About forty-five minutes from Cartagena is a “Volcano” with mud baths that you can swim in. I use the term Volcano loosely, as it is only a twenty metre hill that began as a mud spring at ground level and has gradually gotten bigger over the years, presumably from all the mud that visitors shed as they get out (this is purely a guess from seeing photos of the baths in earlier years).
Getting a mini bus from our hostel, we left early and headed out to the Volcano. Having heard good things from fellow travelers, I was looking forward to experiencing something out of the ordinary, and with all the minerals in the mud it was supposed to have healing and rejuvenating properties. We were not disappointed.
Arriving in rather desolate surroundings, we stripped down to our boardies with the rest of our group and began climbing the steep, mud splattered wooden stairs up to the mud bath.
Being the first up there, I climbed down the ladder, refused the assistance of the guy at the bottom and flopped into the mud, splattering it all over the crowd of people already in there. I struggled to move away from the ladder (hence the guy helping) and moved to a spot against the wall. The experience of moving through the mud is unlike anything I’d felt before and is hard to explain. For starters, it is incredibly buoyant and impossible to sink in, and if you lean back your hold body is suspended on the surface with ease. I’d expected it to be similar to when you walk through slippery mud, but except for a small layer at the very bottom, it is nothing like that. The mud is velvety smooth like melted chocolate, and slips through your fingers without being able to be moulded. The temperature was roughly body temperature, with a warmer layer at the top, and cooler down near your feet.
As the rest of the group slowly submerged themselves with expressions of amazement, the bath became uncomfortably crowded as there was already a group in there. It was hard to jostle for a spot, so Dan and I stayed over near the wall and helped push back away people that had uncontrollably floated too close. Another money spinner for the tour was the group of guys in the bath that would give mud massages to the tourists. Unfortunately it was only guys giving the massages, which didn’t interest me, particularly after watching them grope about on the females (they clearly enjoyed their jobs).
Grabbing some dried mud from the wall, I managed to fashion a mud face and pretended there was a mud man coming out of the bath, before leaving the face sitting on a plank of wood (hey I wasn’t the only one that found it amusing). Speaking of amusing though, I could not stop laughing when a massive bubble exploded out of the mud right next to an old guy from our bus who was looking extremely sheepish.
We were eventually given our marching orders as another group arrived, and climbed back up the ladder while one of the staff slapped as much mud off us as possible. We then descended the stairs and headed down to the lake to wash off. In another spate of immaturity I began picking up big handfuls of sand and dirt and flinging them at Dan on the walk down to the lake. He returned the favour by throwing a handful of campfire ash in my face. Game over.
Down at the lake were half a dozen or so ladies that would help wash the mud off (for a small fee of course), though we opted out and dove in. The ladies began to yell at us though when we strayed too far out and I soon realised why, as my feet began to sink into a layer of mud. Best to stay close to shore.
For lunch we were driven to a little sea-side town twenty minutes out of Cartagena for a bit of a body surf in the ocean and a locally cooked meal of fried fish and coconut rice.
Back in Cartagena for the afternoon, we took off down to the dirt soccer pitch outside the walls and had a kick around and a game of basketball. Even though the sun was almost down, the humidity was still off the chart, and we were drenched in sweat and dirt in no time. It was also clear that all the travel beers so far hadn’t exactly improved out fitness.
Christian, a guy from Seattle who had been at the hostel for the past few days invited us out for a drink and a meal with some of his Colombian friends that night. His travels in South America so far made us look like extreme novices, as he had been travelling for thirteen months, cycling from the bottom of Chile all the way up to Northern Colombia. He had slept in all kinds of places along the way, such as the floor of truck stops, camping out in the middle of nowhere, and the most bizarre – a Llama sacrifice pit.
Although he tried to keep the conversation flowing, his friends didn’t speak much English and after a big night previously, weren’t in the most social of moods. He was also catching a boat to Panama the next day and necessarily was saying goodbye to a Colombian girlfriend, so Dan and I decided to skip out after dinner and headed off for a few nightcaps on the balcony of the Hard Rock café, overlooking Plaza de la Aduana.
