We would be heading off for a full day’s excursion while in Cartagena but this first post from the cruise ship’s visit to this city will focus on photos of some of the skyline as Ruby Princess came into dock. It’s fairly unusual for us to see a sail-in to any port as we tend to be late night drinkers and occasional dancers, and the ships often are alongside quite early in the mornings. However, on this occasion, because the ship was arriving at a more reasonable hour and we had an excursion booked that we needed to meet in a lounge for, we were up early enough to grab breakfast and step out onto the top deck for a look around at this Colombian port first.

The area with the impressive skyscrapers as you approach Cartagena is called Bocagrande. We would get to admire the views of it as the sun set later in the day too.

We popped back to our room to pick up the essentials for the day: Factor 50 sun lotion and plenty of water because although it was quite cloudy in the morning you could feel the high heat and humidity already and knew without looking at the forecast that the clouds would likely get burned off by the sun in fairly short order. We could see the queue of tour buses all ready to escort us ashore from our balcony.

We headed down to the Explorers Lounge at the time we were due to meet for our excursion. There’s never any point arriving early for a Princess Cruises tour unless you’re a huge fan of sitting in packed, cramped spaces for far longer than ever seems necessary whilst fellow passengers who should know better try to persuade everyone around them that no, they’ve never heard of this “queueing” thing before and that really, since they’re paying then they should be allowed to disregard any instructions that might mean they don’t to get onto the bus first and the prime chairs right at the front where they can hold everyone up as they remember they’re carrying a ton of clothing and bags they absolutely must put above their seats before anyone else boards.

The disembarkation process was running a little behind schedule so we were forced to wait for a while. To entertain everyone during this pause I proceeded to the stage and presented my talk on the eventual heat death of the universe and why nothing anyone does really matters.

Of course that didn’t happen. Are you mental?

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll head ashore in Cartagena and start with a visit to the seventeenth century fortress of Castillo San Felipe de Barajas.

“We’ll probably be very glad later that we’re doing this at the start of the day,” I told my wife while looking up at the long sloping paths and the people already walking up them to get to the top of the castle.

“It won’t feel like it at the time, though,” she replied. We would both turn out to be right.

While we were waiting for our guide to return to our group and trying not to think about the rivulets of sweat already starting to run down various parts of the body we also had to engage in numerous head shakes, hand waves, and abuses of Spanish pronunciation with our frequent “No, gracias” replies as purveyors of general tat descended upon us obvious tourists from all angles. There did at least seem to be some official vendor t-shirt that they all wore which lent the operations more of a sense that you weren’t going to get completely ripped off if you bought anything, and it also made it slightly easier to spot them approach from out of the corners of your eyes so you could veer away, or attempt to.

Our guide returned with tickets in hand and ushered us all through to start heading up the zig-zag slopes outside the walls of Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. It wasn’t a fast walk, thankfully, and it had a few stops along the way for the guide to point out distant sights of Cartagena or mention some of the history of this castle, but that didn’t stop it being incredibly uncomfortable for us. We really don’t cope with heat and humidity very well at all and we’re not natural hikers so quite why we often pick excursions that involve lots of walking upwards when we’re in hot climates must surely be evidence that all life is just a simulation and whoever’s configured us toggled the Brain Parasite setting to “on” just for a laugh.

Castillo San Felipe de Barajas stands over forty metres above sea level. The castle itself is triangular with its walls, parapets, and batteries designed to overlap and protect one another, making the taking of the fortress complex a difficult task to do without overwhelming force. The walls were noticeably wider at the base, tapering inwards as they reached the parapets, and this gave the defenders more range of fire down on any attacking force. The heavy slope on all the walls of this seventeenth century defensive structure was distinctly different from most of the other castles we’ve visited around the world.

The fortress fell to the French during the Nine Years War and attempts by the British to take it during the hilariously-named War of Jenkins’ Ear were repelled, but it has otherwise been a place either in local or Spanish hands for most of its history.

One interesting aspect of Castillo San Felipe de Barajas is its maze-like system of tunnels, some of which we were able to walk through and, of course, we did, but if we thought that this might give us some relief from the heat and humidity then we were mistaken as the fortress was a very popular location for many groups and individuals to visit on this day. It was crowded, it was noisy, it was dark, and the wind – which was admittedly only blowing warm air around – was suppressed completely. We couldn’t wait to get out and back into the unrelenting heat and humidity of the outside of the castle which tells you how unpleasant it was. You’ve still got to do it, though.

So, not a huge amount of history to report regarding Castillo San Felipe de Barajas but a very interesting design (built with slave labour from Africa, naturally) and despite our issues with comfort in the conditions it was a place we were very glad to visit. As we gathered to head down there was time to point out one other interesting defensive measure in the castle: gaps in the external walkways that were usually covered by boards that could be broken, removed, or burnt in the event of an attack to produce a deep drop that needed to be overcome. Nice.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll continue our excursion in Colombia with a visit to the historic centre and walled city of Cartagena. The colour yellow will feature heavily.

Our first stop was at Las Bóvedas. This attractive eighteenth century construction has been used as storage vaults, garrisons, and cells for prisoners, but these days it’s a popular destination for tourists looking for souvenirs and that’s why we were taken there.

We bought some gifts then had a little walk around the area away from the crowds of people while we waited for the time to head back to the bus to come around. As we started back we encountered two palenqueras. These are the women in bright, colourful dresses with fruit on their heads and if you want to take a photo of them then you will be expected to pay a dollar or two to each of them for the privilege.

The history of the palenqueras is an interesting one. During Spanish colonisation of this part of the world some slaves would sometimes escape and form defensive communities far from any oppressive rule while maintaining African traditions and language. These places were called palenques and over time, while the men were protecting their towns – such as Palenque de San Basilio, the first free town in the Americas – the women would engage in trade with nearby cities, including Cartagena.

We hopped back on the bus for a short drive that soon became snarled up in traffic. After a bit of a conversation between the driver and tour guide the decision was made to get off a little earlier than planned and walk to the next destination. It would be hot, of course, but the narrow roads and tall colonial buildings within Cartagena’s walled city offered lots of shady routes.

Door knockers on some of the buildings we passed were pointed out to us. The different types gave some indication as to who had lived there in the past; fish, for instance, would mean sailors or fish merchants had lived there, while the lion was indicative of a former military person’s residence.

We soon passed by the Convento de Santo Domingo, the oldest church in Cartagena, established in the sixteenth century to bring Catholicism to Colombia whether it wanted it or not.

Beside the church was a public square, the Plaza Santo Domingo, once a site for executions during the Inquisition but now home to a sculpture by celebrated Colombian artist, Fernando Botero. If you’ve not seen his art before then it’s well worth a look as he has a very distinctive style that always produces curvy figures and La Gorda Gertrudis is typical of this. Naturally, there are parts of the bronze artwork that are supposed to bring luck to you if you rub them, and naturally it’s not the knees.

Our walk through the fabulously colourful buildings with their various colonial styles shortly brought us to Museo Histórico de Cartagena de Indias, a museum largely focusing on torture and persecutions during Spanish rule. A very nice building with a couple of courtyard spaces and associated shade from the sun but the Inquisition torture equipment was perhaps not as interesting to us as to passengers from the USA, for example, as we had visited a few torture museums in Europe before with arguably far more information and better examples of pain devices.

We had one more brief stop before getting some free time to explore Cartagena, and that was to an emerald jewellery shop. We’re familiar with Colombian emeralds because my wife’s engagement ring has one in it, a fact we mentioned and demonstrated when asked if we wanted to buy one while we were there, and a fact that still didn’t put off the salesperson who tried to insist that every woman should have two at the very least. We did not buy a second one.

We had about half an hour to ourselves at this point so headed off on an aimless wander up and down the attractive roads largely arranged in a grid pattern. We passed by the house in which Sir Francis Drake briefly stayed after his attack on the port and destruction of so many buildings that precipitated the subsequent building of the walls of the city and I was happy to take lots of pictures of the bright, colourful architecture that heavily favoured the colour yellow.

We had a few street vendors approach us but a simple “No, gracias” seemed to work well enough in fending them off. However, there was one interesting moment when a young man, probably in his mid-twenties, came over.

“Are you American?” he asked.

“No, English.”

“Oh, England!” he replied and talked for a moment about football before suddenly asking “Hey, then, do you want some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” I replied.

“No,” he said, then looked around slyly and leaned in to slowly ask again. “Do you want some coffee?”

He was not asking if we wanted some coffee. We still didn’t want the not-coffee he was offering, though, and with a smile we parted company.

We had hoped towards the end of our free time that we’d be able to get into the Plaza de Bolívar as it was close to where we needed to meet up and looked nice and shady under the trees. There was a fountain and sculptures within to photograph too, but the entrance was blocked for repairs for something or the other. Fortunately, though, we got some respite from the heat because a street vendor selling beer and soft drinks from a wheeled fridge passed by at this point and we availed ourselves of two local lagers. Lagers aren’t our first choice when it comes to beers but sometimes when it’s baking hot – and it was baking hot in Cartagena – they’re absolutely perfect.

In the next post from this Ruby Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll conclude our day’s excursion in Cartagena with a short walk before a visit to a church, some traditional dancing, and a museum.

We started off with a short walk of no more than a hundred metres from where we’d all met up, heading more-or-less due south towards the Plaza de San Pedro Claver. Naturally, more of that gorgeous colonial architecture came into view and there were more signs of the huge downpours that had preceded our visit to Cartagena, which still hadn’t drained away in places, and which had been the cause of some of the traffic problems our bus had encountered earlier in the day.

The first place we visited was the Church of San Pedro Claver (sometimes called a cathedral, sometimes a sanctuary, but I’ll stick to church). The building itself was one that had been constructed prior to Sir Francis Drake (you can see his house in Cartagena in the previous post) turning up in 1586 and raining down destruction on the city where it suffered damage and needed to be rebuilt.

Its original name was supplanted by that of San Pedro Claver, a Jesuit priest who arrived in Cartagena in 1610 and concentrated heavily on tending to the newly-arrived African slaves with just a little bit of encouragement to ditch their beliefs and convert to Christianity thrown in for good measure. It’s claimed that he personally baptised over 300,000 slaves and worked hard to have them treated more humanely, but he also owned slaves and wasn’t above punishing them so, you know, not all good. He was, nevertheless, canonised in 1888 and is the patron saint of slaves.

We began with a visit to the church’s courtyard, a very pleasant, relatively cool spot given the general levels of heat and humidity in Cartagena.

Next we entered the church itself. It was a fairly minimalist building, not given over to gaudy decorations. If you look just below the altar in one of the photos below then you can see where the bones of San Pedro Claver are located.

With our short visit to the church complete we stepped back out into the plaza, admired the sculpture of San Pedro Claver by Colombian artist Enrique Grau, avoided the temptation of some fresh fruit or other items from some of the stallholders in the area, and headed off around the corner to the next couple of stops on this tour.

First up was a traditional dance and music performance featuring acrobatic dancing, some singing, and plenty of drumming. I won’t pretend that this sort of thing interests us because it generally doesn’t. None of that takes away from the dancers or musicians because they’re all very talented but it’s not the sort of thing that sits well with me in particular and it’s not easy to say why.

The traditional dancing and music only lasted about ten minutes and from there we headed through a small courtyard into the Naval Museum next door. There were some interesting items in there but it was a small museum and overall not a particularly good example of one. Indeed, when combined with the historical museum we’d visited earlier on our walk through the city I think I’d have to say that museums are an area of cultural awareness and tourism that perhaps need a little look into improving. We very much liked Cartagena, though.

And that brought our cruise excursion in Cartagena to an end. All that remained was a short walk to where the bus was waiting for us, a little bit of battling traffic that may or may not have still been affected by localised flooding, and a drive back to the port that was slow enough for me to consider taking a few photos from on the bus (not something I generally do).

The end of the excursion, yes, but not quite the end of activities in Cartagena. In the final post from this final port on our cruise we’ll arrive at the port and discover a park filled with tropical birds only viewable by cruise passengers, plus there’s a sunset sail away and another deck party to enjoy.

We stepped through the security checkpoint at the exterior of the port and found ourselves face-to-face (well, if we crouched) with a peacock. You could see everyone from our tour group immediately whipping out phones and cameras for this because generally speaking you don’t often find peacocks inside cruise port security zones.

The single peacock, though, was nothing compared to what we saw when we rounded the corner and found ourselves in what we later learned was called the Port Oasis Eco Park. I’ve described it as an aviary in the title of this post but it actually contains more than just birds; it’s simply that we didn’t see anything else during our short but very pleasant walk through the grounds. The park was part of the land given over to the port authority when they were tasked with building cruise ship infrastructure, using this buffer zone for security but also as a wildlife habitat. Falling within the security zone of the port it’s a place that’s therefore only accessible to cruise visitors to Cartagena. In addition to more-than-seventy different species of animals there, you will also find a gift shop, somewhere to eat, and toilets.

A lovely surprising end to our time in Colombia but it really was approaching all-aboard time about now so we didn’t dawdle long and headed through to where Ruby Princess was tied up.

Our usual routine when we get back on board a Princess Cruises ship, thanks to the Ocean Medallion system, is to head to our room then order some drinks and maybe snacks to be delivered so that we can cool off, freshen up, and take advantage of our balcony for some last views of wherever we happen to be or to see the sail away. This was no exception.

The sun, getting lower on the horizon, was both producing some lovely colour changes in the sky and bringing with it a drop in overall temperature, and you could see heavy clouds starting to form in the distance as that humidity in the atmosphere started to to condense. We had a feeling that Cartagena might be in for another night of rain and flooding such as that we’d been told had preceded our visit earlier in the day at the start of our tour.

The skyline of the Bocagrande area of Cartagena looked absolutely stunning in silhouette against the darkening sky. As Ruby Princess slowly made her way out and away from the final port of call on our cruise the quiet of the late evening was occasionally punctuated by small party boats heading out on sunset cruises, music thumping across the still water. We couldn’t complain: the ship’s daily activities had us down to do something similar a little later in the day.

But first, dinner, and a drink or several. The Ruby Princess main dining room menu and the food we selected for the evening are below for your perusal if that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.

The Ruby Princess equivalent of a sunset party boat cruise was an 80s Deck Party, quite some time after the sun had actually set. Not the first deck party we’d had on this cruise, and only really differentiated from the others by the selection of music performed by the house band and the neon outfits worn by the entertainments crew, but still enjoyable to get out, get some air, and think how much more preferable all of this was to being at home.

The next post in this Ruby Princess 2023 cruise travelogues series will be the penultimate one and the last spent aboard the ship herself as we relax for two sea days on the way to the departure point at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.