Islas del Rosario

 

We elected to venture to the Islas del Rosario on our last day on the Caribbean coast. I figured, what the hell, why not, might as well punch out all the little touristy things to do so that we can say we did it and won’t feel like we might have missed something. Big mistake. I had thought that it would be a nice leisurely boat ride out to the islands, where you would see some neat coral reefs and get some nice pictures of the blue-green warm tropical sea. Then off to Playa Blanca, the nicest beach in the area supposedly, where you get to lounge about for a few hours before heading back.  Sounds like a nice spend of day, right?

Let me clarify for you what this tour is about, so that if you are ever thinking of embarking upon this “tour”, then you know what it is about: it is not a tour. It is a shuttle. A very very long shuttle. That takes you first to the aquarium out on one of the islands. Then takes you to the Playa Blanca. Then back. That’s it. There’s no touring. There’s no seeing, other than a lot of open water. What there is a lot of are other Latin tourists, all crammed into the boat like sardines.

We got there bright and early, but some people were already there, and all the seats right next to the side were taken. We began to get a premonition that maybe this wasn’t the kind of trip we wanted to be on when the boat began filling up, then was full, and then was packed, and yet still we were all just sitting there, waiting to go. An hour and half later, the boat finally revved its engines and departed. A pretty young lass in tight clothing handed out flyers to everyone telling us to use our life-vests, right as a voice came on over the loud-speaker telling us not to throw any trash into the sea. Let’s see where all those fucking flyers go.

The voice on the loud-speaker was loud. He spoke directly into the microphone, and seemed to spit his consonants out as forcefully as possible, so that the speakers shook and crackled. My girlfriend broke out her earplugs, and I stuffed my fingers in my ears everytime he made an announcement. Yet remarkably, none of the other Latin American tourists seemed perturbed by it, thus illustrating one observation I’ve made of Colombians and Latin Americans in general: I think their eardrums have all been slightly damaged. No one seems to mind when car horns are bleated right into their faces. No one seems to mind when a child screams the whole bus ride long right into their own mother’s face. No one seems to notice when the music is too loud. And everyone shouts at each other when they talk.

Anyway, so what was especially interesting was that all the other tourists dutifully put their little orange life-vests on. My girlfriend and I looked around and didn’t understand why we would be putting life-vests on when we were seated in a quite sizeable boat that you can stand up and walk around on. What I also didn’t understand was, here we are in a country where they drive like bats out of hell without rules or regulation on city streets dotted with pot-holes the depth of caves, and they never put on seat belts (except when passing a police outpost) and think nothing of it—and yet they all dutifully put on their life-vests while on a giant boat. It was just kind of strange. Needless to say, midway through the trip, most life-vests began to turn into seat cushions, as families listlessly fell asleep in the aisle-ways. By the end, absolutely no one had a life vest on, and in fact, all the life-vests were hung-up and put away.

We motored out to the Islas del Rosario, where we didn’t see anything of the coral reefs, and the only option to see aquatic life was to pay some more money to go into the aquarium, which we elected not to do. We sat and dunked our feet in the clear blue water instead and ate galletas. Then we got onto the boat again early and snagged some seats next to the side, so that we could get a little breeze on our faces at least while sitting crammed into the boat for the next few hours.

The next—and only other—stop was Playa Blanca, the beach renowned for its beachiness. The boat couldn’t dock on the shore, so we had these little mini-shuttle boats come out to unload all the passengers and bring us to shore. The minute you step down off the shuttle and into the surf and slosh onto shore, you are bombarded by the locals vending something, anything. Before I even knew what was happening, still trying to keep my balance in the waves, some guy with a bucket full of shells crammed one into my hand and said, “souvenir.” I looked down at this shell in my hand, and then tried to hand it back. “¡No! Es para ti. Un souvenir. Tranquilo. Tranquilo.” I shoved it back into his bucket, then waved off the succession of coconut pasteles, bracelets, earrings, massages, etc. We found a restaurant and ate some overpriced fried chicken and patácones and coconut rice, which seems to be the one dish you will get everywhere in Cartagena. I really liked patácones (mashed fried platano) when I first came to Colombia, but now I am sick to death of the things. They give me heart-burn.

We then found us a little somewhat-quiet spot in the shade, and we enjoyed a little dunkage in the hot Caribbean water. The beach is quite nice—if only you weren’t being hassled every single minute. It would have been a lot of nicer if we had come on a boat directly to the damn beach, instead of wasting all those hours boating out to the Islas just to go sit outside an aquarium.

I gave in and got a massage—I figured, what the hell, if I’m going to be a lazy tourist on the beach, might as well enjoy it. The girl had some strong fingers, and she worked both hard and fast, and it actually hurt far more then it relaxed or felt good. She kept telling me, this is a good massage, huh? To which I would cringingly reply, yeah, sure, as she banged away at my shoulder blades. My girlfriend snapped a picture.

We were given 2 hours to enjoy the tourist ridden beach (there were at least 5-10 other tours on various sized boats, all on the same itinerary, and all crammed onto the beach for the same time), and so when the time came for us to leave, my girlfriend and I were keeping watch on the little boat shuttles like hawks, so that we could fetch our good seats again from the hordes. Other tourists had the same idea. People could be seen trotting after the shuttle as it approached, and it almost looked like an organized line was forming. An organized line, in Colombia? Of course not! It revealed its true nature once the ramp came down. People began shoving right and left, cutting in front of you, stepping on your toes. It was chaos, but we forced and headbutted our way onto it.  Then, once the shuttle came alongside the boat, the frenzy resumed. It was like a pack of mothers trying to purchase the last few trendy available toys in a store before Christmas. There is no such thing as politeness in South America, my friends, when it comes to getting onto a boat where there are few choice seats. It was like rush hour in Bogotá. You only get somewhere by being aggressive and willing to die. My girlfriend told me to go on ahead of her and just get the seats. I pushed my way into the throng, leaving her to fend her own way out of a pack of overweight tourists, and grimly cut and ankle-bit like all the rest to fight my way onto the boat. I obtained our seats, and we sighed and then enjoyed the breeze the few hours more back to Cartagena.

Let me be clear about something here: this “tour” sucks. I don’t understand why it is recommended by the guidebooks at all. If you want to go to Playa Blanca, then go to Playa Blanca, don’t waste your time and money on the extensive boat trip out to an aquarium first. Unless you really like being stuffed onto a boat with a bunch of other tourists and sitting there all day long on hard seats. And having someone yell at you in Spanish over a loudspeaker.