Tolú, October 7-13

The main church in front of the main plaza.

There must always be a shrine.

 Goods are still carried on the head sometimes, but I don´t think they used to wear jeans...

Tolú is a small (36,000) and bumpy 3 hour ride southwest of Cartagena on the Caribbean coast.  While it is in the Lonely Planet guide book, not many foreign tourists end up there.  That is why we went.  Plus we wanted some more ocean time.  It was plenty warm but no where near the sweltering heat of Cartagena.  The only published hostel didn´t have a room for below 50,000 COP, so we asked for a recommendation for something ¨mas economico.¨  Given that Tolú is a hot spot for Colombian vacationers there are plenty of folks who rent out ¨cabañas.¨

The front of the house where we stayed.

The kitchen.

We found ourselves staying in someone´s backyard ¨cabañas¨ for 24,000 COP.   This is the closest we´ve gotten to living with Colombians.  We shared their kitchen and if the side gate was closed we walked through their living room to get to the building in the back where we stayed in one of their four rooms.  This  really wasn´t intended for the foreign crowd so there was no internet at the house, but there were about three internet places close by (with varying connection speeds).
 

One day we asked if we could use their washing machine.  Water from their main water source on the opposite side of the yard had to be carried over and poured into the washer, then when the clothes had been in there a while (i.e. the timer on the machine wasn´t functional) she let us know it was time to ring the clothes out (which we did ourselves).  Then we hung them on their clever clothe´s line.  Chickens were a part of the backyard scenery as were their two children who liked to ¨hide¨ and then jump out and scare us.


In Tolú I felt like we saw a lot of what real life is like for small-town Colombians.  An election was just a few weeks away, so there are plenty of candidates names painted on walls.

Studying.

Playing marbles.

Siesta time on the playa.

Tolú is known for these bicycle party vehicles.  The whole family piles on and about 4 people have pedals.  There is a radio and speakers attached and they go riding through Tolú at night singing along at the top of their lungs.  It´s great to see the multigenerational mingling.  And, it can be tough on the ears...

Good ol´ Coca Cola...

The meat vendors never fail to catch my  interest.

It might be hard to believe, but by the time we got to Tolu, we were both quite tired of fish.  So, Tolu will not hold our favorite memories of food as it was a difficult to find anything but fish.  We generally made our own breakfasts (generally eggs or granola) and dinners (some sort of soup).  The saving grace on the food side of life has been all the amazing tropical fruit and the jugos!

In front of the church on the main plaza - various types of taxis waiting for business.

A very interesting attempt to stop trash tossing.

One day we took a tour out to the St. Bernardo islands.  We were with a group of friends from Medellin - at times it felt like we were on one of those party bikes.  The highlight was defnitely the bathwater warm 3 hours of fun on this beach! 




 And a final note on Tolú.  It goes down as the place of the first siting of a cockroach.  I was actually expecting to see them sooner, we had them in our house despite our every effort back when we lived in Medellin.