mahdnc

We ended up not doing this partly because the weather didn’t look that great and partly because we had a great view from our aft balcony.

I had a small incident of my own at the pier on the way back to board Summit.... While I was walking past the yellow bollard in the above photo, a quick gust of wind blew my Xpedition baseball hat off my head before I could grab it. The hat went airborne and landed in the water in the harbor. My brown hat is visible in the photo below at the lower right hand corner. I received the baseball hat from a fellow passenger during our Xpedition sailing this past November--in appreciation for making their name tags. Looking at it in the water, I figured the hat to be pretty much a loss, but my wife would not give up so easily. She flagged down one of Summit's maintenance workers who was standing on the pier using a very long pole to paint/coat the ship's blue hull. Ten minutes later this employee used the long pole to successfully fish my wayward hat out of the water. I was very grateful. I am happy to report that my Xpedition hat is drying out in our cabin.

I forgot to mention that during Dora's tour, one of the passengers in our tour group (but not on the roll call, I think), slipped and fell. She seemed to have hurt her forearm. This occurred about 2/3 of the way through the tour. They elected to quit the tour to go to a hospital to have an MRI done. Dora accepted their cash payment but returned a portion of it back to them. She also got them a taxi and negotiated the price to their selected destination so they didn't have to.

It is pretty well known that there is an aviary located at the pier which seemed popular with passengers on this cruise:

And some other photos of places we visited:

We also visited the San Diego area of Cartagena

We did see from the outside, Castle San Felipe de Barajas, but we did not have time to tour the fort itself. Just as well, as there was some decent elevation gain to get to it. Why do builders make it so difficult to get to a fort?

Some more photos taken at the Convent (it's possible that there may be a stray photograph that doesn't belong):

The convent is located at the highest point in Cartagena and so the views of the city were impressive. The visibility was pretty good, too, despite the humidity. The panorama photo below looks nicer on a full screen, but it's a little small when posted on this forum. Tap/click on the photo to allow you to enlarge it. Summit is located at the extreme left in the photo.

Our first stop was Convento de la Popa which is located at the top of a hill overlooking the city. The bus takes a few switchbacks to get there with views of the city along the way. When we got off the bus, we were surrounded by a welcoming committee of people selling souvenirs (dressed in yellow in the next photo below). There quite a few of them during the whole tour. They were polite but persistent.

Our first stop was Convento de la Popa which is located at the top of a hill overlooking the city. The bus takes a few switchbacks to get there with views of the city along the way. When we got off the bus, we were surrounded by a welcoming committee of people selling souvenirs (dressed in yellow in the next photo below). There quite a few of them during the whole tour. They were polite but persistent.

Here is how our day went at Cartagena with the Cruise Critic popular guide, Dora De Explorer. This was something that @julieawill suggested on our roll call. Dora ran 3 buses with 3 guides including herself. Our roll call was in Dora Group 2. There were a total of 12 passengers in our bus although not all of them necessarily from our roll call. Summit arrived at Cartagena on time (8:00 am). We agreed to meet at Cafe Al Bacio at 8:10 am so that we could walk off the ship together. The ship was cleared at approximately 8:25 am and some of us took the elevator to get from Deck 5 down to Deck 2 while others took the stairs. So in the end, we did not get off together at the same time, but it worked out as we all re-grouped right at the pier immediately at the gangway. We were instructed to skip the shuttle buses (which would go past our meeting point) and walk to the end of the pier where Dora and her guides found us. The tour lasted about 4.5 hours as we got back to the ship around 1:30 pm (ship left port at 4:00 pm). Although the day was mostly overcast, the humidity slowly took the energy out of me and I was very ready to get back to the ship when the tour was finished. The cost of the tour was $80 USD per person and it was payable with cash when the tour finished and you got off the tour bus at the pier. The tour guide for our group was Josette who spoke English well and threw in a joke or two. All 3 groups were transported in their own air conditioned mini-bus which appeared to be the same. Our bus had 4 rows with 2 seats on either side of the center aisle. This doesn't count the very front row where Josette sat along with another young female employee who kind of acted like a shepherd to make sure the group stayed together. There was also a large single row of seats at the very back of the bus that sat 5 people. I believe that Dora limits the group size to 16--so the seating was ample and no one gets stuck in the dreaded middle seat. The bus was in good condition, rode very smoothly, and the air conditioner worked well (by the end of the tour the AC was becoming the highlight of the trip).

Full moon tonight. And supposedly a Full Moon Party to go with it.

Fourth and final course, Chocolate Cremeux: