Originally Cartagena was not in our itinerary, however with locals and fellow travellers alike repeatedly expressing shock that we were going to miss the city widely regarded as the best in Colombia, eventually the fear of missing something special grew too strong so we re-planned.

When originally organising the trip we had wanted to visit the North coast, but if you have a look at the interactive route map on the home page you will see that it’s a bit of a detour in comparison to our planned route from Salento to Medellín, and our general methodology on this trip is to take our time, enjoy the small things and not attempt to visit too much. However for Cartagena we suddenly decided to make an exception, so we jumped on a Buseta to Pereira and then flew directly to Cartagena.

The contrast from our slow and magical time in Salento made our arrival feel more like a crash than a landing. Visible from the window of the plane were a couple of buildings that appeared to be on fire, the opening of the plane door unleashed a wave of heat and humidity that hit like an oven blast and with the taxi drivers in front of the airport forcefully demanding our custom; our senses felt under full-scale assault.

We side-stepped the mini-mob of vendors and instead ordered an uber. The vehicle slowly rolled towards us with completely opaque windows. No driver visible. No flash of the headlights or beep of the horn to reassure us either. We edged closer. Eventually the driver lowered his window and confirmed our names – he was indeed our uber driver. He happily explained to us that the reason for his 80% tinted windows was because sometimes he needed privacy in the vehicle, I’ll leave it to your imagination what he meant by that, but he insisted that 70% was insufficient. We drove past a neon-clad party-bus full of reggaeton-fuelled gyrating adults before eventually arriving at our pretty hostel safely. We collapsed onto the bed ready to sleep.

We sought some relief from the overwhelming heat and humidity via the air conditioning unit, which quickly obliged, before it began to release a small stream of water down the wall of our room and onto the floor. We reported this to the lone receptionist, who at first solved the problem with a simple mop and towel – not quite the answer we wanted but he said if we survived the night we could move rooms in the morning. “Ok” we tentatively accepted. We then watched as the small stream gradually evolved into a small river, which then began to meander towards and finally actually into the light switch. A swift second report was made to the receptionist. This time he tried to (mis)inform us that water and electricity can mix freely without issue in Cartagena, but fortunately he also asked for help from a member of the maintenance team.

The maintenance worker was fast. He almost immediately spotted and repaired a disconnected pipe, waited and confirmed no more river and with a thumbs up our room was finally ready. Provisional plans to move hotel were left in draft, and we settled in for the night. We fell asleep wondering why the towel and mop was the first solution instead of the maintenance team, and also (as in Bogotá) wondering whether we had made the right choice in spending 4 nights in Cartagena.