Cartagena – There and Back again. A Journey by Bus.

For some strange reason, I had never been to Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Shameful I know. Even more shameful is that I had never set foot in the old walled city of Cartagena. I’m told that you have to visit Cartagena or you’ve never been to Colombia.
So as we have decided to leave Colombia and return to Europe. I felt I had to see this wondrous city at least once. I wish I’d done it 10 years ago. What had I been missing?
So on the spur of the moment, we decided to take a trip there. But how were we going to travel there? By plane. As we only decided to go about 72 hours before hand. It would have been very unlikely that any seats would have been available. But as Colombia is hideously expensive to travel in, especially by air. We shelved that idea. So the only alternative was by bus. 12 hours it was then.
Thankfully for this long journey the buses are pretty good. Air-con, not by Malaysian standards, where without thermal underwear and artic socks, you will get a touch of frostbite. That actually happened to me once in a cinema in KL.
We were told by the two bus companies that have the best buses between Medellin and Cartagena, that the journey time was 12 or 13 hours.
We took the early morning bus from Terminal del Norte. Amazingly busy at 6am. I’m sure I haven’t woken up before 7am since we arrived to Colombia back in May. It was difficult to say the least, and I slept the first 3 hours on the bus.
Now, on all buses I have travelled on in my many travels in the world. The buses always stop somewhere enroute for us weary passengers to grab a breath of fresh air, stretch our legs and grab a bite to eat.
Amazingly this driver only decided to stop once. At 9am in the freezing heights near Yarumal. A beautiful town, set upon the slopes of a mountain.
The pit stop we stopped at was a normal place where they sell overpriced bad food. Couldn’t face anything, except a bad empanada and a papa rellena. Why people sell shit food at truck stops amazes me. Especially when it’s so expensive.
This was our only stop of the day. The driver later reckoned he told us to eat all we could, as we weren’t stopping. He finally relented at 3pm, and gave us an extra 5 minutes somewhere in La Costa to buy a few treats.
The trip through the mountains, plains and finally the Caribbean coast of Colombia took us over 15 hours. I was climbing the walls to get off it.
We passed some great towns, like Piedras (Stones), Planeta Rica (Rich Planet). The scenery was pretty spectacular as well, going from mountains to plains to coast.
Thankfully I had my Ipod with me, and was catching up on 3 weeks off podcasts. Got my fill of Premiership football.
When we finally arrived, the heat that greeted me was like a slap in the face. Damn it was hot, and this was nearing 9pm.
After a blissful week there. The return journey over night was blissfully smooth and short.
It took me a week to persuade Lina to travel by night, as she was still remembering the dark times in Colombian history, where travelling by night included the extra entertainment of being robbed by bandits.
Thankfully nowadays under the leadership of this president, those days are long gone. Hopefully never to return.

SQ Krisflyer Lounge and Business Class flight to Bali

As a travel agent I had flown Business Class with many airlines and experienced the delight that it is. But as I am no longer a travel agent this has now become a thing of the past. But as luck would have it, I managed to acquire enough miles to be able to travel Business Class on Singapore Airlines on the short distance between Singapore and Bali. 

The flight itself is just over 2 hours so I would not get much joy out of that, but to be able to use their lounge at Changai Airport was something I was looking forward to. Quite sad I know. 

As a Business Class passenger you are allowed to choose your own meal off their website. As it was a freebie I decided to go the whole hog, and chose a Chilean Seabass with Olive Mash and sautéed veg. Now I was getting sad. 

The lounge is a place of pure relaxation. The lights are dim, there is some subtle music in the background. There is enough space around to give everyone space to relax and rest before their flight. 

There is a multitude of snacks and drinks to choose from. Thankfully it is all self service. For some reason this made me incredibly hungry and thirsty. I had a couple of plates of the boneless duck that was on offer. Also some marinated and grilled chicken wings. But best of all was the aged cheddar I managed to eat as well. Thankfully all washed down with a lovely Zinfandel Red. I think I polished off a bottle within an hour. All this was finished off with a magnificent brandy and a few strong cups of expresso. Only because I could feel myself getting more and more drunk as time went on. I blame my self imposed beer denial programme to get rid of my belly. 45 days with hardly any alcohol. Never again. It got me nowhere. 

I also could of had some very lovely looking ravioli's with a lovely creamy mushroom sauce topped off with some parmesan cheese. But as I rarely eat past outside of Italy anyhows and I've never tasted it in Asia, I'm not going to start now. This is a personal prejudice as i have found that few Asian chefs can cook Western food that good anyhows, and I know a lot of people think pasta is very easy to cook with a tomato sauce, but you would be surprised how many people can not do this simple task. Either the pasta is over cooked and has lost that Al Dente taste or the sauce is too runny and smoothers the pasta. Not what I like. 

The Asian dishes on offer, like noodles, soups and curries did not really interest me that much after I had seen the duck. 

Luckily for me I was not too far gone as I just noticed the time and my flight was boarding. Somehow I managed to get to the plane about 15 minutes before take off. Never done this before. I was shown to my seat with courtesy, amazing as I could not really string two sentences together. 

I was offered a pre take off cocktail, as I was in Singapore and flying with the national carrier why not go for a Singapore Sling. Add more fuel to the raging fire. I ordered a glass of Australian Sav Blanc to go with my meal. 

To be honest from this point I really can not remember really much, the meal was edible, but my taste buds seemed to have died on me. The wine I do remember was quite refreshing. 

Thankfully for all concerned I was not offered any more alcohol.

By the time we were getting close to landing I had sobered up and was able to order several cups of coffee and water, to which the staff were only to pleased to give me. 

As I left the plane I could see a look of relief off the crew that I had caused no trouble on board. I was relieved too and very embarrassed. But as I will not be flying Business Class again, I did enjoy the experience. Would I do it all again. God yes, but hopefully I would not get as drunk again.