Barranquilla

 Our shared ride car for our trip to Barranquilla showed up at 9:30 this morning. We shared the ride with British couple who were going all the way to Cartagena.

Our first stop was the Carnaval museum. Barranquilla has the second biggest carnival in the world (after Rio)  and this coming weekend is the carnival so the city is getting ready.

The museum has the history of the carnival ( which I don't really care about) BUT it does have 42 Queen of the "Carnaval" dresses worn by the various queen's over the previous years. Two photos below!

Very elaborate.

We took a Uber (actually a Colombian equivalent) to the malecon where we spent a few hours walking around and having a meal.

Our shared ride back was incredibly interesting. Our driver picked us up first and then we had to go a different part of the city to pick up two more people. We saw many beautiful colonial buildings.

Now the drive back got interesting. We drove through some really sketchy parts of the city in order to reach the highway.After we got going  the driver was  pulled over by corrupt cops and ended up paying a 50,000 peso "fine". This is about $C15 (which I paid as I had the correct change and I just subtracted the amount from our one way charge of about $C35.)

We saw many (MANY) motorbikes on the highway. Most motorbikes use the shoulder (At Highway speed) which is a great idea as the drivers of cars and trucks are crazy and there would be many motorcyclists killed here I think if they stayed in the regular lanes .

A big truck ahead of us snagged some overhead lines in a slow speed area just in front of us. Our driver simply pulled in to the oncoming lane,went underneath the snagged wires  still caught up in the truck, and carried on!

We got back here to the very unwelcome news that Air BnB had not cancelled the second reservation from last week so we have two active reservations for tomorrow. So I have been in contact with Air BnB AGAIN. This is becoming very annoying (and maybe an even more expensive mistake)

Time for a rum!!