Cartagena: A Home Away from Home

Our travels through Latin America have been full of expected visitors, unexpected encounters, and new friends. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know other travelers and making friends along the way, but have realized it’s just not the same as having an old friend you know and love visit. When we arrived in Cartagena, Colombia on May 18^th, we knew we had two of the best possible visitors for the week ahead: my sister Julia and my mom!

It’s funny. Since traveling, Andrea and I have gotten used to “endless weekends,” or conversely “endless weeks.” Instead of dedicating ourselves to work five days a week (at least) and then taking two days off, every day is the same. There is no work week, no weekend, no crunch time, no vacation. We’re living in a steady state, where every day has the potential to be a work day (focus on the blog, catch up with finances, work on freelance projects, plan the trip…), or a day of exploration. Most often, we do both. That being said, we know the rest of the world still works with weeks, weekends, crunch time, and vacation. The end of May, in the US, is when school gets out and summer vacation begins. My sister Julia had just finished her freshman year at Colorado College and was quite ready for a little break before beginning her internship for the summer. My mother had been wanting to visit us for quite some time and eventually picked Cartagena as the place where she would come. We all made the timing dovetail well with Julia’s break and BOOM! All of a sudden, three of us Gledhills were in Cartagena together for a week.

We spent the week wandering through the Old Town and Getsemani neighborhoods of the city, leisurely taking in the sights, the smells, and the sounds of Cartagena. We visited the cathedral, the Palace of the Inquisition, various plazas, and even made a day trip out to the world’s weirdest mud volcano: El Totumo. We did a cooking class, visited a chocolate museum, did some shopping, and even rode the tourist bus around the city, but most importantly, we were together. Although we do try to stay in touch with friends and family while traveling, there’s simply no substitute for time together in person.

My sister got to Cartagena a day before my mother, so I had a full day to just spend time with her. I didn’t realize the value of that day beforehand, but really enjoyed having some one-on-one time with her. Julia and I are six years apart, which is enough to have always kept us in different phases of life. When she was a primary schooler in 5^th grade, I was looking at colleges as an 11^th grader. When she was entering high school, I had already graduated, taken a gap year in China, and started college. Over time, that age gap has become less and less important. During this visit though, Julia had already completed her first year of college and she’s actually chosen to study international politics and economics (IPE), which I what I studied as well.

Strangely enough, being so far from home made it much easier to connect. Julia took a gap year before starting college and traveled through Cartagena, so she was very much the local expert! That first day, she showed us around the city. We walked through the Plaza de Bolivar and the Old Town as she pointed out places she had visited, things she’d eaten, and bars she’d frequented. She traveled with someone for several months as well, so Andrea and I were able to share our experience on the road together as a couple. As we got snacks at the local food market, we all swapped stories and generally laughed at the nomadic lifestyle, night buses, weather mishaps, diarrhea and all. Andrea needed her hair trimmed, so Julia took us a market she knew. She shared tips for other things to do in Colombia and we told her more about Central America, which she hadn’t visited.

That evening, we found a fun bar in Getsemani and talked more about school, work, and our careers. I really enjoyed hearing more about Julia’s experience as a freshman, especially after having visited campus last December. It brought back so many memories of my own first year at college. Finding “my people,” figuring out what I wanted to study, meeting Andrea, and so much more. Julia was pumped about IPE, having recently taken her first Econ class, so we nerded out for a while talking about how cool it is to learn about economic theories and have the academic background to really grasp the arguments world leaders are making. After the first couple drinks, we switched to another bar. At the time, Julia was getting ready to start a summer internship and enter the professional working world for the first time. Andrea and I shared anecdotes, tips, and horror stories of our first working experiences, as well as our experience job searching as seniors in college. It was awesome to share experiences and spend quality time together without the distractions of regular life at home.

My mom arrived on a late-night flight  that Friday. Having already done the Cartagena airport run three times, we picked her up. There’s a big waiting hall where all the passengers come out, many to be greeted by their families. Andrea, Julia, and I stood there civilly, watching family after Colombian family rush across the “do not pass” line to embrace the arriving family member. We saw luggage dropped haphazardly and tears shed as the exit was blocked completely, causing traffic jams over and over. When my mom came out, we all calmly waited for her to cross the line with her one bag, at which point I gave her a hug. My mother, the calm, Southern woman she is, told me to wait until we were “out of the way.” Ah yes, I’d forgotten about America. How organized, neat, and controlled. We walked a couple of blocks away from the airport to avoid the airport pickup surcharge and then called an Uber back to Getsemani. We all grabbed a quick dinner and chatted over a nice glass of wine in a restaurant around the corner before heading back for some much-deserved rest.

The next day, the real sight-seeing started. As we strolled through the Plaza de Bolivar, the Plaza de Aduana, the Old Town, and toured the Palace of the Inquisition, we caught up on life. Andrea and I shared with my mom all the stories we had from the road that we hadn’t yet written about on the blog and caught up on the everyday gossip from back home: new restaurants, construction, and last year’s interminable Boston winter.  We window-shopped, stopped for a mid-afternoon coffee, and ended the day with the most exquisite sushi dinner. Traveling on a budget can really change your perception of price. Andrea and I would never dream of going into a nice-looking restaurant. Strictly street and cheap food for us. We have no steady income and every dollar, peso, or colon spent now is one less for tomorrow, for the next country. We try to cook and eat at budget restaurants and had forgotten how nice it is to have a fine meal every once in a while. My mom treated us to (hands down) the best sushi I’ve ever had and we spent the evening chatting, laughing, moaning in disbelief, and savoring our food.

We had a lot of fun immersing ourselves in the strangely buoyant mud of El Totumo, taking a Colombian cooking class from a dairy-obsessed Frenchman who spoke neither English nor Spanish (only Andrea eats dairy and speaks fluent French), visiting the local chocolate museum and creating our own cacao-infused goodies, and wandering the streets over the next several days. As Andrea and I shared what had stood out to us in Central America and pondered over post-travel work and study options, my mom listened as only a mother can. So finely attuned to strengths, interests, and needs, she encouraged, offered advice, and most importantly, told us not to worry. After all, when you give everything up and decide to travel for a while, you should focus on enjoying it!

I felt strangely at home that week in Cartagena. It was a boiling hot and humid city, which of course reminded me of my hometown, Charlotte, but otherwise different in almost every possible way. With the obvious language and cultural differences aside, the winding colonial streets filled with hawkers, tourists, and stray dogs all tripping over one another is nothing like the ordered streets filled with cars that I grew up with, but walking around with my mom, my sister, and my girlfriend that week couldn’t have been more familiar. Traveling is all about new things. New places, new faces, new foods, new languages, new weather, new bus systems. Traveling with family is about spending time together, taking in all these new things, and grounding them in the familiar. It’s about taking the time away from your regular lives to connect, share experiences, and enjoy. After several months of wandering around Latin America, I really appreciated the chance to be “at home” for a few days.