Cartagena (Colombia)

Cartagena is a city on Colombia's Caribbean coast. If you've read or watched Love In The Time Of Cholera you might be familiar with it, ditto if you're a fan of cruising as it's a popular port of call. We went for the final week of my stay in the country, as it's somewhere I thought warranted more than a weekend, the only time I could spare while still working. Because there are two main areas, the historic centre and the stretch of beach, we chose to make it into a twin centred holiday and switched hotels half way through. This worked out really well and it honestly felt like we had travelled some distance, not just a few km down the road, as the areas are so different.

Now THAT'S What I Call South America

I've been all over the place in the last year, leaving the UK last autumn for 4 months in Africa, spending 3 freezing weeks back here in January and then moving to Colombia for 6 months with just a brief jaunt to Venezuela. Here's what no one ever tells you about South America: it can be cold and wet and miserable. Which is fine when you're living and working there, but when you're coming home and everyone expects a tan, well, then action needs to be taken, hence our beach getaway. Getting off the plane in Cartagena was like walking into a sauna. The city is tropical, hot and humid. Being close to the Equator means it's a 12 hours of light / 12 hours of darkness set up, but once the sun is up, so is the temperature. We were regularly outside by 8am and it was already sizzling, staying that way until the sunset around 6.30pm when it cooled off but only everso slightly. Because Cartagena's centre is within walls, these keep out any potential sea breeze, and the streets don't help either, as they're narrow and crowded.

Cartagena has a main tourist office and several satellite branches but they are currently all well hidden behind thick scaffolding, and it took us a while to track one down to acquire a map and ask the super important questions (like "Is there a Crepes and waffles in the centre? Where exactly?") The map we got came in a booklet listing hotels and restaurants, but there was little in the way of tourist info or history on offer there or anywhere else for that matter. Luckily I'd photocopied the relevant pages of my guidebooks so I knew all about how the city had barely survived an attack by the evil, menacing , plundering pirate that was Sir Francis Drake. My students had in fact told me this too. What? I asked. They must be mistaken. They must not have got their words right. After all, everyone knows FD was a skilled and intrepid explorer, a hero in fact, not an evil, menacing, plundering pirate.

The Tourist Tariff

We had high hopes for doing lots of sightseeing but it was just too hot and, more to the point, everything was so expensive. In Bogota most things are free or cost $3000 pesos (£1). In Cartagena they want you to pay £6 for a nosy round the cathedral, £5 for the modern art museum, and the same for the boring looking city museum and naval museum. The Gold museum is free but like a poor man's version of the giant thing in Bogota, i.e. only recommended if you won't be taking in the capital city as well during your trip. It wasn't even air conditioned.

One place we did make a point of visiting was the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, a huge fort to one side of town (handily the side we were staying in). This costs $16,000 per adult (a little over a fiver) and that does not include a tour, but does give you access to the site and allow you to roam freely. Set atop a 40m hill, there are great views to take in once you've got your breath back and wiped off the sweat. The fort was in active use in the 1600s and is still well preserved, especially the warren of tunnels below it which were used to transport goods, and designed to maximise sounds for early detection of approaching baddies. They were dark and narrow and good fun as long as you had a torch (or someone else) with you as the labyrinth went on and on and it would have been relatively easy to get slightly lost. Out of the tunnels there were various ledges to sit on, and canons to pose for photos by, and there's even a shop at the top too. It was definitely worth a trip and I didn't begrudge the entrance fee in the way I would have done had I had to pay the same amount to nosy round a boring, plain church.

For those on a budget, or even those who aren't but can't abide the hideous price inflation in Colombia's most expensive city (fact), there are lots of things to wander round and see. Wander round slowly and see, of course. There's the Plaza de los Coches which used to be a slave market and is now the place to go for candy in big bottles, old sweet shoppe style. The clock tower - Puerto del Reloj - is built into the walls and is one of the ways to access the inner part of the city. That and the nearby cathedral tower make for some nice pics, especially at night (or any time after 6.30pm, once the sun's gone down). The walls themselves are good too, of course, and free. You can climb up at various points and wander along for some great views. We took a book and a Kindle and spent a happy hour there on our second day, because it was the best way to enjoy the sun without feeling like you were going to keel over at any point. Back at sea level it's worth simply wandering some of the less cluttered backstreets to soak up the atmosphere and the architecture. And by architecture I mean some pretty balconies. But they are really pretty, honest.

How To Make A Fast Buck: Grab A Pizza The Action

Because we were on a bed and breakfast basis in both our hotels we had to sort out the other meals which I thought would be easy. Bogota, as I'd realised over the previous 6 months, is awash with places to eat and often it's cheaper to eat out than to cook there, what with the scarcity and cost of certain ingredients. Not so here. On our first day we staggered off the (supremely delayed) plane and went for lunch. We got slices of pizza that would have been $2000 pesos in Bogota. Here, they were $5000 each. That was our first clue. Aside from Crepes and Waffles which has the same menu and virtually the same pricing as the rest of the branches in the country, eating in Cartagena was alarmingly expensive. Not by European standards, sure, but considering you're paying in pesos, and considering the cost of both ingredients and labour locally, someone was making a tidy profit. There are 2 main touristy squares that are packed with eateries and you pay for the location and the name of these places, but it wasn't just there, and even when we found a small Croatian place for pasta one night, and a sort of Arabic place for falafel sandwiches the next, we were paying approaching £15 a time which is, quite frankly, outrageous. What bothered me more than this was the ice creams, or lack thereof. We only found a couple of places scooping cones (not selling pre-packaged Cornettos) and then we were faced with the least favourable combination of poor flavour selection and high prices.

Restaurants were quite set up for foreign tourists, most automatically offering menus in English (though some of these didn't have prices on which was....concerning).That said, I don't think they were running a 'one price for locals, one price for fleecing the tourists' set up - I just don't think locals would eat anywhere in the centre. There are two malls out of town that are known to be popular and have restaurants and food courts etc, but these are a trek without your own wheels so we didn't bother. Service is included in most restaurants, and is the government mandated 10%. Most places include tax - if they don't, I would walk very swiftly away because it adds a fair whack to already eye-watering prices.

I'm not one for street food normally, but I made an exception in Cartagena for the delicious still limeade that it sold in cups on street corners for about 10p. Bogota has the cleanest drinking water in the continent (allegedly) but Cartagena...not so much. Even so, I was having ice in my drinks and brushing my teeth with water from the tap without problems. The Limeade was the only street-side refreshment we managed because the city was surprisingly devoid of pavement cafes, where we'd imagined we would sit and read our books, sipping drinks slowly and enjoying the sit down. In the end we went for carrying water and plopping down on the walls instead - still fun, just not what we had had in mind.

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

Though the historic centre has a coast line, the beaches are thin and a bid uninspiring, so most people head for Bocagrande, about 10 minutes drive along the promenade. This was the site of our second hotel, but we could have also got there by bus from the centre (or vice versa). The two areas could not be more different, as Bocagrande is modern and quite free of personality - it could be a high-rise beach resort pretty much anywhere. It's a split of land with water on both sides but sandy beaches are only on the west side. And mmmm, those beaches. They are just what you would expect for the Caribbean, complete with sparkling (and scorching) sand and warm seas...and harassment by hawkers. You cannot sit for a moment on the beach without someone wanting to sell you something - a sarong, a watch, drinks, ice creams from a dubious cooler. You can buy gold and emeralds on the beach alongside shell necklaces and seed bracelets. You can rent a chair and a shelter (though loungers are few and far between) or have a massage. We didn't spend much time on the beach in the end, preferring to sunbathe by our hotel pools and just pop down for a swim in the sea, leaving everything but towels behind. Clearly having no money on us sort of did the trick, but some persistent fellas still tried.

Off the beach Bocagrande has casinos and tourist shops, though the mark ups continue (over £7 for a bag of Hershey's Kisses that would cost $2 in the US). There are supermarkets, too, which fare a bit better and seemed only a smidge higher than Bogota prices. And there are places to eat - everywhere from McDonalds to Crepes and Waffles, with lots of pizza places thrown in. Like in the centre, a lot of the restaurants are exorbitantly priced and somehow it seems so much worse here since they are far from fancy places and have a distinct 'family diner' look about them. Many were playing the youth world cup while we were there (Bogota was hosting it) and though most we tried served ok food, the atmosphere alone didn't go with the prices they were asking.

You can walk around the two distinct parts (walled city and Bocagrande) but to get from one to the other you need a bus or taxi, mainly for the heat - and once the heat goes it's pitch black, so that's not a solution either. The taxis are fine - safe and clean - but they don't operate meters the way the ones in Bogota do, so you need to check the price in advance. This should be related to zones, and with an official tariff for each, there shouldn't be much you need to negotiate though I'd still check before getting in as there are some taxi drivers who see gringo blood and grin in glee. We took 3 taxis: one from the airport to our first hotel (airport taxis are easy as you get a ticket from the official booth and just pay what it says), one to our second hotel, and then a final one back to the airport. Each one was about £3 - £4 which sounds cheap until you realise that in Bogota it would have been half that for the same distances.

So Hot And Yet So Cool

Cartagena is a good jumping off point for the region, with trips to Santa Marta and Barranquilla on offer alongside more touristy excursions to several islands nearby, and the awesome mud volcano. As a city it's not to be missed and has plenty to occupy you for a week or more, as long as you factor in the weather. A hotel with air con is a must, and if you're only staying the historic centre, more than a few nights will leave you craving even the smallest of rooftop plunge pools. While you could just stay in Bocagrande, we didn't have the energy to leave once we got there so were glad we had 'done' the historic centre already as the sun loungers were calling and nothing was going to drag me away from them and onto a packed, sweaty bus.

There's a mood in Cartagena that doesn't seem to exist in the rest of Colombia - the mixing pot of cultures, the steamy atmosphere, the way it seems like there's a party every night, a festival every weekend. Cartagena was everything I expected and wanted it to be, and more, and I am very glad I got my visit before I came home. It's more than 2 weeks since I left the coast, but I still have a golden glow on my skin and the memories in my heart. The latter, at least, should last for ages to come.