Cartegena

3/27 - JG: we take a quick flight north to Cartagena, Colombia, a city almost 500 years old that once served as a major Spanish port to the Caribbean coast. The city is split into a seaside area that reminds you of Miami, and an historic area full of architecture that is hundreds of years old, with walls encircling the town to protect it from pirates in the 1500s. It is nothing short of stunning all the way around. Not spending more than 45 USD for a night stay up to this point, we splurge a bit and find a b&b on www.airbnb.com (great resource) in the tourist area and make our way back and forth between the two neighborhoods. The owner is Colombian-born but Chicago-raised, and a great guy start to finish. At this point, our navigational Spanish is getting pretty good, and we celebrate Sandy's birthday on the 29th.

Medellin II

3/26 - JG: some additional pics of the cable car up the mountain, the botanical garden, planetarium, and library with outdoor plaza (Plaza de Cisneros, with 170 lightsaber looking things that shine at night).

New World

3/25 - JG: our primary travel book stated "Forget everything you've heard about Colombia - especially from those who have never been there."  This could not be more true, at least so far.  We flew into Medellin, famous for the exploits of Pablo Escobar in the mid-1980s and during that time known as the most violent city in the world. Today, the city is gritty, cosmopolitan, fairly tourist receptive, and majestic all at the same time. We don't notice a lot of English-speaking tourists, but we hit it head on. And, as has been the theme so far on this trip, we don't book a place to stay until we actually get there.

I have to relinquish my fingerprints just to exchange money....

We stop at a rooftop bar overlooking the city after our first night out --

 The cultural history museum --

We decide to take the electric cable car system up the mountains to one of the main libraries in Medellin, located in the Santo Domingo neighborhood. After touring, we strolled the streets and even stopped at a couple of local places for lunch and a beer. We found out the next day that SD is actually one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the entire city. Funny how ignorance can work to your advantage, because the people of that town treated us just fine.

Panama continued

3/17 - JG: we take an overnight bus to Panama City, which is nine hours long and as fun as it sounds. We arrive in Panama City at 430am and are taken to a hotel at the suggestion of a taxi driver at the bus terminal. The place is a dump, but Panama City is full of commerce, and the old city (Casco Viejo, built in the late 1600s after the original Panama City was destroyed by pirates) is located only a 10-minutes cab ride away. Along the way, we visited the Canal, befriended a lone Swiss traveler trekking Central America for 7 months, and even a Panamanian secret service agent who was patrolling for the president and who we met up later in the evening.

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