While I was in Cartagena, the daytime temperature was often only in the high 80s but the heat index was often near 110 and the UV index was usually 10 and up (6 is high).

That sort of humidity and heat and sun is very uncomfortable and you get sweaty within minutes of being outside in the sun especially if you are walking. You can also get a sunburn in under 15 minutes. Check out this chart from aimatmelanoma.com. Only a little while in the morning and evening were below level 6. So most of the day was pretty swealtering.

To avoid the worst of it, I ate a breakfast bar, then went out into a neighborhood (Getsamani or Old Town ) from around 7am till 9 or so when I returned to my hotel for the included breakfast. I then would take my sunbrella (shown below – you can click) which are fairly common to see here) and walk around until noon or so and then go to a local restaurant that hopefully had AC, free WIFI (there are many stickers on doors so you know), or both, and would eat a leisurely lunch. I like this particular sunbrella because it is very compact but still good in fairly windy conditions.

By 1pm it’s sweltering in the shade, so I’d go back to my hotel room and its AC for a little while and go through email, write a blog post like this, or watch videos. Once the temp and UV index got back to something bearable, I’d go back out.

In Cartagena, each time I went back to my room, I would change my clothes to something dry and hang up my now wet clothes so I could put them on again later. I was extremely thankful for my quick-dry clothing, but found I should have brought 4 bras, and 4 pants, not just 3 of each since I was swapping out up to 3x a day for clean and dry items. If my clothes was not quick-dry I would have been wearing damp clothes most of the day, not my favorite thing, nor yours probably.

Happy travels!

There are so many things to do in Cartagena and in other hot countries that it is important to have ways of dealing with the heat.

Here are just some of the options in Cartagena: