{"id":53994,"date":"2025-12-30T18:01:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T00:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=53994"},"modified":"2025-12-30T23:08:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T05:08:27","slug":"cartagena-day-4-part-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=53994","title":{"rendered":"Cartagena Day 4 Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Cartagena Day 3 Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nEarly morning breakfast at 8am. Well, relatively early. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\nPancakes, 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.<\/p>\n

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\nCL spent much of the day coughing. We\u2019ve thrown everything at her medicine wise, it helps some, but not as much as we had hoped. With that said, she\u2019s trending better and her fever seems to be completely gone. It\u2019s just this damn lingering cough that won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n

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\n9am, 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.<\/p>\n

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\nLeaving the old city walls.<\/p>\n

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\nI think everyone\u2019s excited for a beach day. Hopefully it\u2019ll be nice.<\/p>\n

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\nKids are certainly excited.<\/p>\n

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\nAhhh, trash.<\/p>\n

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\nOld town.<\/p>\n

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\nWoah, some fancy old school mansions in this neighborhood. I believe this neighborhood is called Manga, SE of old town.<\/p>\n

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\nAlright, reached the marina in less than 15 minutes. That was easy.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is promising, looks nice.<\/p>\n

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\nWe were offered to sit in this sandy lounge area while we went to the restrooms and bought some supplies.<\/p>\n

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\nSupplies of beer, nice.<\/p>\n

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\nTime to get on the boat. Those of us who wanted Dramamine took some, so hopefully we won\u2019t have any seasickness on this trip.<\/p>\n

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\n500hp!! 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\nI think everyone\u2019s really excited, I certainly am.<\/p>\n

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\nOn our way, about an hour give or take until we get to the Rosario Islands.<\/p>\n

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\nCartagena 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\u2019ll be traveler friendly. Turns out, all of my worrying was for nothing.<\/p>\n

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\nAlright everyone, let\u2019s put on sunblock.<\/p>\n

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\nKL takes a photo of LKL.<\/p>\n

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\nWhile RL takes a photo of LKL and KL.<\/p>\n

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\nHe really enjoyed sitting here facing backwards watching the boat leave the bay.<\/p>\n

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\nGlad she\u2019s feeling much better today to be able to fully enjoy this trip.<\/p>\n

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\nThe water here is a little silty murky, hopefully it\u2019ll get much better when we get out past open water and then to the islands.<\/p>\n

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\nOut of the bay, and now cruising full speed.<\/p>\n

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\nThey loved sitting at the bow and just taking it all in along with the wind in their hair.<\/p>\n

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\nFuerte de San Fernando de Bocachica. Another fort guarding one of the entrances through the ocean into Cartagena.<\/p>\n

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\nThe tide must not raise too much because it seems to be so low at water level.<\/p>\n

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\nAlright, heading out to open water.<\/p>\n

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\nThe water is calm right now, but the captain said that it\u2019ll usually be more choppy on the return trip in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

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\nOh, looks like a fire somewhere.<\/p>\n

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\nPerfect time for some drinks. Weather feels great with the breeze, it\u2019s sunny, we are on a boat. Awesome.<\/p>\n

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\nPL points.<\/p>\n

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\nSisters hanging out in the back, drinking and snacking.<\/p>\n

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\nIn about an hour, we reached Rosario Islands. The water here is very blue and very clear.<\/p>\n

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\nIt\u2019s shallow in this portion.<\/p>\n

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\nOur captain threw some bread into the water to attract fish.<\/p>\n

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\nWoah, lots of tropical fish here.<\/p>\n

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\nFeeding frenzy.<\/p>\n

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\nI 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.<\/p>\n

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\nI guess this one was too low. Got taken out by the waves, probably during a storm.<\/p>\n

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\nThen we come upon this island with hundreds of birds over it. Only this one island has all the birds.<\/p>\n

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\nI would not enjoy having all these birds here at all times. Just bird poop everywhere.<\/p>\n

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\nAs 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.<\/p>\n

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\nRL points.<\/p>\n

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\nJust hundreds if not thousands of them here.<\/p>\n

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\nAnd 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\u2026but maybe they already knew the birds were here when they built the resort here. I\u2019d just be afraid of walking outside and getting pooped on nonstop.<\/p>\n

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\nCheck out my awesome hat.<\/p>\n

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\nLook at that amazing blue turquoise water.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Cartagena Day 4 Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Cartagena Day 3 Part 2. Early morning breakfast at 8am. Well, relatively early. It\u2019s 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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53622,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-53994","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53994"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54495,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53994\/revisions\/54495"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}