coro (venezuela) + cartagena (colombia)

so it's been a while since i last updated this, and a new entry is very much needed...from choroni i took the fun bus up and then down the mountains through the henri pittier national park and then, after a couple bus rides, i finally made it to coro, on the northwestern caribbean coast of venezuela, just in front of aruba, curacao and bonaire (netherlands antilles), which used to be served by a ferry (i know, inviting, right?!)...coro is famous for its colonial architecture and the medanos de coro, a series of big sand dunes right outside the city center! when i arrived, on dec 24th late in the evening, the city was crazy with shoppers and music and the atmosphere was pretty hot...i was pretty hot too, since i got bit by mosquitoes really bad in choroni, and my legs were on fire!!! but yeah, i stayed at this cool place whose owners are architects who studied abroad, and i spent christmas eve with a venezuelan family, 2 canadian and 1 spanish girls, plus the hosts...it was very good, we exchanged "cheapo" (chimbo) presents and it was funny!!! then the next day i made it to the medanos, the giant sand dunes, and i was blown away! it seemed like a real desert, although i've never been to one! the whole sand dune phenomenon is very interesting and philosophically intriguing to me, plus i got to be by myself in the middle of just sand and wind for a while...hehe then later in the day i made my way to maracaibo, spent the night at the bus terminal there, and then eventually made it across the border to maicao, colombia! the bus we payed to take us to the city terminal left us in the middle of the two immigration checkpoints, so me and 2 brazilians had to bargain our way out of there somehow...and we were in the middle of no man's land, the place looked pretty scary if you ask me! we had to pay for an overprived bus ride to...the terminal, only to wait 2 more hours there before we could get on the road for real...so then we arrived in cartagena only pretty late in the evening, had again to fight with taxi drivers and whatnot to make it into the center...the hostel i was going to stay at was full, so i looked around for a bit and decided to settle for a very cheap and kinda shady looking like place...where they got into my room while i was showering and stole my cell phone!!! fuck them!!! fuck colombia, i thought, i am getting the hell out of here! but then again, i should have put a lock at my door right away instead of going for the quick shower...so again, i guess it could be kinda my fault...and then out of the things they could have stolen, the cell phone is by far the least important to me! but you know poor people all over the world love cell phones, so let them have it!!! i spent a day at the police, next to a guy who was handcuffed to the wall and had stolen and crashed a motorbike while on some sort of glue kinda drug, and he was rapping for me to beg for some change since he said he needed it in his next 5 years in jail...well my day spent in frustration and anger didn't really produce much, and then my brother finally reached me, so i could start forgetting about the whole incident and focus on my trip...because cartagena is truly an amazing town...a port town (like marseille, france, the other place where i was robbed...of my hanky!!!), but a beautiful one! as a port town, it has the whole range of scary-shady-weird looking-etc people that always follow you and bug you and offer you all sorts of drugs and girls (i've never been offered by so many prostitutes before in my life!) and whatnot...which gets pretty annoying if you ask me...but then again, the city center is really amazing, old and beautiful!!! we went to check out boca grande last night, which is the part of town where the moneyed colombians stay...and it looks so much like miami beach it is pretty scary!!! today we walked around all day and we're pretty exhausted, but i had a blast eating arepas and mangos and cheese off the street vendors, bargaining our way through some burned cd's with vallenato, and stuff like that...the smile of some colombian girls is unexpectedly very rewarding and surprising at times! well anyway, tomorrow we're going on a full-day boat excursion to the islands of rosario around the bay, then to playa grande, a beach not too far from here...and then the next day we're supposedly going to this mud volcano where you can swim in and have "mud fun"! hahah we'll see how that goes...i am seriously looking forward to getting out of a touristy place and feel more like i am in a more colombian place...