4 full days in Colombia… WOW! This place is pretty interesting. On our first night of exploring the walled city of Cartagena, we made friends with an Israeli who lives in NYC. As any other encounter during my travels, we met out of necessity. He was sitting with his family trying to order french fries only to realize that they only provide fries as a side with the salad… After watching his frustrating attempt to overcome the language barrier, Marc, the cunning linguist that he is, jumped in and was able to get him the fries without salad… Showing gratitude he introduced us to his family, who also spoke Russian.. Just as Marc and I were sitting there enjoying a beer, trying to figure out how and what we were going to do in Cartagena.. he shared with us that he has been coming here for the last 5 years staying a month at a time each time.. He gave us all of the must do’s and don’ts of Cartagena, the beaches, clubs, bars, places to eat.. it was as if the universe saw our need and filled it.
This phenomenon doesn’t surprise me anymore… It used to freak me out that when I would think of a person I haven’t talked to in a while..without fail, they would contact me within 24-48 hours.. sometimes for no reason other than to say HI!… same goes for parking spots, table reservations, It happened with our hotel room as well… All of the places the we “wanted” to book were not available so we settled on this cheap etc.. not too long ago someone labeled this for me… apparently what I unknowingly was doing was manifesting things, or as some would say a self fulfilling prophecy… But I digress…
We exchanged numbers with our new friend and took him up on his recommendations for dinner and place to go out on a random Tuesday night… It was probably one of the most fun and exciting nights I’ve had in a long time… The music, the people, the energy were all amazing…
The next day Marc and I, decided to be tourist and went to see some of the popular destinations, Hollywood Beach, Castillo (old fortress), La Popa Monastery, which to our surprise were pretty cool, we took some pretty amazing pictures from some pretty sweet vantage points.
The next evening we met up with our new found friend and his cousin who lives in Cartagena… The four of us grabbed some coffee and went to some “local” clubs.. driving about 30-45 minutes outside of the city limits felt a bit intimidating.. as our friend (former IDF soldier) described the neighborhoods as a kin to Gaza city, it didn’t give us any comfort.. but regardless, thats what adventures are for… after passing through several random police checkpoints we arrived at a local night club filled with amazing, and exotic looking people.. after arguing with the cab driver over the equivalent of $2… we went into the club..it was another great night, that we didn’t plan or anticipate…
As we progress in our trip we don’t Preallyhave any plans… just taking each day one at a time. I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes things life just happen not because we want them to…. but we need them to.
“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.”