Romancing the English Language: The City of the Bikes

Bienvenidos a Mompos

Meg and I decided we needed a vacation from our constant vacationing, so we headed out for a relaxing weekend in Mompox, a sleepy town a few hours southeast of Cartagena. Honestly, the most exciting part of the trip was getting there and back (although back was much more entertaining because we were accompanied by a British man who spoke no Spanish, but definitely spoke his fair share of English, if you catch my drift...)

It is a nice town on the banks of a river (requiring a ferry ride to reach). We really didn't find much to do there, so we mostly ate and read. Not a bad weekend if you ask me. One interesting thing I found was that there were hardly any cars there; most everyone chose bicycles or motocycles as their mode of transportation. Megan and I indulged ourselves in a moto ride one afternoon, and our new friend took us all over the town, pointing out the highlights (like, "Here is a church. Here is another church. Here you can buy cheese. Here is church.")

We also took a boat ride up the river. Since it is not high tourist season right now we ended up being the only people on the boat ride with our guide, a friendly man who loved to point out all the wildlife and share all of his knowledge about the river (and so naturally we ended up talking about politics and the upcoming presidential election and the changes that need to be made in Colombia. An excellent conversation.) Basically, we got to see a zoo-full of animals, but with no bars, no glass, and no protection from flying poop...