10 15 2010 At sea

Worked on my pictures from Cabo. It was very hot outside and sunny so I escaped to hear another lecture in the theater by Ray Rychnovsky about Cartagena and Aruba.

Columbia was originally populated by the Chibchas Indians. They were excellent goldsmiths and skilled in weaving and pottery. Unfortunately, this was their downfall as the explorers plundered them for their emeralds and gold.

Cartagena is the biggest port in Columbia and one of the biggest in South America - population 892000. It was founded in 1533 by Don Pedro de Heredia. The Spanish conquistadors stole the gold and emeralds and shipped them from Cartagena to Spain. To defend Cartagena from pirate attacks, King Felipe II ordered a protective wall to be built around the city. Cartagena was under siege five times during the 16th century - the most famous led by Sir Francis Drake in 1586. After Drake's siege, Spain built a massive stone wall around the Old City and a fortress, which paid off when in 1741 England attacked with a force of 24,000 men and 186 ships without success. The Spanish admiral Bla de Lezo Olaverrieta defended Cartagena with a much smaller force and so preserved the Spanish empire in the Americas. He was called Halfman as he had only one eye, one hand, and one leg due to his battles. The fortress Castello de San Felipe de Borajas was built for 208 years to repel land attacks - buildings for food storage, defensive tunnels (one person wide), etc. It was finished 1756. The wall around the city and the fortress are now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 1811 Columbia became independent.

Industries: shipping, tourism, oil, emeralds, gold.

Temperature: 88-90F. It lies south of the hurricane track.

The streets in the Old Town are narrow, the buildings have balconies, and are painted in colorful hues.


ARUBA is a small island - 19 x 6 miles - population 101,000 - industries: tourism, oil refinery, aloe vera, phosphate and gold mining - temperature 85-89F, 18" rain/year, Oranjestad the capital is a clean, safe town.
$1=l.79 Aruba Florin

Aruba was colonized by Spain. In 1636 it had been conquered by the Dutch. The Dutch did not colonized areas but took by military conquest already existing settlements from the colonizer. For example, they forcibly absorbed nearby New Sweden by the Delaware River in 1655 from Sweden.

Papiamento - a unique combination of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, African and Indian words - is spoken in the Dutch ABC islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao.

Aruba is now a constitutional country of the Dutch Commonwealth. The Governor is appointed by the Queen. The people are Dutch citizens but Aruba is not part of the European Union. The legal system is based on the Dutch system with courts not juries.


We had dinner in the dining room - delicious and beautifully arranged. At the next table were some Chinese people sitting. Two of the men were studying their cameras and took pictures of the food before they ate. The cameras looked just like the Nikon P100 that had fascinated me the other day. That inspired me to photograph the desserts too. They tasted as good as they looked.

Jalil left to catch the end of the baseball play-offs. I went outside to write and read. It was so quiet and nice there - hardly any people. In the afternoon I had tried to find a chair but could not.