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Articles Tagged ‘Cartagena’

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Touristic Impressions

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

Day 106

Cartagena has been an excellent introduction to Colombia. An easy introduction, a beautiful, romantic, walled city set on the Caribbean with fresh night breezes blowing while we sip beer and gaze upon stunning colonial architecture. However its not always perfect. As a tourist when you visit cities like this you can easily create an experience for yourself that may not be a true representation of the city.

An example, for the four days we have spent here in the city I have not again seen the shanty towns that were visible near the runway as our plane landed. Obviously there aren’t any hotels in that area of the city and even if there were nobody would want to stay there. On the other hand while we are staying in the old part of Cartagena we are not staying in the polished, restored part of the city. The hotels there are way out of our price range. Instead the Hotel Marlin is located in the still beautiful and colonial neighbourhood of Gestamani. A working class area just on the outside of the polished historic centre. The buildings here are a bit rundown, but its definitely still beautiful and definitely still a “real” neighbourhood. To walk to the centre we have to go through or around a park. This park is filled with prostitutes day and night, all selling their trade very openly. The ugly part about the park is that I have a hard time believing that some of these girls are much older than 13. Jordana and I are a bit surprised that all this is done so openly and tolerated. There are police everywhere in Cartagena, and even a small station in the park. You see if we had the money to stay just on the other side of the walls, only 300 metres away we would never see this park. If we had that kind of money we could leave Cartagena telling people how clean a beautiful the whole city was. Don’t get me wrong, the majority of the city is clean and beautiful and the people have been friendly especially for such a touristy city. All this struck me when we saw a massive cruise ship pull into port and the passengers were shuttled around the city for a day tour. I wondered what they would tell family and friends about Cartagena when they returned home.

We had one last day in the city before we caught an overnight bus south to Medellin this evening. We decided to spend the day just walking around the city and checking out some areas that we hadn’t seen yet. We walked through that very park I just talked about to the polished part of Cartagena. On a lighter note that same prostitute filled park is also filled with monkeys, iguanas and street performers. Making this about the oddest 1 square km in all of Latin America, a Colombian freak show. We spent the day walking atop the old city walls, giving us a fabulous view of the city on one side and the crashing waves of the Caribbean on the other. We stopped off for a break at one of the cities many beautiful squares. For a cool down we entered the Juan Valdez cafe. Being in Colombia it seemed an appropriate place for a coffee. However the coffee was overpriced and not very good. It was air conditioned so it was worth the stop.

After a pizza dinner we said farewell to the old city and claimed our bags from the hotels bag storage. The bus station is quite a distance from the city, about 25 minutes out. The taxi deposited us just as the sun was setting. As we entered the station we were besieged by touts yelling out different cities. If I have learned one thing from travelling it is to just ignore these guys, even if it appears rude. We approached a ticket office and asked for the next bus to Medellin. Colombia is the first place I have ever been in the world where you bargain for a bus ticket, and we are not talking about some mickey mouse company. This is a major bus company with nice buses. After our brief bargaining session we were aboard a nice a/c bus with ample leg room. Good thing as this was to be a 14 hour bus trip.

I looked forward to Medellin, not so much for any museums or big attractions, there really isn’t any. More so for the city itself, a city that not so long ago was the murder captial of the world over 5,000 homicides a year. A city that was the centre of theJuan Pablo Escobar cartel, where for $30 you could have a hit man hired to knock off whomever you wanted rid of. Since the death of Escobar the city has supposedly been a model for the revitalization of a city. As a bit of an urban planning geek I looked forward to finding out myself. Also we were planning on catching a football (soccer) match in the city, the biggest rivalry or classico in the Colombian league; Atletico v Independiente Medellin. I couldn’t wait for the 14 hour journey to be over.

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Red Hot Cartagena

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

Day 105

Cartagena is hot, damn hot. Truthfully the nights do have a beautifully cooling breeze off the caribbean. The thing is once the sunrises it takes about 2 hours for the heat and humidity to become oppressive. Waking up in the morning I couldn’t wait to get in the cold shower, then walk into the bedroom and stand in front of the standalone fan and under the ceiling fan. Ahhh coolness, I like to call it backpacker a/c. The same routine is repeated at night for a somewhat comfortable sleep.

Cartagena is one of those incredibly beautiful cities where the main attraction is simply being. Walking from shady square to shady square, taking a stroll atop the city walls then when the heat becomes to much hiding out in an air conditioned cafe with an ice coffee. This is pretty much what we did in Cartagena.

Our day started out entering the Plaza de Los Coches, a former slave-trading square. Today the slaves have been replaced with tourists and its filled with horse carriages for tours. Just off the square, we found a fabulous cafe where we had fresh fruit shakes and a spinach empanada-like pastry. The cafe was run by a very friendly older lady and the selection of fruit shakes had to be seen to be believed. The list was massive and the fruit so exotic some fruits don’t even have English translations. It was a perfect way to start the day. From breakfast we walked back through the plaza and under the Portal de Los Dulces. Sweet vendors line up their stalls selling all kinds of sweets, if you know Jordana then you will understand how tough it was for me to steer her clear. We continued walking a circle around the old city, following the city walls and tucking in and out of the narrow cobbled streets. The most impressive thing about the old city is the lack of ugly modern buildings. There are a few monstrosities built in the 70’s and 80’s, but not enough to kill the beautiful, romantic feel of the city.

Night is maybe the most beautiful and enjoyable time in Cartagena. A cool breeze clears out the humidity, the churches, walls and buildings are magnificently lit up. We found yet another chinese place for dinner. For us vegetarians we just couldn’t beat the tasty fried rice for $6. We easily split one order, actually it was a challenge to finish. After dinner we headed to a cuban salsa bar that set up a huge patio next to the walls of the city. To our left was a beautiful square with a large, brightly lit church standing tall behind. People danced non-stop to the salsa inside. Outside Jordana and I drank $1 Aguila beers and admired the night time atmosphere. Street performers would stop by with their hilarious antics. One guy in particular had a fantastic routine of following people while imitating their every move. Then he would throw down a real looking puppy dog. When people stepped on it he’d make a yellping noise. As we sat there listening to the blaring salsa, watching the street performers and admiring the lit up city, I turned to Jordana and said, “look around, this could be one of those tourism commercials where it just looks to good to be true. It all looks so perfect.” Cartagena often looked that way.

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