Wonderful Cartagena!

We're just sailing out of wonderful Cartagena on the Caribbean Coast (now) of Colombia.  Billed as the safest city in Colombia - and by the visibility of the Policia on every corner I have no reason to doubt this - we still took some obvious precautions.  We found birds:

Sam Toucan (who nibbles ankles much to my surprise)

And very big budgies

This smallish city was a gatway for the gold trade as there was easy access to Europe and it acted as the major port for gold and other trade - no Pnanma Canal then.. It was plundered by so many people I lost count but Sir Francis Drake was one of them.  It's full of colour in the lively and friendly people:

And charming 17th and 18th century buildings - Paul (not a building) is with our driver Francisco (also not a building)

It's a walled city and 11 kms remain.  It's also noted for its beaches - but hey we'd stay home for good beaches.

There's a huge fortress: Castillo San Felipe de Barajas begun in the 16th century and this forms part of the 1984 UNESCO heritage listing along with the old city.itself.  It's a long way up - we know, we climbed it. I'm VERY glad we have comfy shoes and gave a small nod to exercise before we left.  This photo is actually from Wikipedia - we would have been swamped by souvenir sellers, traffic and policia if we had stood where this was taken - but you get the picture (groan)!



Another trap of any part of Colombia is their gold, emeralds and leather goods.  A dangerous challenge we chose to accept.  We're off the Ecuador via the Panama Canal.  We arrive at the canal at 6am tomorrow.  Frankly I was a bit ambivalent towards this, but some interesting on board lectures from our reident expert Terry Breen have highlighted this is quite an engineering marvel and given 24,000 lives were lost in trying to build it (in two different incarnations), it does deserve a bit more respect.  Paul's been fascinated with this since he was about five - so there'll be no sleeping in tomorrow.