Cartegena, Columbia (City Tour)
Ship: Swan Hellenic - SH Diana
Itinerary: 11-Night Puntarenas to Cartagena
This morning, SH Diana is docked in Cartegena, Columbia, our final port-of-call on this sailing. We will overnight here then disembark tomorrow morning. From my balcony, I can see the tour buses already lined up outside for excursion guests.
By 8:15am, guests begin disembarking the ship for their excursions. I booked the included “Cartegena City Tour” excursion.
There were about twenty people on our motor coach for this tour. Swan Hellenic does a good job of splitting the tours into smaller groups. For guests who want to explore on their own, Swan Hellenic has arranged for a complimentary shuttle to take them into town.
Our first stop was at San Felipe Castle, which we did not actually tour, but were able to photograph from the outside.
Locals were on hand for photo ops and a table with fresh fruit was on offer, all included in our excursion at no additional charge.
Even the local police officers got into the act, encouraging tourists to get their photos taken with them. There was a lot of police presence everywhere we went on this excursion.
Much of this excursion involves walking through quaint pedestrian streets of Cartegena with interesting architecture.
Local artists can be seen throughout the city creating their works of art and offering them for sale.
This excursion even included a stop at a local restaurant where we were treated to a local fruit drink and Arepas, a fried dough pocket filled with egg and ground meet.
Throughout the tour, the guide would stop at various points of interest to explain the history of a statue or Cartegena in general. Unfortunately, Swan Hellenic does not use QuietVox portable receivers, so if you are not close to the tour guide, you will trouble hearing the commentary.
Many streets in Cartegena’s tourist district are decorated with colorful flags or umbrellas to provide a little respite from the hot sunshine.
Local vendors can be seen throughout the city pushing their carts through the streets to drum up business.
We made one brief stop at a local emerald jewelry store. We were only there for about ten minutes. I am not sure how many tourists decide to purchase a $5,000 piece of jewelry in under ten minutes?
At the conclusion of the tour, the coach drops us Port Oasis Cartegena which is an animal sanctuary that you must walk through to get back to the ship. This is actually one of the highlights of visiting Cartegena, and it is completely free! In fact, you can simply walk (or take a shuttle) from the ship to this sanctuary.
Rather than stand in the hot sun and wait for the shuttle to take ma back to the ship, I decided to walk back. The ship is docked about 3/4 of the mile from the port entry so it was a fairly easy walk.
Once back on board, I was treated to a tour of the ship’s bridge by Captain Ukkonen. All guests on this cruise were offered an opportunity to tour the bridge.
