Cartagena

I´m writing this in the town that is widely accepted to be the most beautiful in the western hemisphere - Cartagena de Indias. All around me brightly-coloured buildings are huddled together within the ancient walls that bristle with cannons pointing out over the still, blue waters of the Caribbean.

Despite these pleasant surroundings I can´t help but feel annoyed and thwarted; I totally forgot it was Pancake Day on Tuesday. It´s the third year in a row I´ve done that. It only dawned on me the next day, when I noticed that about half the people in Bogota had ash crosses daubed on their foreheads. I have to admit I found it quite unsettling, a bit like that film about bodysnatchers from outer space. Chris and I were walking down Septima and noticed a freshly-daubed stream of people emerging from a church, so we decided to investigate. The queue of people waiting for their cross was moving remarkably quickly (the daubers were slapping the stuff on like Zorro with his sword) but it still stretched all the way down the nave. It´s a good job Jesus was killed all that time ago - because it would have taken ages to draw a little picture of an electric chair on everybody´s head. The oddest part of the event was the choice of music. For some reason they were playing a panpipe version of Carly Simon´s Nobody Does it Better - the theme, I think, from The Spy Who Loved Me. It was certainly an odd choice, but Chris and I agreed it was the least strange part of the whole thing.

It was while walking through the crowds of becrossed people that I decided to book a flight to Cartagena to meet up with Australian John before he leaves the New World for Spain. Along with Jess and Chappy, he should be arriving at the hostel here sometime today.

I got here last night and turned in early so I could get up early and take photos of the town before it got too busy. It really is a lovely place. It was founded in 1533, but not much of that age remains because of the attacks by English Pirates, including one by Sir Francis Drake in 1586. Unlike some of the other raids he agreed not to destroy the town in exchange for a ransom of 1,000,000 pesos, which was a lot of money in them days, y´know.

I had been warned by friends in Bogota that the street vendors and hawkers were a real problem here, and that I should be prepared to exercise a great deal of patience. However, I didn´t have any problem, because I have discovered the secret of invisibility. One simply needs to walk around with a supermarket carrier bag and nobody notices you. Not one single sunglasses salesman, money changer, guide or beggar approached me, unless I had my camera out of the bag. Even then, I could just pop it back in and they would lose interest in me and wander off to pester somebody else.

Oh, here are some of the words for the cross daubing song. It almost works as something "a-bit-like-Jesus-really", but not quite:

I wasn't lookin' but somehow you found me
I tried to hide from your love light
But like heaven above me
The spy who loved me
Is keepin' all my secrets safe tonight

Oh, oh, oh.