Last night we flew from Cartagena to Medellin. It was a sad goodbye, as Cartagena has been good to us – our first home away from home. We really enjoyed the sights, the people, the food, and generally the weather. Given my horrific sunburn, our last couple days were pretty tame but still a ton of fun. See below!

Laundry

Even though we’d only been gone a week, we’d sweated through the majority of our clothes in Cartagena. Next to our hotel (Hotel Boutique La Artilleria) was a laundromat called Beer & Laundry, so we decided to test it out, especially since they also advertised pizza. This ended up being one of our favorite finds in the city! We got all of our laundry washed, dried, and folded while we ate one of the best pizzas ever all while talking with the couple from Medellin that owns the place. They were the sweetest and filled us in on all the things we need to do in Medellin and Bogota. We also met another traveler there who is also traveling the world but while working remotely. Thanks to a picture he showed us, we’re now planning to make a stop in Salento!

Football

Nope, we don’t mean futbol, we mean good ole American football! We watched the Patriots game from the Clock Pub inside the old city with a new friend we met on the street. Gary is 70 and works part time while traveling the world. We had great conversation, watched some football, and enjoyed some drinks. For the Eagles game, we watched it back in our room while dining on street arepas. Both perfect viewing locations! Now John’s team and my team will play each other in the Super Bowl. So here comes the divorce! Hey, we almost made it two months 🙂

Street Meat

John and I absolutely fell in love with the area near our hotel, especially the tiny Plaza de la Trinidad which was alive every night with street food vendors, music, and people. We ate here quite a few nights, having a huge hamburger with everything on it one night, and the best meal we had in Cartagena at a restaurant that didn’t have a name but had seating inside and chairs lining both sides of the street as they cooked meat on the grill outside. Best. Carne. Asada. Ever. If you’re ever in town, look for it right before you get to the plaza on your left. The chefs wear yellow polos.

Bocagrande

We found Cartagena to be very walkable, so we made the trek out to Bocagrande (about 4 miles round trip). We stared up at all the high rises, snuck into the Hyatt for amazing views from their pool deck (side note – their restrooms are lovely if you ever find yourself over there needing a restroom), and waded in the sea. We stopped for lunch at Crepes and Waffles, which was reasonably priced, delicious, and gave us the sugar rush we needed to walk home!

Sloths

I know I’ve already talked about the sloths, but we saw one again on our last day, and she had a baby! We’d heard that there was a sloth that had recently given birth. The adorable little animal was clinging to its mom’s chest as she went from branch to branch eating leaves. We ended up really close to the sloth, but it was still hard to get good pictures. But, you can kind of see the baby’s arm in the picture above! All these sloth sightings led us to research sloths. We’ve determined that the ones we were seeing are 3-toed sloths. According to Wikipedia, they have a litter of just one, are mammals, and the gestational period is 6 months. I of course decided we needed to know how they mate. YouTube was happy to provide this. Look it up if you’re curious!

Cocadas

On our last day John and I tried the cocadas from the sweets sellers in the old town. These were amazing! We’re both happy and sad to have only discovered this on our last day, as we would’ve made this an everyday occurrence.

Mojitos

We finished our research on best mojito in town. Stefano’s Bistro had the best (we might’ve gone there three times). The Clock Pub was a close second though.

Jugos

During our time in Cartagena, we had at least one jugo each day from the shop right next to Stefano’s Bistro. I’m a big fan of the papaya con leche while John alternated between maracuya and fresa con leche. Our final act in Cartagena was to stop by and see our juice lady one last time.

That pretty much sums up our time in Cartagena. We loved it and would love to go back some day! But onward to Medellin. Spoiler alert, we’re already loving it here too!