An Evening Boat Cruise
Friday August 25th - there didn't seem to be any more particular excursions to do around cartagena so we took it easy by the rooftop pool all day. It was pleasant.
We finally resolved to book a place in the Rosario Islands, the Isle del Piratas. Amd i realized I'd been looking at the price for two nights on the hotels.com website rather than per one. So while for example this place at $160 was just beyond what i felt quite comfortable with ($140), i realized it was actually only $80 a night! Wish the app would just show the nightly cost, the way i plan relates more to what i think is an appropriate price per night, amd how that relates to the overall budget I've already figured out. More easy knowing i can afford X per day than being told this block of five days is Y now what am i gonna do with that but extra math dividing it to find out how it relates to the daily budget.
In the evening Cristina and i went on an evening dinner cruise about the bay on a not-terribly-large boat they fit a surprisingly large number of dinner guests on to that i seem to have neglected to take a photo of.
While we were waiting i noticed a silhouette barely visible except for the lights it blocked behind it as it crept in like a phantom. A tallship silhouette. The barque Phantom!
I don't think i mentioned "Barco Phantom" here yet. During the city tour i had noticed with interest at traditionally rigged sailing ship at the dock. It appeared to have all its rigging in place and functional masts and spars (as opposed to the surprising number of pretend "pirate ships" that just have essentially a caricature of masts and spars), but no sails bent on (ie attached, ie not about to sail as it would take an experienced crew more than a day to bend them all on). When I'd gotten back to the room i googled it amd of course g0 advertises itself as a "pirate galleon" (a galleon would have a comprehensively different hull shape and very specifically a lateen sail on the mizzen rather than a gaff and spanker (hey i don't make up the names). Amd then ship seems to make evening motorings around the bay whilst playing party music for its guests. It made me sad to see a ship with all the rare accoutrements to be a functional tallship working instead in a capacity a motorized barge could just as easily do but i guess you gotta do what you gotta do, the hustle is real.
But then as i watched this Phantom emerge from the dark i counted only two masts. What! I joke that I'm bad at basic arithmetic but this is too much. Had i posted to facedown about a barque that was clearly just a brigantine??? The shame! I quickly pulled up my pictures from the day before but no yeah no there were definitely three masts.
I remained absolutely hornswaggled until a few minutes later another sailing ship silhouette began ghosting across the distant city lights. This one with the three masts. So the identity of the brigantine remains unknown.
Anyway we boarded our boat, which was modern amd elegant. We were seated on the top level near the con. The on either side of us were pairs of women though i don't think they were couples amd/or romantically involved. To my left they were latina, to my right young African American women with ridiculous fake lashes (together they may have averaged an average weight by being at opposite ends of the scale). Can i just say in my humble opinion ridiculously huge fake lashes never make you look like anything other than completely vapid. Anyway all the conversation i overheard was very vapid. Amd they complained about jet lag because God forbid Miami is an hour ahead. But hey i guess good for them cartagena is a brave choice for what sounded like a practically first trip abroad, but my guess is they were to naive to even realize it was a brave choice.
Oh and when their food arrived they picked at it and then declared they didn't like it (food quality as far as i could tell was excellent. They appeared to have spoken no Spanish so may have not known what they were ordering). They asked the waiter if they could send it back amd get something else amd were then shocked that they could not ("how long does it take to cook something else!") apparently they didn't notice this was a small vessel filled to the gills with diners, I'm surprised the galley could meet the capacity, amd they took our orders before launch I'm sure specifically to only take on board what was actually ordered.
Anyway OUR food was delicious, amd the captain took these adorable photos of us goofing around at the con. (Which he didn't do for anyone else, clearly we're special)
Taxis to amd from the dock, indeed all taxis except that first one, charged us in the area of 15,000 [$3.75) amd 20,000 (at night) for journeys of the similar length, so it seems only it was that first taxi driver who thought he'd take advantage of dorky tourists from the airport.
Amd just a comment about "amd," i think I've mentioned it before but my phone spellcheck for baffling reasons defaults to amd rather than and so rather than fight it every single time we'll just have to live with amd.
We finally resolved to book a place in the Rosario Islands, the Isle del Piratas. Amd i realized I'd been looking at the price for two nights on the hotels.com website rather than per one. So while for example this place at $160 was just beyond what i felt quite comfortable with ($140), i realized it was actually only $80 a night! Wish the app would just show the nightly cost, the way i plan relates more to what i think is an appropriate price per night, amd how that relates to the overall budget I've already figured out. More easy knowing i can afford X per day than being told this block of five days is Y now what am i gonna do with that but extra math dividing it to find out how it relates to the daily budget.
In the evening Cristina and i went on an evening dinner cruise about the bay on a not-terribly-large boat they fit a surprisingly large number of dinner guests on to that i seem to have neglected to take a photo of.
While we were waiting i noticed a silhouette barely visible except for the lights it blocked behind it as it crept in like a phantom. A tallship silhouette. The barque Phantom!
I don't think i mentioned "Barco Phantom" here yet. During the city tour i had noticed with interest at traditionally rigged sailing ship at the dock. It appeared to have all its rigging in place and functional masts and spars (as opposed to the surprising number of pretend "pirate ships" that just have essentially a caricature of masts and spars), but no sails bent on (ie attached, ie not about to sail as it would take an experienced crew more than a day to bend them all on). When I'd gotten back to the room i googled it amd of course g0 advertises itself as a "pirate galleon" (a galleon would have a comprehensively different hull shape and very specifically a lateen sail on the mizzen rather than a gaff and spanker (hey i don't make up the names). Amd then ship seems to make evening motorings around the bay whilst playing party music for its guests. It made me sad to see a ship with all the rare accoutrements to be a functional tallship working instead in a capacity a motorized barge could just as easily do but i guess you gotta do what you gotta do, the hustle is real.
But then as i watched this Phantom emerge from the dark i counted only two masts. What! I joke that I'm bad at basic arithmetic but this is too much. Had i posted to facedown about a barque that was clearly just a brigantine??? The shame! I quickly pulled up my pictures from the day before but no yeah no there were definitely three masts.
I remained absolutely hornswaggled until a few minutes later another sailing ship silhouette began ghosting across the distant city lights. This one with the three masts. So the identity of the brigantine remains unknown.
Anyway we boarded our boat, which was modern amd elegant. We were seated on the top level near the con. The on either side of us were pairs of women though i don't think they were couples amd/or romantically involved. To my left they were latina, to my right young African American women with ridiculous fake lashes (together they may have averaged an average weight by being at opposite ends of the scale). Can i just say in my humble opinion ridiculously huge fake lashes never make you look like anything other than completely vapid. Anyway all the conversation i overheard was very vapid. Amd they complained about jet lag because God forbid Miami is an hour ahead. But hey i guess good for them cartagena is a brave choice for what sounded like a practically first trip abroad, but my guess is they were to naive to even realize it was a brave choice.
Oh and when their food arrived they picked at it and then declared they didn't like it (food quality as far as i could tell was excellent. They appeared to have spoken no Spanish so may have not known what they were ordering). They asked the waiter if they could send it back amd get something else amd were then shocked that they could not ("how long does it take to cook something else!") apparently they didn't notice this was a small vessel filled to the gills with diners, I'm surprised the galley could meet the capacity, amd they took our orders before launch I'm sure specifically to only take on board what was actually ordered.
Anyway OUR food was delicious, amd the captain took these adorable photos of us goofing around at the con. (Which he didn't do for anyone else, clearly we're special)
Taxis to amd from the dock, indeed all taxis except that first one, charged us in the area of 15,000 [$3.75) amd 20,000 (at night) for journeys of the similar length, so it seems only it was that first taxi driver who thought he'd take advantage of dorky tourists from the airport.
Amd just a comment about "amd," i think I've mentioned it before but my phone spellcheck for baffling reasons defaults to amd rather than and so rather than fight it every single time we'll just have to live with amd.