Retire Early Lifestyle
Retirement; like your parents, but way cooler

In 1991 Billy and Akaisha Kaderli retired at the age of 38. Now, into their 4th decade of this financially independent lifestyle, they invite you to take advantage of their wisdom and experience.

La Estrella

Restaurant - Bar

Cartagena, Colombia

Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

Currency Exchange

We were finally on our long-awaited trip to Colombia.

After settling in at our hotel, the first afternoon we simply walked out the door, found a place and (happily) ordered some of the best burgers we have had in Latin America. But these were at tourist prices, so we needed a local place - A restaurant where the native Cartagenos ate, at native prices.

Enter, La Estrella Restaurant and Bar.

Stitched emblem of La Estrella on an employee's shirt

Since our hotel was right in town, we had the convenience of most everything being close by.

Not far from our daily coffee place, we stumbled into this open air eatery which seemed to be very popular.

Perfect.

(Notice the bottle of beer inside the stitched star of this emblem!)

Community seating

Seating at La Estrella is open and shared. Generally, there are 4-top tables all throughout, and in this case, several of them were pulled together to accommodate this crowd of friends.

Often we ate with strangers by sharing their table. People were open and friendly.

Menu at La Estrella

Prices for complete plates here run from just over $3USD to about $10USD. If you check the currency exchange link at the top of this page, you will find the most current exchange of COP to USD.

Prices are listed in the thousands COP, so the breaded fish filet listed at the bottom (12,000COP) ran just over $3USD.

Beautiful Afro-Colombiana

Three girlfriends were sharing lunch and several Corona beers together.

This young woman is particularly stunning, but in all  honesty, it seemed all the locals were handsome or gorgeous.

Carlos

In the evenings, La Estrella became a neighborhood bar, like Cheers.

The night before we left, La Estrella was very busy, and we ended up sharing this table with Carlos. Of indigenous background, Carlos told us of his family living for generations in Bogota. He knew quite a bit of history from the perspective of a family who lived through the Conquistadores, the selling of African humans, all the way to modern day times.

He had many stories to tell.

Fortunately, our Spanish was sufficient enough for us to grasp most of what he was sharing.

Restaurant during the day, bar at night

During the day, La Estrella is a restaurant serving full meals and sundries.

At night, the place fills up again, only this time, as a neighborhood bar. You can see the bottle offerings behind the man in the red shirt. The items in the case on the right are fried empanadas stuffed with chicken, pork, or some sweet.

You can also pick up some snacks and a soda if you would like.

The local beer and hot sauce

Aguila, meaning Eagle, is one of the country's local beers.

The bottle of hot sauce is called Ajibasco. It had the most unusual flavor... tasting of green olives but spicy!

It was so delicious, unique and surprising, that we purchased a bottle to take home.

Full plate for $3USD

This is one of La Estrella's typical $3 plates. A beverage is included in the price as well.

Fried plantain, coconut rice, beans, grilled pork chop and shredded carrot/cabbage salad with a tomato slice on top.

Another $3 meal

This is the same idea, this time with a whitefish fillet.

It was easy to get a full meal here, and often we took leftovers home to put into the hotel's refrigerator to have for breakfast.

At just over $3USD per person,  is was a deal not to pass up!

The waiter serving a customer

All the waitstaff at La Estrella wore red shirts. This man is wearing a typical hat worn by many Colombianos, and they were sold "everywhere" on the streets.

The menu is on the wall behind them.

Fried Mojarra

This particular plate, a whole Mojarra fish, was just over $6USD at the time of our visit.

Whole fish served with head and fins still attached is very common around the world. To be eaten with one's fingers, after the meal, it's often difficult to get that sticky-fish off your hands.

If you don't have a babywipe with you, just ask for another slice of lime and use that to take off the tackiness of your meal.

Works wonders.

And in that way you won't have bits of napkin stuck to yourself which can be very annoying.

Our bill

This was the bill for our first meal at La Estrella, coming to just under $12USD.

We later found out that an agua fresca (fruit water) was included in the meal, and we pretty much stuck to the 12,000COP meals after that.

By adopting this strategy, our daily lunches there totaled about $8USD. We wanted to spend that savings later on in the day by visiting many of the rooftop bars.

Those were GREAT fun.

La Estrella Restaurant Bar

2- a, Cl. 38 # 2-139

Cartagena, Bolívar, Colombia

For more information on Colombia, with photos, stories and videos, click here

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Retire Early Lifestyle appeals to a different kind of person – the person who prizes their independence, values their time, and who doesn’t want to mindlessly follow the crowd.

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