Thursday, March 26, 2009

Colombia take 3

I'll start randomly with photos. This first one is in one of the squares, inside the old city. The artist Fernando Botero had a tendancy to portray people of "larger" proportions in his sculptures, drawings and paintings. In the best way to describe the reasoning, this is his quote: "An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it."
I guess the guy just loved the big girls. I know a hasher who is about the big girls. HAHAHAHAA!
A quick shot of the ocean, from inside the city wall.
The spaniard, Don Pedro de Heredia is displayed here in a larger than life effigy. He founded the city of Cartagena in 1533.
Here is a side shot of "El Castillo San Felipe". A very large castle that was used to defend the city against invading forces. Rumor is that there are tunnels that go way underground and connect all the castles and forts as far off as the "walled city" that is about 2 miles down on the coast.
We went into some of the lower corridors in the castle, and one of the tour guides was telling us about these "death houses" as they were referred to. These long corridors, had little cubby holes, that you can see down the length of this hall in the picture below. The cubby holes were about 3-4 feet by another 4-5 feet. Large enough for a soldier to stand inside of it. The corners of the wall into the cubby holes were cut away so that soldiers defending the castle could peek around the corner without giving themselves away. Also, there was no lights down here...back in the day. So the defending soldiers would wait in the cubby hole, with bayonets on their rifles, and stab the enemy so that the gun shots would not alert the enemy on the outside.

Lastly the ceiling was very low. I was walking along hunched over. The guide said that it was done on purpose, cause many of the invading armies/navies were tall people and the colombians were smaller in stature...so the enemy was "uncomfortable" inside the tunnels.
A shot along one of the upper walls, with the Colombian flag flying large.
A view from the main balconies high above the ground, still inside Castillo San Felipe.
Some connecting tunnels inside the castle.
Sitting down at one of the guard towers.
After the castle, we stopped in at the Museo de la Inquisicion (or the Inquisition Museum) which, whenever I say "the inquisition" I can only think of one thing..."THE INQUISITION".
HAHAHAHA. The picture below shows a torture device that was used for women that had been unfaithful to their men, whores, etc... It basically grabs the breast and cuts it up.





Here is another one, that sits with two very sharp prongs digging into the bottom of the jaw and the other piece digs into the top of the sternum. Very painful eventually stabbing them and cutting off air flow for an excrusiatingly slow death.

Aguila beer, the equivalent of PBR in Colombia. went down great, when super cold.
We stopped by the Naval Museum and saw some cool history of the naval battles and invasions by the French as well as pirates, most notable, Sir Francis Drake.
Here is a display in one of the memorabilia halls. It is dedicated to "Chicote" the ship mascot.
What's even more hilarious is that he was so loved, that when he died, they cut his head off and stuffed him to keep around, and he ended up in this museum. hahahaha
Here I am with "las negritas" as they so liked to be referred too.
These guys would dress all in black, and painted skin very black, and then would pose in frozen position begging for tips. Street performers if you will. A lot to do with the slave trade from over a century ago. Cartagena was a major port in the caribbean that involved a large amount of slave trading and shipping in and out, at this port.
A view out to the ocean from one of the canon emplacements.
Old wall, streets.
Me with the sculpture by Botero.
A nice cart sitting on an old street. I really liked this photo.
Some of the housing in the old city.
The main gate of the entire walled city. The old clock tower, and the only actual opening and gate into the old city when it was founded is the center arch in this photo. The other two were opened in many later years to help move people in and out.
The Port of the Pegasus.
A shot from our balcony of the light house on the end of the peninsula where our hotel was located.


I'll post more soon. Man I crack up everytime I see that video by Mel Brooks about the inquisition.

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