Cartagena, still

It is good that the blue truck has gotten used to trips on water. Beacause after the vessel Toronto has been delayed due to destructive señorita Sandy, which kept the 299 meter RoRo vessel a float out in the Atlantic for a couple days before it could sail in to Baltimore's harbour at the US East coast, causing a 3 day delay with its arrival in Veracruz, Mexico, where the blue truck boarded. It is now on  - its new - schedule to roll into the harbour of Cartagena in Colombia on the 18th of November. There is only one problem. The harbour here is so busy that the harbour police has not given it a window to sail into the harbour prior to the 21st of November at 6am. 

Colombia, not just busy streets, a busy harbour too

This has made me curious, what is going on in Colombia that the harbour is so busy that it doesn't even ave space for "my" vessel? I have done some research in the internet and in fact the economy of Colombia the country that we often just know by the news of drug cartels, the killing of Escobar in the 90ties and the war between the goverment and the FARC guirillas, is going fairly strong. Especially considering economy in the US and Europe. Unemployment rate has gone down by about 3% since the beginning of the year and dropped below 10% in October. Interest rates have been continously high and are at levels we wouldn't even allow ourselfs to dream of in Europe or the US and have average at over 4.5% in 2012. Registration of new cars is raising, salary in manufacturing are raising, consumer prices are rising, consumer spending is rising. Dependency of the US as Colombias export nation No. 1 has decreased and it looks a lot like a significant portion of the growth of this country is organic. 

This is not to say there wouldn't be any problems. FARC is still a challange, might even be for me when I start travelling the country. Drug production, export and traffic are an issue, still. Nevertheless I was surprised to learn about that, just because the arrival of my truck is delayed a few days. And reading this, that my current host country is in an upswing while most of the world is struggling getting out of recession or avoiding inflation makes waiting the couple of days longer a lot easier.