at the Marina at Club Nautico.

City Street	Anchorage	Cathedral, San Pedro	Interior	City View
Fuerte San Phillipe	Fort wall	Us in tower	City Gate	Coffee Consortium
Toucan at Brunch	Cruisers at Christmas Dinner	City Building	Howler Monkey	Chuck at the Fort

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