Day 75

Odometer  32,010 – 32,052 —–  42  Miles (9352 Miles Total)

Cartagena, Colombia

The girls last night invited me to go see them at the beach today and I decided I would take them up on the offer since it’s so hot in the city here. I’m starting to realize that once I leave here it’s going to get cold very quickly in the rest of the countries I’m going to so time to take full advantage of the sun. I went downstairs to work on my blog while waiting for my breakfast to come out. While I was working on my laptop I heard this girl speaking Serbian on a phone call with her mom. When she hung up I said good morning in Serbian and I saw the look of terror on her face. She was thinking oh shit did I say something I wasn’t supposed to since I didn’t think anyone could understand me. haha

We chatted for a bit. Her friend popped up. They were from Montenegro but live in Amsterdam now. I was actually talking to them while working on the blog yesterday and of course the topic came up quickly between the both of them and other people about Americans. It never ends. I loaded up the bike and headed down to the beach while stopping for a bunch of water because the girls didn’t have any down there and everything was too expensive. The ride was 56 minutes but I got there in 35 with the stops. I parked on the dirt road before the parking lot hoping I wouldn’t get a ticket or my bike stolen or something. The girls said it was a 35 minute walk to their hostel on the beach so they got moving. As soon as I got to the water to start walking their direction I couldn’t believe this water. It was some of the nicest water I have ever seen in my life. I was not expecting this. I was so happy!

I made the walk down to them pretty quick and met up with them at this hostel. I dropped my stuff off in their room while they ate breakfast and we went for a long swim since it was so hot. The water was so clean and blue I wish you all could see it. Once we got done swimming we decided to go for a long walk to the other side of the beach. We stopped for some food and Josefine started bargaining for prices. My god is she freaking good at it! We got a red snapper for nearly the same price as Danielle got us in Santa Marta on the beach. The food came out in about 5 minutes and we stuffed our faces. Saskia is a fancy eater and hasn’t ever used her hands before to eat food. I told her to drop the shit and use her fingers. I taught her how to eat a fish the right way since she was a bit slow at it! Sorry Saskia! haha

We devoured every piece of the fish we each had and then went for a swim to clean our faces off. We went for a long walk to the end of the beach where there were a bunch of boats parked. We swam in the water for a while. The girls got up on my shoulders and stood up and jumped off. They were having so much fun. Josefine just broke up with her boyfriend of 4.5 years two nights ago and the last two months of her trip have been some lows from what Saskia told me. It was nice to see her forgetting about all of that and just having a blast. Saskia said she hasn’t seen her smile and laugh like this in a while.

We got some ice cream on the walk back. I got two cones of course and the girls love how I get double dessert everywhere we go. We finished the walk back to the hostel and got to lay down. Josefine came out for a swim with me and we were trying to balance on rocks in the waves. She said she needed more core strength so I took her to the beach after 30 minutes in the water and gave her some ab exercises to do. She loved it and hated me for it. Saskia was just lounging around reading her book the whole time. They started bargaining with a guy that would take them on a plankton tour later on in the night time. Jesus christ these girls have no shame in bargaining it’s the funniest thing ever to watch.

We went out for some more food while we watched the sunset on the beach and took some pictures. We chatted for a while over dinner and then before it got dark we parted ways. I’m going to miss these Dutch girls! We might be able to meet up in Ecuador in a month if the timing works out though so that would be nice. I made the trek back to my bike and had to deal with a ton of traffic of 4 million people leaving the beach. It was an eerie ride home since there was nothing between the beach and the city for the most part. I got home safe and jumped in the shower. I ran downstairs to work on the blog a bit before I was going to get some street food and before I knew it I made friends with two people.

Alina is from Canada but lives in Chicago now so we took a ride into the city center to get some street food which she was skeptical about. Once she saw the line for the place that had Arepas she was convinced it was good. We chilled out on the sidewalk for about 30 minutes waiting for the food to be done. Of course like everyone else we chatted about all kinds of things. We got our food which she ended up loving and went to get some ice cream. We took a long walk to the other side of town to the new city center which was surrounded by a huge stone wall which we got on top of and walked around for a bit. It was getting late so we decided to head back. Maybe 5 blocks from the old center where everyone hangs out I noticed a man with a really really nice clean ironed white shirt. He was dressed really nicely.

Something felt weird about the way he was walking. He was walking ahead of us but pretty close to my side and it was sort of aggressive in a way but not really. I kept an eye on him for about a block. Another block later he was doing the same thing but walking sort of sporadically one second in front of me the next behind me. I put my hands in my pockets to protect my phone, keys and wallet. I didn’t say anything to her as we just kept walking. He did this for about 5 more blocks. At one intersection I acted like we were going to turn and he did as well. Ok this is getting a bit weird now. We kept walking minding our own business. As we came to the center where we just saw a Michael Jackson performance while eating ice cream 1 hour ago I noticed he was there doing another one. There was a huge crowd around him so we were walking with a bunch of people surrounding us which were other tourists. We all turned left to go around the center and the white shirt guy was in front of us looking back at us. I grabbed her and stopped to turn right to try to get in the crowd to watch this guy do his performance. As I did that he stopped and started pushing through the tourists we just turned around from and started following us. I said to her there’s a guy following us for the last 5 blocks and this is the third time he’s changing directions to stay with us. I pushed her through the crowd and we walked to the left and I told her to sit down in an open area in front of the crowd. We sat down and I explained to her what just happened and I looked back near the opening we just snuck through. I see white shirt guy with his arm around a guy wearing a blue shirt and he starts to whisper in his ear and he’s pointing at us. I stand up and make eye contact with them and stare them in the eye to let them know I see them. I stare at them for about 10-15 seconds and they’re staring right back. Well fuck

Blue shirt guy starts walking over to us and gets behind us. I grab her and lift her up and we walk right in the middle of the performance and out the other side. I tell her to go to a bar across the street and we will go inside if they come over to us. We waited out front for about a minute while I was scanning the crowd for them but I lost them. Two people walked up that she knew from another hostel and she explained to them what just happened. I gave her my phone keys and wallet and I walked back into the performance to go look for them. I really wanted to see what they were going to do since I didn’t have to worry about the shit in my pockets falling out if something happened.

I walked back into the crowd looking for them but nothing. They were gone. I went back over to her friends and her and we decided to go for a walk. We walked a block over and ended up hanging out there till 1Am just chatting about so many things. They gave me a lot of places to visit in Colombia which I was happy about. I got pretty tired and they walked us back to my bike where we rode back to the hostel. I parked my bike inside and said goodnight! I haven’t had an adrenaline rush like that in a while. Those guys really had me jacked up. I wonder if I will see them tomorrow night since I’m pretty easy to spot here. We will see what happens.