Continued from Cartagena Day 3 Part 2.

Early morning breakfast at 8am. Well, relatively early. It’s an hour ahead here from Austin so technically it feels more like 7am. The housekeepers had to come here at 6:30am to start making everything from scratch. I think it was a little early for them too. Speaking of time, It seems like everything opens later in Cartagena. Places that serve coffee early are hard to find, like they open at 10am. Maybe due to the heat, but I feel like all schedules are shifted back a few hours. People eat late for all meals as well. Dinner spots seem to be more full at 8-9pm than 6-7 kinda thing.

Pancakes, eggs with pico, and passion fruit. Yum. I ate a lot of pancakes, they were super good. These ladies know how to make a mean breakfast.

CL spent much of the day coughing. We’ve thrown everything at her medicine wise, it helps some, but not as much as we had hoped. With that said, she’s trending better and her fever seems to be completely gone. It’s just this damn lingering cough that won’t go away.

9am, our driver shows up and off we go. We are headed out to Rosario Islands on a speedboat for some beach time. The Airbnb allows us to bring the towels that they have for the pool upstairs to the beach, so that was a nice touch.

Leaving the old city walls.

I think everyone’s excited for a beach day. Hopefully it’ll be nice.

Kids are certainly excited.

Ahhh, trash.

Old town.

Woah, some fancy old school mansions in this neighborhood. I believe this neighborhood is called Manga, SE of old town.

Alright, reached the marina in less than 15 minutes. That was easy.

This is promising, looks nice.

We were offered to sit in this sandy lounge area while we went to the restrooms and bought some supplies.

Supplies of beer, nice.

Time to get on the boat. Those of us who wanted Dramamine took some, so hopefully we won’t have any seasickness on this trip.

500hp!! For $1,111 we get a whole boat to ourselves until 3pm. There are organized boat outings with others, but then they leave earlier and come back later, which isn’t the greatest for those of us with kids. It made sense to spend a little more since we are a large party of 8 already. Feels kinda fancy I will say.

I think everyone’s really excited, I certainly am.

On our way, about an hour give or take until we get to the Rosario Islands.

Cartagena is also a cruise ship port. Before I booked the trip, I was a little uncertain about traveling here. You know, new place in foreign country with kids. It being a cruise port gave me a little bit more confidence that it’ll be traveler friendly. Turns out, all of my worrying was for nothing.

Alright everyone, let’s put on sunblock.

KL takes a photo of LKL.

While RL takes a photo of LKL and KL.

He really enjoyed sitting here facing backwards watching the boat leave the bay.

Glad she’s feeling much better today to be able to fully enjoy this trip.

The water here is a little silty murky, hopefully it’ll get much better when we get out past open water and then to the islands.

Out of the bay, and now cruising full speed.

They loved sitting at the bow and just taking it all in along with the wind in their hair.

Fuerte de San Fernando de Bocachica. Another fort guarding one of the entrances through the ocean into Cartagena.

The tide must not raise too much because it seems to be so low at water level.

Alright, heading out to open water.

The water is calm right now, but the captain said that it’ll usually be more choppy on the return trip in the afternoon.

Oh, looks like a fire somewhere.

Perfect time for some drinks. Weather feels great with the breeze, it’s sunny, we are on a boat. Awesome.

PL points.

Sisters hanging out in the back, drinking and snacking.

In about an hour, we reached Rosario Islands. The water here is very blue and very clear.

It’s shallow in this portion.

Our captain threw some bread into the water to attract fish.

Woah, lots of tropical fish here.

Feeding frenzy.

I thought about booking a stay at one of these tiny island houses. But would probably get bored quickly. Look at how low the islands are to the sea level though.

I guess this one was too low. Got taken out by the waves, probably during a storm.

Then we come upon this island with hundreds of birds over it. Only this one island has all the birds.

I would not enjoy having all these birds here at all times. Just bird poop everywhere.

As we get closer, I realize that they were frigate birds with their large red ballooned necks. Surprised that I remember what these birds were called.

RL points.

Just hundreds if not thousands of them here.

And only on this island. There seems to be a resort of some sort on this island too. The birds are probably mostly a curse for them and not so much a blessing…but maybe they already knew the birds were here when they built the resort here. I’d just be afraid of walking outside and getting pooped on nonstop.

Check out my awesome hat.

Look at that amazing blue turquoise water.

To be continued at Cartagena Day 4 Part 2.