Cartagena

Cartagena is the most chaotic place I have ever been. I say this having been to Belize.

Of everywhere I've traveled, this is the place where English worked the least. And I speak enough Spanish to get by better than most Americans. It didn't matter. My partner's and my phones were both about to die, so I went looking for a portable charging block. I walked into what appeared to be an electronics store. It was actually five or six electronics stores and a small bar, somehow all occupying the same space. I tried every combination of Spanish words I could think of for "portable charging block." Nothing landed.

Eventually a Black American man who was just having a drink at the little bar inside the electronics market asked me what I was trying to say, translated it for me on the spot, and went back to his beer. He was there for maybe thirty seconds. He saved us.

The walled city itself is stunning. The colonial architecture, the colors, the sheer density of history in a small area. And in the middle of a major city park, just hanging out in a tree like it was completely normal, were two three-toed sloths. Genuinely one of the more surreal things I've seen. These ancient, impossibly slow animals just existing in the middle of a city. We watched from a distance as some British tourists got approached by the guys stationed near the sloths, who were very clearly running a scam. We have enough combined travel experience to recognize the setup immediately. We left. The Brits did not.

We eventually went back to the ship. A Colombian cruise port where the scam density is high and your group's combined Spanish is just you, doing your best. There's a limit to how long you can sustain that energy. We hit it.

Cartagena rewards patience and a high chaos tolerance. We had one of those, inconsistently.