Finally she returned with two others in tow and rushed us through the terminal. Again questions were asked of me and I had no idea what was going on. The two new comers were hurried off to a set of stairs and told to basically leg it. We were taken to the tax office briefly but hurried off again when the line appeared too long (let’s hope there was no departure tax) We reached customs and the other two were hurried through the express lane while the rep spotted some other hostesses and asked if they spoke English, demoralising me with her tone. They wanted to know where I was going after Ecuador and where my tickets were. I tried to explain I was leaving by bus and hadn’t booked anything. After a few worried glances were exchanged, they decided it was all a becoming a bit too difficult and herded me off to the express customs lane, wishing me luck. I spotted my fellow travellers at the customs desk next to me, but they certainly weren’t waiting around. I waited nervously while customs disinterestedly stamped my passport, then ran to find where my plane was leaving from. Storm in a teacup.

I woke up shivering and it felt like someone had taken a metal baseball bat and smacked me across the chest, back, neck and wrist. It hurt to roll over and I could barely get out of bed. After I had a shower my back spasmed and I had to stand still in the same position for about five minutes before I could move again.

Rather than ride it out, I decided I should try and see a doctor. I managed to get a hold of Peter and he organised for Lucia’s brother Raul (who lived in Cartagena) to come and pick me up. I’d just been after the name of an English speaking doctor, but hey, a lift to the hospital was welcome too!

Raul and his wife came and picked me up and took me to the hospital but couldn’t get me an appointment until the afternoon. In the meantime Raul gave me a brief touron the way to his house,  of all the suburbs of Cartagena that I hadn’t made it to. We drove past the castle, Castille San Felipe, the church over looking Cartagena, La Popa, and the big harbour where all the transport ships came in, including a massive French warship Jeanne de Arc.

I whiled away the afternoon at Raul’s, trying not to move much, scoring an awesome home-made soup in the process that his wife had made for lunch.

The doctor’s waiting room was extremely crowded, and there seemed to be some kind of jostling for position, while I sat there wincing. The doctor was a friend of theirs, and spoke pretty good English, so I was able to explain the problem reasonably well. I had originally had ideas of Malaria swirling through my head, but we hadn’t seemed to have visited the high risk areas. After showing the doctor the painkillers I’d gotten from the chemist, he dutifully prescribed some triple the strength and then, almost as an afterthought, began ruffling through his drawers, before pulling out a big needle. Having no idea what he was giving me, I lay down while he stabbed me in the hip with it and promised me it would fix the back ache. Fair enough.

After downing some painkillers, I thanked Raul and his wife profusely for their help and was dropped back at the hostel, feeling a little guilty for taking up so much of their day. The pain as eased and there was quite a bit of action happening at the hostel, with about 20 or so people sitting around drinking. On doctor’s orders I stayed away from alcohol, but joined in with the general conversation. There was a random assortment of people, and a couple of the guys were the type you just hate to meet while travelling. Loud, obnoxious, hero-complex type guys, they’d bought a bottle of Aguardiente and were pretty much forcing it down everyone’s throat (but feel free to give some money for the privilege). Determined to be party leaders, they dragged about half the group out to go to Café Del Mar (really what’s the obsession with this place?) After stumbling through the city in the most random route, they decided to stop in at Plaza Santo Domingo to meet some others. By this stage a few pommies and an Irish girl I’d been talking to were getting a bit fed up so we bailed on the heroes and headed for Café del Mar.

With the wind blowing a gale up on the city wall, and ridiculous prices for drinks, we all decided to hit up the street vendors again, and head for another part of town, via the hostel.  I made a strategic exit and headed to bed, only to be woken up by Liz and Jess at about four am and again at six as they packed to leave. I realised that some people just have no idea sometimes, as they stumbled around for about ten minutes talking at the top of their voices, and doing the same again when they woke up to pack and leave. The funny thing was that the previous night they’d actually asked someone about dorm etiquette, and unfortunately been told by someone just as bad, that there is none.

Feeling rejuvenated, I went in for a swim and nearly broke a toe on the hidden reef in front of us.

Drifting to a sandy area further down the beach, the water was a beautiful temperature

and things were looking up. Grabbing a coconut from a passing vendor I settled back into my beach chair with a book and looked forward to a relaxing afternoon.

My plans were rapidly scuttled with the rude interruption of our ships fog horn calling everyone back to the boat. Far from the promised 3 hours on Playa Blanca (the speedboats give you barely any time there said the hostel), we were being hurried off after just over an hour.
The back ache returned on the lurching journey back to Cartagena, and I miserably tried to sleep through the trip along with everyone else. Having left at 8am and not getting back until 6pm, with only a measly hour at Playa Blanca, it definitely was a trip we could have done without. In future, speedboats all the way!

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.