Last night marked the end of our time rotating like something slowly cooking at a Hawaiian luau. Between the Cartagena heat and a mattress that turned sleep into an Olympic sport, we’re officially done. But morning has a way of resetting everything, and today felt like the beginning of the next part of the journey.
We got out of bed as soon as we saw her from our room window. Our ship had arrived, and suddenly the morning had purpose. Packing, done. Morning routine, done. Uber scheduled, and we were off to find a new place for breakfast before the next part of the journey began.There are people jams, but not traffic jams this morning. The roads are quieter, which makes me think everyone must be at church asking for forgiveness after acting like fools all Saturday night and keeping me awake. We found our little breakfast café and went inside. Like Florida, there are many restaurants here in Cartagena that only serve breakfast and lunch — although here they call it brunch no matter what time you go. The place held about twenty to thirty people inside and maybe another fifteen or twenty on the outside patio. Chris isn’t big on sitting outside because of the street noise, so we found a table inside and settled in.
Our waitress spoke English very well, or so I thought, and she was very pleasant. I ordered my usual Coke Zero and Chris ordered coffee. One thing I’ve learned while being here — no one knows what Coke Zero is. You have to ask for Coca-Cola Zero. You would think they were the same thing, but by day three I learned to call it by its proper name.
Breakfast offered a wide variety of both sweet and savory dishes, and honestly everything looked good. Chris ordered pancakes with bananas and Oreos, and I went with the chicken club, no egg. That’s where the “our waitress spoke English very well, or so I thought” part came in. I can’t have eggs because of an allergy, and when my sandwich arrived, it had egg on it and no bacon. When they fixed it, it still had no bacon.
The pancakes looked delicious, but my sandwich — such a simple sandwich — was absolutely fabulous. Lightly toasted bread, grilled chicken, mozzarella cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayonnaise, stacked three layers high cut in half. I managed about one and a half halves and a few fries before admitting defeat. So good. Another thing I’ve noticed here — they don’t really use syrup. It’s always honey. We paid the bill, caught an Uber, and headed back to the room for last-minute cleanup. It was only 9:15, and we couldn’t get on the ship until 11:30. Ugh!
While waiting for our embarkation time, I found myself reflecting on the last six nights and five days. Like any place, there were disappointments. The traffic and lack of organization, meaning no stop signs and limited street lights, made getting around difficult, whether we were in an Uber or walking. It often felt like the movement of the city never really stopped and it was very confused. We also saw a lot of homelessness, with people sleeping on the streets and trash piling up faster than cleanup crews could manage. Construction seemed to be everywhere, and between damaged sidewalks and narrow roads, getting from one place to another sometimes felt more challenging than it should have been.
But there were also so many good things about our time here. The cost of everything was incredible — 25,000 Colombian pesos is about seven dollars. We ate like royalty most days and rarely spent more than fifty US dollars on a meal. Twenty-minute Uber rides were usually only five or six dollars. The ocean views were beautiful, with water stretching for miles, and more than once we could see our ship, Royal Caribbean’s Serenade of the Seas, waiting in the distance.
More than anything, we loved the experience and the time together. For the most part, the people were genuinely kind. Just yesterday, a woman left her restaurant job — where she had been standing outside welcoming customers — and walked us half a block to make sure we found where we were going. Moments like that stay with you. All in all, five days in the area where we stayed felt like enough, but it’s also a place we would visit again. At 10:10 a.m., we still had less than an hour to go before embarkation. We are impatiently waiting, once again.
One hour later, we were loading our suitcases into an Uber and heading to the ship. To be clear, this experience was going to be different from other cruises and ports we’ve visited. We had to show boarding passes just to enter the lot. After unloading our luggage, we were directed to a check-in station under a tarp where boarding passes, IDs, and luggage were checked again. Fresh luggage tags were added, and we were sent up a ramp to drop the bags for inspection. They will make sure it gets to our cabin. Around the corner was immigration, where passports and boarding passes were checked again and photos were taken. By the end of it, we had shown our documents three separate times.
As we moved farther along, we realized the waiting area was actually part of an animal sanctuary. Most of what we saw were birds but there was also a turtle farm, an anteater, ducks with babies, monkeys, flamingos, macaws, parrots, peacocks, and many others I couldn’t even name. Since we couldn’t board until our assigned time, we spent over an hour listening to the loud, screeching parrots and holding a few of the friendlier ones. Chris and I waited in line to hold two white parrots, and once they climbed onto us, we were suddenly the only ones in the area — one chewing on my hair while the other tried to take pieces out of Chris’s backpack. We took a lot of pictures, and it’s one of those unexpected moments we’ll remember for a long time.
We eventually wandered into the gift shop, mostly to escape the Colombian heat. I was just looking, but Chris spotted coffee mugs similar to the ones we had bought a few days earlier — only these were round, bigger, and made by local artisans. Of course, we bought two. I wanted more, but they didn’t have a website, and we still had to figure out how we were going to get everything home safely and our, already over the weight limit luggage, doesn't cost more than the cups.
Out the back door was an unexpected gift — drinks, shade, and a place to wait until boarding finally began. At 12:20 p.m., we lined up and once again showed passports and boarding passes several more times before boarding a shuttle to the ship. This had been a great land experience, but finally, this was what we had been waiting for.
Chris and I have developed a routine since we started cruising. First, we find the muster station. Then we check out the Windjammer buffet, locate the main dining room so we know where we’ll sit each night, stop by the Crown Lounge for drinks or snacks thanks to our loyalty status, and find the gym so I can weigh in on the days I feel brave enough. After that, we wander through a few of our favorite quiet lounges where we know we’ll eventually end up during the trip. Around 1:30, we grabbed a light lunch at the buffet before heading to our room.
Chris found this itinerary almost a year and a half ago. Booking that early often means better pricing on balconies and suites, and this time he reserved a Junior Suite. It doesn’t come with all the perks of the larger suites, but I actually prefer it — the walk-in closet, the extra space you don’t quite know what to do with, and a larger bathroom make a big difference. In smaller rooms, the bathrooms often feel like closets.
We waited for our luggage to arrive while enjoying the balcony, then decided to grab a drink and revisit a few of the spots we knew we’d spend time in later. Our luggage arrived around five, and after showers and getting ready, we headed to our 6:15 dinner. Our table sits by a window, and the food was good as always.
We had plans for the evening — an after-dinner show at eight, a movie I wanted to see at nine while Chris headed to the casino. By 11:30, we were both crawling into a soft, warm, and very comfortable bed.
After six nights of rotating like something cooking in the heat, I couldn’t have asked for a better ending to the day.
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