23rd March 2015 – Santa Marta to Cartagena – 2015-03-30 02:34

Today we have a short drive of only 237 kilometers from Santa Marta to Cartagena, so we have a later start of 9:00 am. We drive south down the coast with the Caribbean Sea on our right.We drive on a narrow isthmus with the Caribbean Sea very close and a settlement on the outskirts of town on our left. This area of Colombia is not as clean and affluent as it is down south and it has a Caribbean look and feel. There are lots of stalls on the side of the road selling fish and the people are all very friendly. The settlements disappear and we now have thick mangroves on our left. We drive through villages and towns and there are a lot of donkey carts all loaded up being driven through the traffic.There are lots of trucks and tankers in this part of Colombia too.There is a strong army and police presence in this area. Just after we go through a toll an army helicopter lands on the road behind us, causing our group to be divided in two. Goldie & us continue down the road, but the rest of the cars are stopped at the toll booth while the helicopter lands and takes off. We are waiting on the side of the road for a while & it gets a bit hot for John & Ros in Goldie, so they put their umbrella up for shade, which gets turned inside out with a big gust of wind.We stop in a little sea side village for lunch and a photo shot of the cars on the Caribbean as this marks the end of our South American leg of our journey. We drive into the old part of Cartagena through the old wall of the city to reach our hotel. We don?t have a separate carpark to park the cars in here, which is the first time on this trip that this has happened. So we leave them in the street outside the front of the hotel and we pay for security, which means we have the cars washed and someone will watch the cars all night, for US$15 per car. We arrive in time this afternoon to go for a stroll around this beautiful city before it gets dark.