Bogotá & Cartagena

In December, my friends Debbie and Iacov were getting married in Cartagena, so Hannah and I decided to make a trip out of it and work remotely from Bogotá a few days ahead of the wedding. I’m sad I didn’t get a photo of the two of them.

In Bogotá we got to hike, see a few museums, eat good food, and meet up with old friends (Goldy and Jonny made great hosts). Cartagena was a whirlwind, but luckily we also got to explore a bit.

A roll of Lomochrome Metropolis, a Cinestill 400D, and also my digital camera made the trip a fun photo trek. You for sure can tell which shots below came from which medium.

On our way to the Airbnb, our driver mentioned there was an art fair in San Felipe. We were staying a few blocks over in Quinta Camacho and decided to walk there.

As usual, people were surprised that I asked to take their photos, but in general they were less shy than in other places I’ve visited.

We went up Monserrate, and got rained on on the way down. It was only 10,000 feet of elevation.

For some reason, this dude started speaking to me in German halfway through our conversation in Spanish.

The next morning, before work, we headed downtown to do a self-guided walking tour. We used Voicemap, and it reminded us of how sad it is that Detour is no longer around.

I stood here way too long to take this photo, and still missed the moment when the “L” went up.

This one was too weird to not share.

Visiting the Museo Nacional was a disappointing experience. The exhibits were set up in a very disorganized way, and the content seemed to be copy pasted from academic research. They had cool artifacts, but the incoherent passages and inaccessible language meant to impress people with their big words didn’t impress me.

The biking infrastructure was cool, particularly for a Latin American city, but I wasn’t as impressed as I expected to be after hearing about it for years.

My friend Alicia recommended that we go to Leo, and it was one of the best parts of the trip. Having such a good meal at this price was too good to pass up. I had no idea what half the things we were eating were, but they were extremely tasty.

The view from our apartment was insane.

And then, there was Cartagena. It was night and day compared to Bogotá.

The walled city is extremely touristy, to the point of being gaudy, but that doesn’t make it less beautiful.

The Inquisition Museum was not great, but it was good to get a bit of Colombian history. Unfortunately we were in a rush at the end and missed the bit about their fight for independence, which I assume I would have enjoyed.

The narrow streets with their funky architecture felt like a mix of New Orleans and the old Italian towns we visited a couple of years ago. I’ve never been to Spain, but I assume I’d compare it to that instead if I had the reference.

One day, as I walked out to grab coffee a fire hydrant had broken and flooded the street.

White, black, pink, green, red.

The light leak in my camera actually made this one more interesting. The accidents of film.

The contrast with modernity is fascinating.

This is life.

These guys were heckling the poor dude second from the left. Here they had just slapped him in the back of the head. One of my favorite shots of the trip, though.

To get to the actual wedding we took a boat. It broke down halfway through and we had to go back to shore to switch boats. It made the trip longer, but we had beers and cool views, so I had no complaints.

Garbis came on the boat with us.

Daniela y Andrés

We also made new friends.

The wedding venue was on an island, and we barely made it in time to get ready.

But we still had a bit of time to appreciate the ocean.

And that was Colombia.

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