07/05/2019 Market, Cartagena, Colombia

We got up and had the hostel breakfast, before having a little chat with Goldie on facetime, it’s his birthday today! Then we got sorted and left the hostel to grab a taxi. It is very easy to find a taxi here, and they are really cheap too. The roads are a sea of yellow cars beeping their horns as they drive past to try and get customers, I don’t think we have waited more than 30 seconds to get one! We went to the Mercado de Bazurto, which is a huge local market selling meat, fish, vegetables, clothes, drinks, and food to eat on the go. It was huge and absolute carnage! The market, and the area it was in, showed us a completely different side to Cartagena, it was a lot rougher round the edges and I didn’t spot another tourist in sight. As we walked through there were people wandering around the market with machetes and huge knives (I guess to chop open the coconuts and melons etc) which was a little bit disconcerting! Sadly we couldn’t get any pictures, it was definitely not a safe place to bring the camera, but it was nice to soak up the atmosphere, see the bright colours, and smell all the smells! We weren’t brave enough to eat there but after a good 20 minutes of wandering (and trying not to get too lost as I think you could easily get very lost in that place) we hopped in another taxi and got taken to a nearby shopping mall. It was such a contrast to the market we had just been in, the total opposite. We went up to the food court and Josh had the Bandeja Paisa (traditional Colombian dish; plaintain, avocado, rice, egg, arepa, mixed beans, pork chop, chorizo sausage) Jen chicken and jacket potato. You would never see people eating that food in a mall at home! Josh treated himself to a McFlurry afterwards and we wandered around the shops. It was a generic mall and we could have been anywhere in the world in that moment, but that was the comfort and beauty of being there, like a little bit of respite. We eventually found the beauty area of the mall (reason for going there in the first place) and Josh and I both got our eyebrows waxed. Pretty funny trying to liaise that with the language barrier! We went and sat in a café for a coffee and to enjoy the air conditioning before getting a taxi back to the hostel. We spent the afternoon organising and booking the following weeks accommodation (we have used booking.com so much now that we get bonus discount which is quite handy actually!) then had leftover chicken pasta for dinner and shared some Chilean wine from the nearby supermarket. We got showered and ready before getting a taxi into the old town. We went to a bar for a cocktail and ended up having a tequila (I am sure that shot was a double at the very least, and they are very generous with alcohol in the cocktails!) before heading round the corner to a fancy cocktail bar. It was really cool, there was a square bar in the middle of the room with stools around it and then the four outer walls of the room were lined with tables and chairs, with a DJ playing in the corner. It was table service only, and although it was slightly more expensive than other bars, it was still a lot cheaper than it would be at home, so we made the most of it! When we were ready to have a little dance we walked down the road before being ushered by a group of people into what we were told was a club for dancing. As we walked in it became VERY obvious this was in fact a place for tourists to come and find ‘ladies of the night’ as mum and dad call them. It was literally a room full of ladies, and we were definitely the first tourists they had managed to get in there. My eyes were on the floor so much I actually bumped into the waiter and knocked the menu out of his hand onto the floor. I quickly picked it up and shoved it back in his hand before we turned straight back around and out the door. We noticed lots of ladies with their pimps thereafter walking up and down in the old town trying to get tourists attention. They weren’t shy, they would literally wink or stick out their tongue at Josh even as we were walking hand in hand together, it was so surreal! We ended up dancing back at our fancy cocktail bar we had been in previously, before heading to a rooftop bar near the clock tower with a view of the old city. We got a taxi home, pretty tipsy, and were home by 0100!