Christmas treats

We decided to treat ourselves to a night on a beautiful Caribbean island for Christmas this year – no need for more thermal pyjamas like last year. The island was really relaxed and we had the little resort where we were staying to ourselves. Our room opened out onto the beach and the cook served us fresh seafood and rice with grated coconut. It was all very lovely.

Back in Cartagena we booked into a hotel near to the centre. Nothing quite so picturesque but it served a purpose. We decided to always take the lift from our third floor room after the first evening when Simon spotted a rat in the stairwell. That aside, we’ve had a lovely couple of days doing touristy things in Cartagena – walking along the lit-up colonial walls in the evening, visiting the 16^th century castle and venturing down lots of tunnels built into its structure, and exploring a few museums.

 Yesterday we had a hilarious couple of hours caked in gloopy, custard-like mud in a volcano a few hours (on several sweaty local buses and the back of a motorbike) from Cartagena. It was a bizarre sensation to be virtually weightless and able to float in any position. The volcano is hundreds of metres, and so we approached the mud bath at the top, about the size of a plunge pool, with trepidation. As soon as we got in it was obvious we weren’t going to sink, quite the opposite in fact. Once we were in a lying position it was quite hard to move upright again. In true naughty boy at the swimming pool fashion, Simon attempted to do a forward roll and was told off by a local girl overseeing matters who got slightly splattered in mud from when his feet came crashing down.  After the mud, we staggered down to the nearby lake like a pair of bog monsters and spent at least half an hour trying to wash it all off. Later that evening, we were still finding bits of mud in our ears.

 

Last night, we had a romantic engagement dinner which we had been promising ourselves ever since Venezuela. While it was definitely budget busting, it was really lovely; we had a table in a beautiful square and enjoyed delicious fish and our first bottle of wine since leaving England.