Continued from Cartagena Day 2.

Illness continues in this household. Little KL showed up on this trip at the tail end of his cold, and it seems to have been passed onto CL. She woke up this morning with a fever and just general lethargy. Sigh. I guess the good news is that since we bought along all the cold meds from Austin for Little KL, we at least have all the meds available now for CL. We have a whole gauntlet of meds to throw at her to make her feel better.

With that said, we do have a driver scheduled to pick us up at 10am today to do some sightseeing. Hopefully her meds would kick in by then and she’ll feel well enough to want to tag along and one of us won’t need to stay behind with her. Such is 3 kid life, someone always gets sicks at some point.

Breakfast made by our two housekeepers again. Yum. The food is genuinely delicious, and it’s been different each day. I wonder if it’ll be different tomorrow as well. Though, as nice as it is to have breakfast be made for us, because my room is right next to the kitchen, the when ladies show up an hour and a half before breakfast start time, I get woken up when they arrive. I guess its a small price to pay.

Reminds me of the GIANT avocados that we also saw in Costa Rica.

Nestle, Milo. It’s some sort of fortified chocolate shake that the two housekeepers made for the kids yesterday. The kids loved them and the ladies made them again this morning but handed the third to CH this morning since CL was in a bedroom recovering. CH didn’t understand what Jelly said when she handed it to her so she just started drinking it…hahaha. Once CL started feeling better and came out for breakfast, we asked if we could have one more Milo. So, a 4th Milo was made for CL.

Meds kicked in. Seems like she’ll be ready to rock and roll as long as we stay on top of her meds.

Thinking.

Feeling better and better…slowly.

Our driver is here. The streets are so narrow, there’s no room to pass. So when the drivers show up, they honk, we all get in as fast as we can and try to block traffic as little as possible. We’ve also realized that our Airbnb is in a slightly quieter section of Old Town, so that’s nice. There’s quite the party atmosphere here, lots of noises and music going on into late night.

Heading out of Old Town this morning. Let’s hope it’s a little bit less hot today than yesterday since we’ll be outdoors most of the day.

First stop is San Felipe de Barajas Fort, a short drive from Old Town.

Lots of white tourist vans here, took a photo of the plate so I can find ours when we are done here. Immediately after getting out of our van, we were MOBBED by hat sellers. RL wanted to buy some hats for the kids, and next thing you know, there were like 5 hat sellers all pressuring us to buy hats…I need to get a hat just to keep off the hat sellers.

Line for getting tickets. Line wasn’t long, but it was slow moving. At least it’s shaded over here. It’s hot out here,

The hat sellers got us, almost everyone came away with a hat, even me. And I didn’t even want a hat, but panicked and bought one. Boo.

More hat sellers, but none of them bothered us. Probably because we all had hats already. It’s also breezy up here, so despite the sun and the heat, it was bearable. CL asked why there were so many hat sellers and no ice cream sellers. Great question.

Old Town in the distance.

All those taller buildings is in a newer area called Boca Grande.

Bathrooms here are situated in the tunnel system inside the fort. Neat.

I can’t decide which photo I like better, so I’m putting both of them up.

Removable bridges as defense.

Here’s one of the bridges.

CL isn’t 100% but she’s being a trooper.

At the top of that small mountain is Convento de Santa Cruz de la Popa, where we’ll be headed to after the fort.

Come on children, let’s sit on the cannon and get another “all sitting on cannon” photo. Yes, I know it’s hot and bright, but let’s rally.

There we go, was that so hard?

Down we go into the tunnels.

We found a cat just chilling down here in the cooler tunnels.

Believe these were barracks for the soldiers stationed at the fort.

Popped up above ground.

Kids wanted to explore more tunnels, so down again we go.

Little KL points.

Overheating a little in this heat.

Thinking.

Alright, let’s make the summit push for this fort on the other side. Then we can call it done and head to the convent next.

Oh, there’s a souvenir shop at the top and they sell ice cream!

Trying to find some shade.

It’s hot, our popsicles are immediately melting, even in the shade. But a cold popsicle really hit the spot here.

PL took too long to eat her popsicle, it dripped on her shirt.

I guess this is another one of those moveable bridges.

Took this photo of all of us cooling off in the shade. Just happened to get a photo of this guy in purple with his shorts all pulled up, looks like a diaper. Not a good look, nope, not at all.

Lots of hawks here, probably due to the updrafts of the breeze against the fort.

We came, we conquered the fort, time to head back down.

The ticket line has gotten much much longer when we left. Good thing we showed up earlier.

Destination, top of the mountain.

Some shanty towns over here along the base of the mountain.

We are here, after a pretty short drive from the fort.

More hat sellers, but armed with our hats, they didn’t really bother us too much.

Good thing I got some cash from the ATM yesterday. This ticket booth only took cash. Almost everywhere else here in Cartagena they’ve taken Amex or Visa without any issues.

Just had ice cream, otherwise we’d be all over this.

What a nice vantage point. Imagine being here a few centuries ago watching the battles unfold at the fort.

Very beautiful courtyard.

Oh, seems like they’ve been having erosion issues and have had to stabilize the foundation on the backside.

Sure enough, came back outside and looked down.

I’d like to go visit that street with all those umbrellas and street side restaurants/shops.

Easy peasy, short visit, let’s go back home now.

Our driver told us that all these motorcycles with a passenger are mostly motorcycle taxis. They weave in and out of traffic, and it’s pretty cheap for many people to take a ride from the burbs into central Cartagena. Imagine the trust of getting onto a motorcycle with a complete stranger. We see both men and women getting onto random moto taxis.

At a stoplight, there’s a panhandler painted all in gold singing.

Our driver calls him over and gives him money.

He says this is a well known singer, and they seem to know each other.

Back inside old town.

A well deserved cold beer after our sightseeing this morning.

Breakfast has been so filling, for lunch we are just eating all the leftover food that we’ve been bringing back from the restaurants in the past couple of days. Leftover squid ink paella, yes please. Yum.

To be continued at Cartagena Day 3 Part 2.