Spoiler alert: the best part might have been when I got in the cab and said a few words to the driver. His reply was “Where are you from? Somewhere in Colombia?”. The key to maintaining the illusion of fluency is for me not to say too much, as there are limits to my vocabulary. A good example of this is that I was told by the owner of the airbnb that I could clean up the puddle of water on the floor by going outside my unit and using the trapeador hanging on the wall. Huh? Trapeador? It means “mop”.
I have conflicted feelings about being a tourist. Having nothing better to do I decided to go on a two hour Walking Tour of the historic Centro of Cartagena. I told myself that going on a tour given by a spanish speaking guide (they also have english speaking tours) would make it more palatable. Yes, and no.
There’s probably no way to avoid the feeling of being an outsider when you visit another country. It’s something I’ve never been comfortable with, and being part of an organized group makes it clear which “side” I’m on.
The tour itself was well organized, with the guide giving us a lot of details along the way. After about a half an hour, my interest started to fade, which was probably connected to the fact that he was speaking in spanish in the often noisy street.
In addition to Getsemaní (video at the top of the post), we stopped in the Parque del Centenario where there were several sloths in the trees. The whole spectacle just made me sad. The guide noticed this in a couple of the other tourists as well. It had a zoo-like quality.
After the tour ended I asked the guide, in my broken spanish, if he had any information on how I could buy a passage/ticket on a cargo ship going down the Dique Canal to the Magdalena River. As I mentioned in a previous post, this was something one of my language friends is interested in doing, and she asked me to find out whatever I could while I was here. Unfortunately the guide didn’t know anything about those tickets and so I’ll have to look elsewhere for more information.
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