it felt good to be back in cartagena..as nice as it was chilling out in taganga returning to a larger city brings with it a little more energy and excitment..we were still pretty wrecked after the massive weekend and so we took it pretty easy on the first night back in town..we cooked up some dinner with tony and tommy and just chilled around the pool and the courtyard..
On Wednesday will and i took a final walk around old town (which is stunning with its colonial architecture and mix of colors)..Wednesday is one of the biggest party nights in catagena (as our hostel has a party for all the others) and so we started having beers at the corner shop at about 5 that afternoon..its a really cool vibe drinking cheap beers from the corner store with the locals and watching the world go by...something that will be sorely missed..the night turned out to be a fitting farewell and was easily one of the biggest of the entire trip..stupidity in bucket loads..way too much alcohol and Charles was out of control..we partied on the roof top terrace until it closed at 3am and then headed into old town to one of the clubs..we all ended up stumbling home at different hours..i finished the evening on the sun beds chatting to a few nice travelers who had just woken up..needless to say we were on different levels..
Our last day was spent primarily in bed!! i didn't get up until 4.30 in the afternoon..i had a final stroll around out district and we had pizza with the boys..tony and i shared a big joint on the roof top, listened to some jazz and watched the sunset, both on the day and on our south American adventure..it was a perfectly symbolic way to end the trip...
Friday morning was an early start and i was pretty nervous about making it into the US without a vaccination booklet, which in the end turned out to be no problem at all..the most stressful part of the day was no doubt getting out of Colombia! First of all i had overstayed my "visa" by 4 days (for some reason they gave me 30 and the boys 60 days and never informed anyone of the variance). this resulted at the attendant telling me i may not be able to fly (which obviously had my head processing all the possible consequences of this)..luckily she came back and said it would be OK to fly out..thank fuck for that!! lucky break..Then we were all searched numerous times and i was x rayed (whole body which looked insane on the 20 inch monitor, penis and all) which was intimidating at best.. i was stoked to be on the plane incident free and on the way to the US..
It was a short 3 hour flight and once again i was a little concerned about everything going smoothly but as i stated before there were no troubles getting into the US..few..we got a $42 taxi to our hostel on ocean drive (its going to take a while to get used to paying real money again)..the hostel is in an amazing location, right across the road from the beach and in the middle of the strip..we strolled around in the afternoon, trying to adjust to the insane level of money, development and materialism..we had a quite dinner after an afternoon kippa and after looking through an art exhibition across the road we retired early to bed, trying to avoid the lure of the raging Miami nightlife..
On Saturday we were finally staring to feel like functioning human beings again..we woke late after a 12 hour sleep and headed to get some groceries (we will have to start cooking a little for our selves now instead of eating out 3 times a day!!)..we spent the afternoon on south beach, entertained by the hundred of eccentrics floating around, watched a movie and then considered getting motivated for one last big night before we split up for a few weeks!! As to what happens exactly we will see!!
