Come, Dowsed in Mud

Thursday 13 May
Cartagena

Craig was hungover this morning. This was a common occurrence. Craig was hungover a lot. Anyway despite all that, today was the day we went to the mud volcano. We gathered in the foyer of the hotel across the road from ours and waited for the bus to turn up. In the meantime some aged American hippy appeared out of nowhere and cornered Joe as he forcefully regaled him of times when he was the tour manager for The Doors. Clearly, he’d only come out of the experience slightly better than Jim Morrison. We felt sorry for Joe, stuck there having to listen to his stories with no escape. Thankfully after a tortuous half hour the bus turned up to take us to the volcano.

It is a thankfully dormant volcano, and one which contains a lot of mud. To be honest I wasn't sure it was actually a volcano. I mean, there was a conical mound with a lot of mud in a hole in the top. But theoretically it could have been man made. But then who would actually think to build such a thing? Probably best to take it at face value, hey?

Anyway they had built stairs up the side and a frame around the top so you could get in and out relatively easily. I say relatively as if you've never tried to move through a lot of mud, then you wouldn't know that it's pretty difficult. You can't swim through it like water. The density of the mud serves to hold you around your centre of gravity and any movement from your limbs has very little effect. Your best bet is to pull yourself along the side. The other really bizarre effect the mud has is to be so dense, you can't feel the bottom. Instead you stand there, suspended, with no idea what is keeping you there. I presume the mud is denser than humans as you don't sink lower than the middle of your chest. It is just the pressure of the mud that is holding you there. It is a truly bizarre feeling and one that was great to experience.

You could cover yourself in the mud and you looked like some superhero - you know, the ones that are all the same colour. Doctor Manhattan springs to mind. And if you moved your hand down quickly from above the surface to about a foot below, it made a pleasing "ploop" sound followed by a bubble that appeared a second afterwards and burst on the surface. That amused me for a long time.

There were some locals there to take your picture on your camera and give you a massage –whether you wanted it or not – and then afterwards you climbed, with difficulty, out of the mud and scraped off most of the mud still sticking to you. There was a surprising amount. Then you walked down to the nearby lake and a large Caribbean woman washed the remaining mud off you.

After that Joe, Craig and Etienne headed off to Taganga and I returned to Cartagena, once again left behind as the others moved on. I went out in the evening to find a restaurant that the guidebook recommended, though the first two places seemed to no longer exist. Looking for the third I eventually wandered into the old, historic part of town, which is what all the fuss is about. It was very beautiful, with old colonial buildings and lots of beautiful flowers and everything kept in good condition.

With all the tourism also comes the street hawkers hassling you to come in their restaurants, or if you’re not interested in that they are kind enough to offer prostitution or drugs as alternatives. However I found the third restaurant in the book, only to see that one of the others had moved from their previous location to next door to this one. Lunch tomorrow was sorted then. I went in and on the TV they were playing Leonard Cohen's First We Take Manhattan, one of my favourite songs, which was a good sign. They had a good selection of music playing there, including The PIxies' Gigantic and Pink Floyd's Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

I had a nice meal and started talking to a couple who were sitting next to me. She was Chilean and I think he was American. They were very friendly and good fun to talk to. That was pretty much it for that night.