Finally- we are in NYC and have wireless network so I will try to bring you up to date:

Saturday September 19, 2009

Since we have internet here we spent some time this morning taking care of business: booking a room in Bogota; paying bills and catching up on the blogs. We set out at about 10am to see the old city in daylight. It is truly awe inspiring. We started by going to “Las Bovedas” or the dungeon. These are set along the outer wall of the city and were originally used for storing supplies and munitions, later were converted into jail cells and are currently used gift shops. We walked up onto a large plaza on the wall. From there you can see the Caribbean sea and get a little oriented towards the city. There was a kite competition going on with close to a hundred kites flying outside the wall.

We started down one of the streets and soon found ourselves totally lost. We stopped at the “Juan Valdez” coffee shop to check our maps and Dick was soon able to figure it out. We walked to the Bolivar Plaza which is cool and green. We did check out some emeralds at one of the shops (they told us it was an emerald museum) and although undoubtedly, if you are buying emeralds, Colombia is one of the best places to buy, that was not on our agenda. We went to the “Palacio de la Inquisicion” where they displayed various implement of torture which were used to unearth witches and heretics. We then traveled upstairs to the historical museum which has some history and artifacts from early Cartagenia. We spent much of morning and early afternoon wandering through the city before heading back to the hotel to check out, stopping for lunch at a neat little café on 10th street for their comida corriente (set lunch)of soup and Cuban pork, rice and salad.

We went back to the hotel room to check out and used their wireless for a couple of hours til it cooled off for a bit. It does get quite hot and muggy in Cartagena but not nearly as bad as we had expected and it does cool off in the late afternoon and evenings, especially if there is a breeze from the ocean. We stored our bags at the hotel and walked back up to the old city looking for an ice cream place for dinner. We really enjoyed sitting and watching people for an hour or two.
We finally made our way to the airport and were checked in, through security and ready to leave about an hour and a half before our plane was due to depart. No restaurant after security at the airport(at least at the domestic terminal). The plane was on time and we had an uneventful hour + flight to Bogota. When weighing the $100 flight against the $60 – 23 hour bus trip it was a no brainer choice.

We checked into the Anandamayi Hostel just a block up Calle 9 from the Posada del Sol. This is an absolutely beautiful hostel, set in an old home that has been tastefully remodeled, more about the hostel tomorrow. She did give us hot water bottles to sleep with since it was so cold.