Time change overnight so we set the clocks back one hour for an extra hour of sleep. Up at 6:30 as we couldn't sleep anymore. Caught our first sight of Columbia and the South American coast through the morning mist a short time later. Showered and down for breakfast by 8:00. That done, we met our tour group, the Colonial City Explorer, at 9 in the Bordeaux dining room.

          
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Once everyone was present and accounted for, we disembarked at 9:30 and boarded our tour bus.  Our guide Nick narrated the 20 minute drive to downtown. Our route took us past the Fortaleza de San Felipe and within view of the La Popa Monastery overlooking the city from its hilltop perch. Arriving at the old city gate and the clock tower, we made our way on foot to the main plaza, Plaza de la Aduana.  Then on to the Simon Bolivar Square. From there we were turned loose from the organized portion of the tour to wander through old town for the next 1 ½ hours or so.

      
      
      
      
  
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Cartagena was founded in 1533 by the Spaniard, Don Pedro de Heredia. When the conquistadors discovered the interior of Columbia was rich in gold and emeralds, these riches flowed into Cartagena for shipment to Spain. Cartagena was subject to five sieges during the 16th century; the most famous led by Sir Francis Drake in 1586. After Drake's siege, Spain increased its efforts to fortify Cartagena and the massive stone wall around the old city was constructed. This effort paid off in 1741 when England attacked with a force of 24,000 men and 186 ships. They never took Cartagena, which is now the fifth largest city in Columbia.

Making our way back to the square in front of the San Pedro Claver Church, we waited for the rest of our tour buddies to show up. While waiting we were pestered by the many, many street vendors peddling their wares. Not too much pressure though except for one fellow who was determined to sell Shelly a lace tablecloth. He started by asking for $20 USD and Shell offered him $5. After a lot of back and forth, he came down to $12 and Shelly was up to $10. However, neither would move from their positions so no deal was done.

      
      
    
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Now, a mention about Ethel. There were two sisters on our tour; the younger who was about 93 and her older sister Ethel who I'm sure was pushing 100. They always had to be in the front of the line or the front of the bus and both were totally oblivious to those behind them and the environment around them. One very irritating trait they had was whenever there was a curb to climb or step off of, one or both of them would just grab on to whatever part of the anatomy the nearest person had available and would cling onto it until they had performed whatever manoeuvre they were attempting. You learned very early on the walk to keep your distance from those two.

On the walking part of the tour, Ethel stopped to take a drink from her water bottle, and then promptly hurried to catch up with the tour group. She did catch up, but to the wrong group. If her sister hadn't noticed she was missing, Ethel would have happily continued on "her" tour and probably ended up on the wrong ship. Might have been a blessing on our part.

About halfway thru the tour Ethel and her sister decided they didn't want to continue on and fully expected the tour to be over because they were done. Fortunately we had two guides with us.  One escorted the sisters back to the bus until the rest of us concluded our tour. When we finally made our way back to our ride, there was Ethel and Ethel's sister sitting in the front of the shuttle looking not too happy.

However, another tour from another ship asked our guide if we would take back two oldsters from their tour back to the cruise port as they had enough as well. Well, it took about ten minutes to round up the two and the sisters were bitching the whole time. Finally Ethel demanded an explanation as to why we weren't leaving and when she was told of the situation her comment was, "Well, phone them and find out where they are!"

    
  
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Eventually we did make our way back to the cruise terminal and reboarded the ship. Was glad to see the last of the sisters, but we have a premonition we'll probably be running into them again while on tour. They were holding up proceedings on the sub tour yesterday and we've got three more tours to go. As well, every time we've come across a people jam on the ship since departure from Fort Lauderdale, these sisters were usually the cause.

At 3:15 our ship left the pier.  It began making way out of the harbour and into the open seas again for our 286 nautical mile cruise to our next destination, Gatum Lake, Panama.

    
    
    
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We spent the afternoon re-hydrating ourselves from our 95 degree tour this morning and just generally hanging out on the verandas until dinner at 5:30. Again, our dining experience was the best, with a brief stop in the casino after and cocktails in the room before bed. Gonna be a long day tomorrow at Panama, so off to bed at 11.