Cartagena, Colombia

I took the bus from Guachaca to Cartagena via Santa Marta, about a five-hour trip along a two-lane coastal highway. The bus wasn’t comfortable and the scenery wasn’t great, so I was glad when I arrived in Cartagena. I took a taxi from the bus terminal to my small hotel within the walls of the old city.

Cartagena’s old city consists of the inner historical districts of El Centro and San Diego and an outer walled town, Getsemaní. The inner districts are more elegant and expensive, with more affluent tourists. I stayed in Getsemaní which is more bohemian, catering to a younger crowd.  I stayed at Posada La Fe, located on a quiet narrow side street.  My room was very comfortable and I enjoyed the tiny swimming pool on the roof terrace and the nice breakfast served each morning by cheerful staff.

I enjoyed walking around the old city, impressed by its thick fortress walls, the colonial architecture, the small plazas and the city’s history, especially the epic naval battles that took place in the bay beyond the walls. These naval battles are documented by excruciating detailed, minute-by-minute timelines (in Spanish) at the Museo Naval de Caribe.

You can tell that Cartagena was a very rich, very cultured, very cosmopolitan city during the days it was ruled by Spain.  The sense of its tropical elegance and once commercial importance has been preserved. It makes other New World colonial cities in North and Central America seem like outposts. Historic Boston seems like a rustic hamlet by comparison.

Yet I couldn’t help but get a feeling like I was visiting a variation on Disneyland. Once you pass through one of the gates into the walled city, you are in a place dedicated 100 percent to tourism. Restaurants, gift shops, bars, hotels, museums, tour offices throughout. Tourists by the thousands wandering around. Caribbean women in bright dresses with bowls of fruit on their heads readily available for picture-taking, like Disney characters roam around the Magic Kingdom. I have a similar impression of Venice, Italy, another historic city that is virtually devoid of local residents and local-serving business, overrun by tourists.

After a couple of days of exploring the old city were enough and I grew tired of the noise and tourist bustle and ventured beyond the wall.

I spent a day visiting the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which is considered the greatest fortress ever built by the Spaniards in their colonies. It is indeed quite a feat of military engineering. The castle is located high on a hill above the city overlooking the surrounding land and waters.  Its design and layout provide redundant artillery coverage in every direction with 10-foot (3 meter) thick walls protecting the cannons and their crews. Tunnels run underground between the gun emplacements so that soldiers and ammunition could be moved around during battle. It was impregnable and was never taken, despite numerous assaults. I can well imagine that this fort inspired the design of America’s Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, which I visited during my sailing voyage on my way from Mexico to New York.

I spent my last day walking along a beach road in the modern, high-rise neighborhood of Boca Grande. There are nice hotels, condominiums and shopping malls on the land side of the road, rustic little beach bar/restaurants on the sea side. The tourists here are mostly Colombian. It was a nice walk and I enjoyed a respite from “Disneyland” but nothing special to note. However, I can imagine that there is plenty more to discover if one stayed longer in Cartagena. I think my impression was clouded by aversion to the tourism in old town.

I was in Cartagena during the week of March 9, 2020, as the world beyond China, South Korea and Italy started treating coronavirus pandemic as a serious threat. Colombia had only a few cases and life in Cartagena seemed to be going on mostly as usual. People were washing their hands more frequently and the city’s stores were out of hand sanitizer, a few people were wearing masks. But the streets of the old city and its plazas, restaurants and bars were thronged with people enjoying themselves.

I would watch that gradually change as I moved on to Medellín.