Cruise Ship Diaries Part 9

With a rich history of colonalism and actual pirates of the Carribean, Cartagena, Colombia was something of a mixed bag when we visited on the Coral. In England at least at the time Colombia was famous for being a dangerous drug capitial and for being the country where a natinonal football player was shot dead after scoring an own goal in the world cup!

Cartaegnas most famous landmark is its colonial walled city and fortress which were given UNIESCO heiritage status in 1984, I took many a sweaty walk down the streets past the old fort buildings while the guests looked like they would pass out any moment! Yes, Cartegna was one of the single hottest places I'd ever been.

Also because of Colombia's colorful history in 1990 the US state department warned against travelling because of the violence and rampant kidnapping at the time. But since 2002 with the election of president Alvaro Uribe Colombia had began to shed its negative image and toursim was beginning to boom again and when we arrived in October 2007 on the Coral, we were the first cruise ship to visit Cartagena in 8 years so naturally they made a big deal out of it.

However it was still the first port I had visited that had a sense of danger to it, the first time I'd seen gun toting security at the cruise terminal and I would also learn that all out tour buses had unmarked police escorts as well. On my first shoot the tour guide said proudly in the bus 'and if you take a look to your right you can see beautiful Colombia',,,this is what I saw...

Yep! Nothing says welcome to our beautiful country like a potentially dead animal in the street, thankfully Cartagena had more to offer than sleeping dogs and machine gun wielding security!

At lot of money had been speny on getting tourists back to Cartagena and the most popular tour was a walking tour of the city, that took in the colonial forts and parts of the walled city, interesting enough for sure but walking with all the camera kit (and usually a hangover) in one of the hottest places I'd ever been at that point did not make for an enjoyable experience each cruise. As this was the most popular excursion it meant myself or the senior would be out filming the same thing every cruise.

Luckily there were a few over options, if you are in the Caribbean then the very least you can do is go on a fully working wooden Spanish style galleon as you can see in the video below

It always makes me laugh that when I lived onboard a boat for 6 months at a time, many days especially in the Carribean you would step on dry land for maybe ten minutes before getting on another boat! The galleon tour was awesome as it actually felt like you were at sea in the olden days, every creak of the wooden boat and pitching up and down really enhanced the experience, plus the sea breeze was infintely more preferable to the oppressive heat of the city walking tour.

Entertainment was provided onboard with what I assume was a traditional band playing and local folkloric dancers who would get the passengers up to dance and also my roomate Liam (making an appearnce at 0.51 in the above video, Liam your welcome!)

But without a doubt the single most entertaining tour was the mud volcano a short drive away from the port near Santa Catalina although it sounds better in its native Spanish 'Volcan de Lodo El Totumo'. Taking into account health and safety restrictions today, this place was rickety even by 2007 standards!

People would walk up the rickety wooden steps and lower themselves down a ladder into the mud where they would not be sink but also not be able to touch the bottom which meant hilarity ensued if someone pushed there friend as the only thing that would stop you moving would be crashing into someone else!

I'd have to run up to the top of the steps first so I coild squeeze in with the camera and get that shot of everyone coming to the top of the ladder and looking down with horror at what they had got themselves into. Unfortunately because I had to wear a white polo shirt and was pointing a camera at them I would get mud pelted at me by the guests every single time!

Then I'd have to be the first person down waiting with the camera to get everyone stagger past covered head to toe in mud or as I would yell at them as they stumbled towards me 'C'mon give me mud monster arghhh!!!'

My directorial chops were pretty good and once you get one person posing and reacting to the camera almost everyone else does it as well. Probably the most unexpected thing happens next is that now your covered head to toe in quicky drying mud how the hell do you get clean before heading back to the ship? Well there's some local old women and a river instead of showers, where they will get very intimate with you very quiclkly and wash you down in the river. In 2007 i thought that having a bunch of strangers rubbing you all over might potentially be litgious (especially with the Americans!) but I can only imagine what the reaction to this would be today.

'Checks Trip Adivsor'...yes they are still doing it today and people still generally think its a little weird! I'm actually gutted I never got to get in the mud and film as these days I could have gone in with a Go Pro and cleaned it later but back then there was no way (or time) for me to do both, also there was nowhere I could trust leaving the camera where it was not in my direct line of sight.

Although the city walking tour was very popular, the mud volcano followed close behind and it was always a people stopper in the photo gallery when people saw the footage the next day. I remeber getting a light bollocking from my senior on one cruise when we had some US colleges volley ball team on the excursion with me and the video was all stunningly tall women in bikinis throwing mud at each (and me). 'Neil.. why is the video all girls in biknis?' I was asked, 'We'll thats who was on the tour with me, the volley ball team and two older couples' and I made sure to get a wide shot of everyone waving at the camera for my defence.

All I will say is that cruise we did really good numbers on the DVD and I caught more than one older passenger watching that video and deciding to buy it on the popularity of that one particular segment!

Next time on the cruise diaries - 4.30am starts, helicopter shoots with no doors and walking across the Panama Canal!