the Cartagena hustle

Our last post let the bird out of the bag, so to speak: presented with an opportunity to squeeze in one more week of leave before the kids returned from the States, we booked a last-minute trip to Colombia, reprising our travels last year. Our first — of what we hope will be many visits to this wonderful country — centered on central highlands and Colombia’s coffee axis. This time around, we started in Cartagena and explored the country’s northern coastline.

Cartagena is a fun city with a historic center full of Spanish colonial fortifications, a great restaurant scene, and bustling nightlife. A port city on the Caribbean coast, it also serves as a gateway to several pretty island beaches. Because Cartagena welcomes a great number of tourists who largely stick to the small historic center, it also draws an intense number of vendors, hawkers, street performers, artisans of various stripe and skill, and the like. Walking down the street, one is bombarded with countless offers of services, tours, and knickknacks.

The hustle began even before we reached our hotel, as our taxi driver regaled us with marginally accurate explanations of the city’s principal landmarks, suggested various tour options, warned us not to trust the hawkers who would surely accost us as soon as we stepped out of his cab, and ended by sharing the contact number of the most trustworthy local tour guide. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that we had no plans whatsoever to go on any island excursions or city tours. With merely one week at our disposal, we only planned to spend two nights in the city — just enough for a late afternoon walk around the historic center after arrival and a full day to explore further afield.

In addition to Cartagena’s nonstop hustle, the thing that struck us most forcefully was the sweltering heat. We strung together a city tour of our own devising, taking in most of Cartagena’s primary landmarks: San Felipe Castle, the colorful Getsemani neighborhood, the square with the obligatory Botero statue, and of course the giant boots — which had nothing to do with the artist’s love for his wife, as our misinformed taxi driver insisted, and were in fact inspired by a poem Luis Carlos Lopez wrote as an homage to his native city, comparing Cartagena to a pair of old, beloved boots. To look at us after our midday walk, one would have been forgiven for thinking that we had spent several hours inside of a sauna; the heat and humidity were absolutely brutal.

There are many great reasons to visit Cartagena. For us, the city’s true highlight was its food and bar scene. We sampled as many creative, delicious dishes as we could reasonably cram into a day and a half, enjoyed inspired craft cocktails at el Baron — hands down the best bar we’ve visited in many years — and pampered ourselves with hot water showers and a comfortable bed at a nice boutique hotel. There would be no pampering the rest of the week, which we spent in the wilderness areas of Santa Marta and whose austerity reminded us of our backpacking days.