Carpurgana
Carpurgana is a small beach side town at the very top of Colombia on the Caribbean coast. What makes it slightly more interesting is that it's only accessible by sea. We ended our San Blas Adventures tour here and stayed a night so we could go through immigration before heading on to Cartagena.
Kate and I took our bags and started up the main street asking at each of the hostels to see if there was any availability. It was a long walk before we came to a very empty and run-down hostel called "Hostel Marlin". The good news was it was only 18 USD a night and had an ensuite. The bad news was it wasn't particularly clean and the hostel owner seemed to be on another planet. As we only planned on being there for one night and we didn't want to keep on looking we decided to go for it, even so we could just put down our bags and stop searching.
Next up on the todo list was to sort out travel for the next day. We decided we didn't want to stay any longer than a night in Carpurgana as we had very limited time in Colombia and we were tossing up between going to Medellin or Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. Cartagena was a little out the way, but it was one of the highlights of Colombia and we decided not to miss it. We went to investigate the times of the boats and buses down at the dock and found there was only one a day leaving at 10am. This would be cutting it really fine as we needed to go through immigration first and that only opened at 9am. We spoke to Brandon who said it would be fine and that he'd be at immigration with us to make sure everything went smoothly.
We were a little worried about booking a ticket and then missing it but we took the advise of our guide and went to the ticket office which is opposite the pier and in a little compound with a large seating area. We did our best to communicate with the lady at the ticket office while contending with the queuing etiquette of South America (there is none, just push to the front). We worked out that it's cheapest to get a boat-bus combo ticket for about 60,000 pesos to Cartagena. It seemed pricey but was our first experience with Colombian transport and we didn't want to be stranded to Carpurgana another night so we bought ourselves two tickets.
We spent the next few hours attempting to get wifi as we had been off the grid for a few days and Kate wanted to let her family know she'd made it to Colombia. I, on the other hand, had forgotten to let my family know where I was going, so didn't have this problem. We tried everywhere and those places that did have a connection weren't working properly. Eventually we were speaking to one the waitresses at a cafe and she informed us that all the internet connectivity for the whole town goes through one satellite connection which is often out of action; If one places isn't working you can probably count on everywhere not working. We'd have to wait til Cartagena for wifi!
We spent a couple of hours getting ready for dinner at the hostel and listening to the rain that had started. It wasn't long before we noticed a drip from the roof. Our room - as well as being rather dirty and stuffy - was also rather leaky! We asked the receptionist at the hotel if they could do anything and they promptly handed us a bowl to catch the water, hopefully the rain would stop before long! For dinner we had paid 10 USD each for a dinner with everyone from that boat at the San Blas Adventures offices. We had a few beers with everyone and the food was pretty good too. As we wanted to be up early to make sure we were first through immigration we headed to bed soon after dinner.
In the morning we got to Immigration early, at 8:15am though it was only meant to open at 9am. We'd heard that the office has irregular office hours which are often that the whim of the officer on duty so it was possible (though very unlikely) that it would open early. Either way we wanted to be first inline so we had time to go and get on our boat which left at 10. We waited until 9am before we started to get a little uneasy and it was a nervous 10 minutes before the immigration eventually opened. We were second inline behind another couple, Ryan & Rosie, who'd been on the San Blas tour with us. They went in and stayed there for a very long time. It turned out that the generator for the immigration office kept on conking out which mean they had to keep on restarting it and loading up all their systems which took a long time. As the time crept past 9:30am and we still hadn't even started immigration we were sure we'd miss the boat. To make matters worse our guide, Brandon, hadn't shown up. We weren't particularly happy about his advice at this point!
Eventually Ryan & Rosie came out and they headed off to try and catch the boat. We went in, already resigned to the process taking more time than we had. The immigration officer greeted us and asked us how we were. I did my best to explain that we were good but were hoping to catch the 10am boat so were hoping the process could be quick. He smiled and to our surprise our passports were stamped moments later. We grabbed our bags and rushed off to the pier to board the boat to Necolci. We arrived just in time to get our bags checked-in (which was a process involving getting directed to various people over and over again). One of the people had a list of names and asked us to wait until our names were called. We'd been in these situations before where the person would get distracted and forget about us, we hadn't seen our name on the list so we kept on asking as many people as possible which boat we needed for Cartagena. We eventually got enough nods to stop us worrying so much and soon our names were called and we piled on to a very large speed boat. Soon we were on our way across a glass like sea and thinking it was a shame it hadn't been this calm for the San Blas Tour!
Where we stayed
Hostel Marlin - One of the cheapest and worst options in town, perfect for times when everything else is booked out. Hopefully they've fixed the leaky roof!Top Tips
- There is one boat (then a bus) a day to get to Cartagena. If you buy a combo ticket you should get it cheaper for around 60,000 pesos
- Immigration opens at 9am (usually) and the boat to Cartagena leaves at 10am. We made it to the boat, but only just. Make sure you're either first inline or try and get through immigration the day before to save yourself some stress!
Journal
After we unloaded the San Blas Adventures boat in to their office about 20 metres from the pier we sat down and waited for Brandon to go and check if immigration was open for us to get stamped into Colombia. At this point we wanted to get a head start on looking for hostels so I ran out to check if any of the places had availability. It turned out that everywhere nearby was completely booked out. We'd arrived, somehow, at an very, very busy time as it was some kind of Colombian holiday. This had piece of information was corroborated by Brandon when he returned to tell us that immigration was shut for the day and would open at 9am in the morning.
Kate and I took our bags and started up the main street asking at each of the hostels to see if there was any availability. It was a long walk before we came to a very empty and run-down hostel called "Hostel Marlin". The good news was it was only 18 USD a night and had an ensuite. The bad news was it wasn't particularly clean and the hostel owner seemed to be on another planet. As we only planned on being there for one night and we didn't want to keep on looking we decided to go for it, even so we could just put down our bags and stop searching.
Next up on the todo list was to sort out travel for the next day. We decided we didn't want to stay any longer than a night in Carpurgana as we had very limited time in Colombia and we were tossing up between going to Medellin or Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. Cartagena was a little out the way, but it was one of the highlights of Colombia and we decided not to miss it. We went to investigate the times of the boats and buses down at the dock and found there was only one a day leaving at 10am. This would be cutting it really fine as we needed to go through immigration first and that only opened at 9am. We spoke to Brandon who said it would be fine and that he'd be at immigration with us to make sure everything went smoothly.
We were a little worried about booking a ticket and then missing it but we took the advise of our guide and went to the ticket office which is opposite the pier and in a little compound with a large seating area. We did our best to communicate with the lady at the ticket office while contending with the queuing etiquette of South America (there is none, just push to the front). We worked out that it's cheapest to get a boat-bus combo ticket for about 60,000 pesos to Cartagena. It seemed pricey but was our first experience with Colombian transport and we didn't want to be stranded to Carpurgana another night so we bought ourselves two tickets.
We spent the next few hours attempting to get wifi as we had been off the grid for a few days and Kate wanted to let her family know she'd made it to Colombia. I, on the other hand, had forgotten to let my family know where I was going, so didn't have this problem. We tried everywhere and those places that did have a connection weren't working properly. Eventually we were speaking to one the waitresses at a cafe and she informed us that all the internet connectivity for the whole town goes through one satellite connection which is often out of action; If one places isn't working you can probably count on everywhere not working. We'd have to wait til Cartagena for wifi!
We spent a couple of hours getting ready for dinner at the hostel and listening to the rain that had started. It wasn't long before we noticed a drip from the roof. Our room - as well as being rather dirty and stuffy - was also rather leaky! We asked the receptionist at the hotel if they could do anything and they promptly handed us a bowl to catch the water, hopefully the rain would stop before long! For dinner we had paid 10 USD each for a dinner with everyone from that boat at the San Blas Adventures offices. We had a few beers with everyone and the food was pretty good too. As we wanted to be up early to make sure we were first through immigration we headed to bed soon after dinner.
In the morning we got to Immigration early, at 8:15am though it was only meant to open at 9am. We'd heard that the office has irregular office hours which are often that the whim of the officer on duty so it was possible (though very unlikely) that it would open early. Either way we wanted to be first inline so we had time to go and get on our boat which left at 10. We waited until 9am before we started to get a little uneasy and it was a nervous 10 minutes before the immigration eventually opened. We were second inline behind another couple, Ryan & Rosie, who'd been on the San Blas tour with us. They went in and stayed there for a very long time. It turned out that the generator for the immigration office kept on conking out which mean they had to keep on restarting it and loading up all their systems which took a long time. As the time crept past 9:30am and we still hadn't even started immigration we were sure we'd miss the boat. To make matters worse our guide, Brandon, hadn't shown up. We weren't particularly happy about his advice at this point!
Eventually Ryan & Rosie came out and they headed off to try and catch the boat. We went in, already resigned to the process taking more time than we had. The immigration officer greeted us and asked us how we were. I did my best to explain that we were good but were hoping to catch the 10am boat so were hoping the process could be quick. He smiled and to our surprise our passports were stamped moments later. We grabbed our bags and rushed off to the pier to board the boat to Necolci. We arrived just in time to get our bags checked-in (which was a process involving getting directed to various people over and over again). One of the people had a list of names and asked us to wait until our names were called. We'd been in these situations before where the person would get distracted and forget about us, we hadn't seen our name on the list so we kept on asking as many people as possible which boat we needed for Cartagena. We eventually got enough nods to stop us worrying so much and soon our names were called and we piled on to a very large speed boat. Soon we were on our way across a glass like sea and thinking it was a shame it hadn't been this calm for the San Blas Tour!
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