Cartagena, Colombia

Below you will find the itinerary for my trip to Cartagena along with a gallery of photos:

Airline: We flew Copa Airlines for about $560 and booked 5 months in advance. DO NOT UPGRADE the flights. Book economy. The plane interior is older than me. Meals and unlimited drinks, beer, and spirits are included in economy.

Hotel: We stayed at Casa La Cartujita. It's a luxury boutique hotel located in the walled city. It's beautiful. The 24 hour staff was the best. The location is awesome. We did not take any taxis. We walked everywhere.

Activities:

- First things first, a walking tour of the city. I found a tour on Airbnb Experiences. There are several on there with reviews. Get to know the city before you explore on your own. This is how we heard about the graffiti area that we went back to later for our own impromptu photoshoot.

- Photography Walking Tour: I like to be in the moment on vacation. Some people like to take 80 million pictures to prove they were there or having fun (i.e. my daughter lol). I try to find a photographer on every trip now to get some decent shots so I can spend the rest of my trip relaxing. Again, there are several photo tours on Airbnb Experiences.

- Black History: Colombia is a part of the black diaspora so I definitely sought out some black history tours. Unfortunately, the day our tour was scheduled, a protest was planned. We had no room in our plans to move the date so this activity was cancelled. To book their tour, please visit http://experiencerealcartagena.com/

- Chocolate Museum: This is what we did on protest day. Many businesses were not open so we were lucky we found something to do. Here we learned all about how chocolate is grown, harvested, and made into many different things. We also made our own chocolates.

- Beach Day - Playa Blanca is beautiful. The merchants constantly asking you to buy things and my daughter's beat up Nike flip flops being stolen was not beautiful. The food we had at the beach club was phenomenal. Actually, most of the food in Colombia was great. And that's coming from a picky eater. Drinks here were watered down (like everywhere else we went).

- Totum Mud Volcano - Do this on your last day because mud will be in all your crevices. It's a weird experience but it was fun. DO NOT pay more than $50 per person for this. We paid about $35 on Airbnb Experiences.