Cartagena Reports

[QUOTE=Nypher;2591879]Nothing much happens. All you get is an email confirmation that you did it. Then when you travel you have to show them the email confirmation before boarding the plane and when you land you have to show immigration officer the same email. They are only looking at your name and registration number and passport number to make sure every thing match up.

I got stuck at the front of the line the line for 30 minutes because two dumb ass women did not have her shit together and took forever to provide the immigration officer with the address and phone number of the place they were going to stay. The bad shit was there were only 2 booths open for feigners and the women were at both booths and I was waiting behind them to be next. I passed through the officer in 5 minutes. Simple process, handed them my passport with the printed out email of the Check MiG, and a printed out email of the AirBB that had the address and phone number on it. They did everything, asked no questions, stamped the passport then gave me the Bienvidios![/QUOTE]Thanks for that. Any idea of the time frame for the confirmation please? I had several probs with the Mig site, and I have doubts about it.

[QUOTE=Dublin12;2592162]Thanks for that. Any idea of the time frame for the confirmation please? I had several probs with the Mig site, and I have doubts about it.[/QUOTE]It sends the email as soon as you click send. You should also screenshot after you press for cases when you do not get the email. I have never not gotten the email in 2 seconds.

[QUOTE=Dublin12;2592159]All good points. However, I would expect persons using it to carry out their own due diligence to check on the current validity of such info. I came across a page on this site from about 2016 with around a dozen links for guest friendly hotels. Ten were dead.

On the other hand, Guest Friendly info in Colombia seems to be precious info.[/QUOTE]You would be surprised how many travelers read these pages, do not do their due diligence to verify the information. [blue][Deleted by Admin][/blue]

[QUOTE=Dublin12;2592162]Thanks for that. Any idea of the time frame for the confirmation please? I had several probs with the Mig site, and I have doubts about it.[/QUOTE]I received the email instantly but it ended up in my junk mail folder. You may want to check your Spam or junk mail folder. If not, preregister again and verify your email address is correct.

It has rained every day since I landed Sunday. The bad part is that the sewage system cannot drain the water fast enough so the smell is terrible when walking around Centro.

Playa Hollywood vendors are 4 X as annoying. After it rained yesterday, my friends and I decided to go to Playa Hollywood as it will be les people and we can enjoy the beach more. A soon as we stepped out of the taxi Jose and his son are ready to pounce. We didn't even get a chance to step in the sand yet. Instantly started showing us tables to sit. I walked by Tony#1 said Hi to him, his English is good and way better than Jose. Seems there is some rivalry between these guys to get gringos chairs and food and drinks.

The vendors set up shop right by the bathrooms and as soon as we passed it they followed behind us all the way to where we were sitting. Highly annoying! We are having drinks, the vendors are bothering us; we are trying to eat, the vendors are bothering us, they will not take no and constantly hover. Ran into a new annoyance. I kept hearing this squeaking sound like a dog with a squeaky toy. I though it was those black birds flying around and was annoyed so I told the vendor to keeps the birds away form me. He replies "no bird. Mime. " To my surprise turn around and lo and behold there is a Mime behind me pantomiming and his voice is the squeaky toy. I had one big WTF moment, and decided to call it a day and the bill came in almost 2 million pesos due to 6 orders of food and drinks I guess.

Woke up this great Friday morning to the smell of my chica cooking breakfast. 5 minutes into eating outside by the pool, a total deluge!! Its been raining for the last hour non stop. A private pool and due to the rain or cloudy skies the sun is hardly out to enjoy it but all the girls I've ran into so far more than make up for it. I'm on chica#9 and I have not once heard the words leche papi or been over charged that much for a gringo. 250 mil for 2 leches during the day and 500 mil -600 mil la noche but most girls don't show up in the discos until close to 11 pm.

As a word of advice to the new mongers. When you are matching on tinder or you get a girls number in the night and want to see her during the day. Ask her how close she lives next to where you are staying due to although they live in Cartagena it can take some of them over an hour to get to Centro or Boca Grande. This gives you the timing if you are rotating chicas on the same day.

[QUOTE=Nypher;2592190] When you are matching on tinder or you get a girls number in the night and want to see her during the day. Ask her how close she lives next to where you are staying due to although they live in Cartagena it can take some of them over an hour to get to Centro or Boca Grande. This gives you the timing if you are rotating chicas on the same day.[/QUOTE]I can concur that it takes a while for chicas to travel across Cartagena. Geographically, that is to say looking at it on a map, Cartagena is no that large a large city at all but there are over 900,000 people crammed into the small area that it occupies, and it is not a grided city it was deeveloped haphazardly so there is the one main road that runs through the center, and one that runs around the outside that is sometimes quicker to use. Most taxi drivers are not using GPS, so they may not even know the quickest routes that time of day, probably don't use GPS because they are poor and don't want to pay for data all day long.

I used to see a non-pro chica that lived in the far southeast part of the city and she had her own car and it took the better part of an hour for her to drive to Laguito. More recently I was seeing a chica a few times that lived near the Mall Paseo de la Castellana, which is in the eastern part of the city and it was an forty five minutes to an hour for her to come by taxi. For guys who are familiar with Medellin it is like a chica traveling from Bello to Laureles or even Poblado depending on the time of day and traffic. I posted a image of the directions routes from Google Maps to show how long it estimates.

Will be in Cartagena the last week of September. Found the El Viajero Centro has an apartment. May use it or just get an extra room each night for mongering but will be nice to be that close to home. Still interested in hooking up with fellow mongers while there. Love this place. First drink is on me.

[QUOTE=MrEnternational;2592178]It sends the email as soon as you click send. You should also screenshot after you press for cases when you do not get the email. I have never not gotten the email in 2 seconds.[/QUOTE]The site is an absolute nightmare and very poorly designed. I've had nothing and following on from your post, I tried to to apply again. The site has locked me out and does not recognise my password even though I saved it in Google passwords.

I've since discovered that before I entered the Bio details, I should have filled in details of my flight, and was not allowed to apply until I was 48 hours from take off. It's now obvious that the system is meant to be linear so why did it not tell me that I have to fill in flight details first, and that I cannot apply more than 48 hours in advance? If there is a problem with the info provided, when you click "next", it takes you back to the age you are already on, but gives no indication of what the problem is. Then there is the problem of ambiguity. It asks what travel doc I am using, and included in the options are "Passport" and "Official Passport". What's the difference? Aren't all Passports "official"?

I've deleted my web history in case the prob could be solved by deleting cookies, but it keeps showing my main email address.

I've contacted my Airbnb host, She has a sister who is a travel agent. She has come up with the idea that they will make the application for me using my alternate email address to access the confirmation. That way, my main email address will not cause a prob as it seems to at the moment. Hopefully that should work. However, my concern now is that they cannot do so until Midnight on Aug 22nd and if this fails the only other options I can think of are the Colombian Consulate in DUB, which is currently closed due to Covid, or possibly my host might be able to contact the Colombian Foreign Ministry in the hope of sorting this out. If it's the latter, I am presuming that the Ministry will not be open until 09.00 the following day (15.00 DUB time), and that's just 15 hours before my flight is due to take off.

For some reason, ISG will not allow me to tag my reply to your post so I have replied this way:

I did check the junk folder when I got no acknowledgement after a couple of days. If you see my reply to Mr E, below this, you will see that my attempts to deal with this seem to have been stymied by the website itself which appears to have been very badly designed for foreign use. Thanks anyway.

[QUOTE=Dublin12;2592507]The site is an absolute nightmare and very poorly designed. I've had nothing and following on from your post, I tried to to apply again. The site has locked me out and does not recognise my password even though I saved it in Google passwords.
[/QUOTE]I don't know why you are having so many problems. I just did it 5 minutes ago for my trip tomorrow and no problems to speak of. Took me like 2 minutes to complete it.

There are different types of passports. Government employees and people that work at embassies have official and diplomatic passports.

Recognize your password? No idea what you are talking about. There is no password needed for the site. Maybe it is different for me because I think the app is on my phone and I am not using a website. Download the app and see how that works out for you.

I heard Cartagena high end hotels do not allow overnight guests.

1. Is it possible to get daytime guests and keep her in the room like I did in other hotels all over the world. Do they keep the cedula of guests?

2 I always book for two people. Can I go and make a deal with a chica and sign her up as my companion?

3. I am sure on the way from the airport get the taxi guy cruise around and find a girl and check in together.

Now that going to Asia is pretty much not possible this year I am thinking of going to Cartagena. Not much interested in staying at air be&be.

Like high end hotels and get a girl and stay together and maybe travel around. I have done this in Costa Rica.

[QUOTE=Dublin12;2592507]The site is an absolute nightmare and very poorly designed.

...and that I cannot apply more than 48 hours in advance? ...[/QUOTE]I am not sure which site you are using, but early this year I had similar issues. I used the Colombia migracion website and entered all the info requested. I never received an email from them. Checked my spam folder, nothing. So, I went back and tried to do it again but the site would not let me. On the 2nd time, I decided to take screen shots of what I was doing, then printed them out.

At the local airport where I live, the AA airline agent would not let me board the plane without the email from migracion. I started to argue with him and showed him my screen shots. After a while, he somehow decided to let me in. After that it was a breeze. I flew through Miami and nobody asked me for any proof. When I arrived in Colombia, I simply handed out the printout of my screen shots, and the agent stamped my passport and I was on my way.

Once in Colombia, I learned that everybody else was doing it via their smart phone and hardly anyone used their desktop / laptop. So, I assumed that was my problem. I figured the app was designed for smart phones and that it doesn't work well with desktop agents. I never had a problem since, as I switched to using my Iphone instead.

[QUOTE=MrEnternational;2592580]I don't know why you are having so many problems. I just did it 5 minutes ago for my trip tomorrow and no problems to speak of. Took me like 2 minutes to complete it.

There are different types of passports. Government employees and people that work at embassies have official and diplomatic passports.

Recognize your password? No idea what you are talking about. There is no password needed for the site. Maybe it is different for me because I think the app is on my phone and I am not using a website. Download the app and see how that works out for you.[/QUOTE][URL]https://apps.migracioncolombia.gov.co/pre-registro/public/iniciarSesion.jsf[/URL]

Click on the link, and it takes you direct to a page asking for a password.

This link: [URL]https://apps.migracioncolombia.gov.co/pre-registro/public/registrarUsuario.jsf[/URL] asks your nationality and then gives 4 passport options including "passport" and "official passport". It also includes Diplomatic passports which suggests that the other two passports mentioned have nothing to do with Diplomatic.

And if you look at this site: [URL]https://apps.migracioncolombia.gov.co/pre-registro/public/preregistro.jsf[/URL] it apparently has seven different types of passport listed.

I really don't make this stuff up.

[QUOTE=Sammon;2592590]I heard Cartagena high end hotels do not allow overnight guests.

1. Is it possible to get daytime guests and keep her in the room like I did in other hotels all over the world. Do they keep the cedula of guests?

2 I always book for two people. Can I go and make a deal with a chica and sign her up as my companion?

3. I am sure on the way from the airport get the taxi guy cruise around and find a girl and check in together.

Now that going to Asia is pretty much not possible this year I am thinking of going to Cartagena. Not much interested in staying at air be&be.

Like high end hotels and get a girl and stay together and maybe travel around. I have done this in Costa Rica.[/QUOTE]Finding G / friendly hotels seems to be difficult. There is this on Youtube:

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kj2Tw8EB1s[/URL]

I am in the same boat as you: a 1st time refugee from SEA, and the perceived wisdom seems to be that you are more likely to find success with Airbnb. But ypu will need to clarify with the hosts in advance.

Look through recent posts on this section, and there is plenty of advice from regular mongers.

[QUOTE=Lefeu;2592615]I am not sure which site you are using, but early this year I had similar issues. I used the Colombia migracion website and entered all the info requested. I never received an email from them. Checked my spam folder, nothing. So, I went back and tried to do it again but the site would not let me. On the 2nd time, I decided to take screen shots of what I was doing, then printed them out.

At the local airport where I live, the AA airline agent would not let me board the plane without the email from migracion. I started to argue with him and showed him my screen shots. After a while, he somehow decided to let me in. After that it was a breeze. I flew through Miami and nobody asked me for any proof. When I arrived in Colombia, I simply handed out the printout of my screen shots, and the agent stamped my passport and I was on my way.

Once in Colombia, I learned that everybody else was doing it via their smart phone and hardly anyone used their desktop / laptop. So, I assumed that was my problem. I figured the app was designed for smart phones and that it doesn't work well with desktop agents. I never had a problem since, as I switched to using my Iphone instead.[/QUOTE]I am glad to hear that my experience is not unique. However if you check the post by Gene Hickman #11341, you will see that he says it's the phone app that is the problem and he recommends using the web browser.

I think you were lucky with the AA airline agent. He would have been within his rights to refuse you, but I am delighted that you had a happy ending.

I can't follow your screenshot advice because I am still locked out by my rejected password.

I strongly suspect that there is more than one app, and I have fallen foul of the "rogue".

[QUOTE=MrEnternational;2592580]I don't know why you are having so many problems. I just did it 5 minutes ago for my trip tomorrow and no problems to speak of. Took me like 2 minutes to complete it.

There are different types of passports. Government employees and people that work at embassies have official and diplomatic passports.

Recognize your password? No idea what you are talking about. There is no password needed for the site. Maybe it is different for me because I think the app is on my phone and I am not using a website. Download the app and see how that works out for you.[/QUOTE]I see from your screenshots that this is entirely different from the site I've been using. Also if you read you read the post by Lefeu, he pretty much complains of identical problems to that which I had including password probs.