Cartagena
We spent 5 days in Cartagena, staying in the rejuvenated Getsemani neighborhood just outside the walled old city. Getsemani is full of wall murals and colorful streets, small hotels and hostels and lots of bars and restaurants. It especially attracts tourists from other Latin American countries. Inside the walled city there are pricier hotels, restaurants and more historical buildings. There were essentially no North American tourists, except on cruise ship day, when the city was flooded with older white people (gee, I guess that describes us now). With all the people, music, food, it was a colorful noisy experience.
and of course, with such a picturesque setting, aspiring Instagram stars were everywhere:
Our apartment faced onto Calle 30, a main thorough fare through town with a park opposite our apartment. Sloths and monkeys live in the trees in the park.
The Cartagena Party Buses
With the park across the street and no bar on the flrst floor below us, we thought it would be fairly quiet at night. No such luck. Calle 30 also happens to be part of the route for party buses, which rolled through in the evenings until the wee hours, playing thumping music for their inebriated passengers singing and cheering along with the music and the emcee’s shouts and chants of encouragement.
The last night we spent in a hotel just up the street, which, in addition to the party busses, was located directly across from Cafe Havana. The live Cuban music (think Ricky Ricardo with the bongo drums and a band with trumpets) was really good, but ran until about 2 am. Occasionally the rolling Party Bus music clashed with the stationary Cuban music. Life in the city is a noisy thing.
Inside the Walled City
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish built a wall around Cartagena to protect their plundered gold from being plundered by the French and English. We spent time walking through the walled city, full of tourists and aggressive vendors selling hats, tours, gelato, emeralds and food. The Gold Museum was closed for renovation, but a smaller display was set up in a nearby bank. It chronicled ancient pottery and gold sculptures and artifacts worn by kings. I really liked the simple happy face on the clay pot, and the intricate filigree of the golden earrings, cast using the lost wax technique. The Emerald Museum explained the mining methods, which then lead to a store with beautiful but expensive emeralds. Needless to say, Susie bought neither gold nor emeralds.
The Peter Claver house showed the history of this Catholic priest and missionary who came to Cartagena in 1610 and dedicated his life to serving the enslaved African people in the region. The house is well preserved. After his death the Catholic Church built a chapel next to the house where he lived to honor him, and later the Catholic church made him a Saint.
A huge Spanish fort (largest in the Americas) sits behind Cartagena on a hill. It was built to defend Cartagena from a land attack. It’s size and clever design prevented the fort from ever being taken, even when the English attacked with a much larger army.
We ate good food at small nearby restaurants such as Municipal Tacos, Pascals, and Arepas at Colombitalia Arepas. Cartagena and the Getsemeni neighborhood are lively places with great restaurants, quaint streets, a great melting pot of ethnicities, with that somber historical backdrop of Spanish conquest and the slave trade.
San Andres Island:
Yes, Colombia has two small islands in the Caribbean Sea located much closer to Nicaragua than Colombia. Viva Airlines had cheap fares to San Andres, so we thought we’d go out and see the place. San Andres and Providencia are located just below the star in the map above. While politically connected to Colombia, historical connections are to the British. The first language is English-based creole, with some Spanish and African languages mixed in. Locals speak Creole or English with an accent similar to Jamaican. San Andres was reportedly a hangout of the privateer Henry Morgan in the 17th century.
This is a tourist resort island full of Latin American tourists with a very small sprinkling of western tourists. Like other tropical tourist islands, there are scooters and golf carts and side-by-side carts for rent, lots of restaurants, hotels and apartments, name brand beachwear stores etc. along the boardwalk of the beach in the main island city. The rest of the island is more sparsely populated.
We ended up at a less-than-ideal ground floor apartment in town of San Andres (simply referred to as El Centro locally), and a 3 minute walk from the main beach. Long story as to how we landed there, when we were hoping for a quiet oceanfront bungalow. We had all the noises of a ground-floor apartment in town at night, including one morning of hammering through the cement floor right outside our door, to get to the sewer line and snake out a clog. (see photo,) “Adventure travel” does not always mean fun or ideal.
Around the Island
We rented a two-seat Mule to drive around the island. Great views of multi-hued blue/green Caribbean waters over rocky shoreline on the west coast, a blowhole at the southern tip (only blowing air while we were there), and a stop at a quieter beach on the east coast for lunch and swimming. The water was bathtub warm, and the sunshine was fierce, so we stayed in the shade of palm trees until later in the day to take a swim.
In the evening we returned to El Centro and walked the beach boardwalk in town with lots of other tourists.
A photo while flying away from the island shows the beautiful clear water and reefs on the east side of the island. Our apartment was in the middle of the peninsula in the photo:
We can see why it is a destination for folks from Central and South America. We enjoyed our time here and it was novel to visit this island that is not very well known by travelers outside Latin America. Not really a bucket list destination, compared to all the other Caribbean locations further east.
Next up, Medellin, Colombia!
Is Colombia Safe?
Colombia was a dangerous place not that long ago. Crime, drug lords (remember Pablo Escobar and his Medellin Cartel?). From our research, parts of the country are still not good destinations for tourists, such as the jungle regions near borders with Venezuela and Ecuador. The cities are generally safe and lively, especially during the day.
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