Cartagena to San Andres

Got back to Cartagena again with the explicit plan of finally taking care of this Panama issue (to be talked about later) and get the hell out of South America. As will be explained, this never happened.
On the shuttle from Santa Marta to Cartagena, as per the gringo trail rule, we met 3 guys we were on the Lost City Trek with. Navin, an English guy and Charlie and Grant, two Americans. After getting dropped off, we all decided to meet up the next day for the infamous Cartagena Mud Volcano. Now the Mud Volcano is basically a big mound of earth about 60 feet high. You climb a rickety, muddy staircase to the top of this mound and are faced with a soupy, mud hole filled with people laughing and throwing mud at eachother. You wait your turn, climb in and are instantly grabbed by a Colombian in the hole who starts slapping and sliding mud all over your body. It was uncomfortable. I don't think another man sliding a muddy hand all over your body could be anything but that though. What makes matters worse is that by letting him grab me and touch me while laying in the mud awkwardly, I was tacitly agreeing to a $3000 COP "massage." It was the worse massage of my life. Anyway, it turns out that this is a true geological feature. El Totumo Volcano is the surface eruption of rotting vegetation pushed to the surface and apparently the hole goes down about 1,100 meters or something. Not like there is any danger of sinking. The mud makes you more bouyant than a cork top.
While in Cartagena, we went to a great beach on Playa Blanca which is one in a long string of islands known as the Rosario islands. Stayed for a few days doing the usual Caribbean Coast beach things; drinking, eating, making fires, killing mosquitoes, sleeping in hammocks. We also met up with Eduardo and Laura again for the usual awesome dose of Eduardo's historical knowledge. Cartagena, like I've said before, is a really amazing city and Eduardo enlightened us on some things you wouldn't have known about before.
I was eventually convinced to go to the San Andres islands with some New Yorkers, ZeeCee and Denise, that I met. They were going with some Danish guys and I really wanted to Scuba Dive so I went. San Andres is an island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea about 470 miles from the Colombian mainland. How it came to be Colombian territory while being so far away is similar to how Easter Island came to be a part of Chilean territory. San Andres is interesting because it's a completely unique amalgamation of the plethora of European countries that were fighting for control of it. Because of this, the indigenous population speaks English and Spanish. It was the home to tons of pirates like the infamous Captain Henry Morgan and you can imagine what the tiny island must have looked like 200 years ago.
We got a house right across the beach and spent our days scuba diving, on the beach or riding around in a rented scooter, which we rented from a guy who called himself "The General" a 60 year old rastafarian who lived in a burned out house and rented scooters (and also sold pot as he told us). I'd really like to be his friend. I've never been so relaxed and had such a great time. I only ended up going on two dives since my wallet hurt me and I got a weird fever for the last few days that kind of incapacitated me. However, 5 days here is nowhere near enough. I'd go back in a heart beat.